Unspeakable Joy...It's a girl!!

Selah Blessen Wolf was born on Tuesday, December 19, 2006, at 6.26 pm. She is 8 lbs 3 oz and 19 inches long. As soon as I saw her, I said "Praise God!" and I burst into tears. The emotion of the moment was overwhelming. After about 9 hours of labor, Laura's pain was eclipsed by the beautiful cries of our daughter. She was a little purple when she came out, but she pinked up pretty quickly and actually had a 9.9 Apgar score. She is very healthy and has been eating well.

Of course, we are already quite smitten with her and have spent a lot of time holding her in the past 48 hours. Laura is doing very well and has been able to get a pretty good amount of rest considering the circumstances. Her labor experience was not exactly as we expected (but I assume that is probably the case with all labors), but I think it went very well. Special thanks to Sharon for giving us great guidance for laboring well. We came home from the hospital this afternoon.

Thank you so much to everyone who prayed for us, called us, texted us, gave us cards and gifts, and visited us at the hospital. You really helped this be a special time for us.

Laura's parents are in town to help out and I am taking some time off to help Laura and to bond with our beautiful daughter.

Below are a few pics. Check out our Flickr for many more.

I'm not sure where the red tinged hair came from.

















Proud parents. Selah is about one hour old here.

















In the nursery.

A baby coming soon!

We went to the doctor on Thursday, December 14 only to find that I had not progressed anymore. The doctor strongly advised us to schedule an induction on Monday, Tuesday, or Wednesday of this week. We wanted to wait til Wednesday, but realized that Wednesday is my birthday...so we went with Tuesday, December 19. Should God not bring the baby by early tomorrow morning, we will show up at the hospital at 7 AM and let the doctor break the amniotic membrane (break my water). She will wait a couple of hours to allow that to start labor and if it doesn't, she will start me on pitocin to induce labor. We expect to have news sometime tomorrow. We probably won't update the blog til we get home from the hospital on Thursday.

Until tomorrow morning...we keep asking God to bring the baby sooner! We know that whether God decides to bring this child from my womb before the induction or through the induction, He is the mighty, sovereign God. We want Him to recieve the most glory possible through the birth of our child and we trust that He knows how to glorify Himself in our lives. We praise Him for drawing us near to Him as we have learned so much through the pregnancy alone. We praise Him for His faithfulness and for the health He has given me and the baby thus far.

We can hardly wait another 24 hours to hold our firstborn!!

No baby yet

I really appreciate all of the people who have called to check on the baby status, but God has not chosen to bring this little one into our arms just yet. I still feel the same as I have for many months--great! I've been going on really long walks, which physically wear me out--so my days also include a nap. I have also busied myself with some holiday baking and think I might do some reading today.

As soon as we know something, we'll let you know!

39 Weeks

Here we are. 6 days away from the official due date. Laura still looks great. She is having a good number of Braxton-Hicks contractions throughout the day now. They only hurt in the evening. Today was her last day of work for a long time. We are rejoicing in that tonight. No more grading papers at home! Our friends Russell and Bethany just had their baby, Tye Maddox. We visited them in the hospital last night and it made us both that much more excited. We can't wait to meet our child.