Joy!

She finally arrived! Joy Cara Copeland was born on January 11, 2008. Kimi and the baby are doing great. We are so blessed to have this healthy baby girl. She was 7 lbs, 7.7 ounces. That's right - 7-7-7. They told us to go to Vegas. She was 20 inches long. She's got a tint of red hair, which my mom was really happy about.

We really felt all the prayers that people were offering up on our behalf. We felt for a while like we wouldn't get pregnant again. It was our three year old (at the time) daughter who began praying in faith that God would give us a new baby. She prayed and told us that "God said yes."

Then when we got pregnant it was more praying - since we had a miscarriage just before this pregnancy. Then when it came time for delivery, more praying. Right before the baby was born we prayed that the delivery would be a safe one. Joy came out with the cord wrapped around her neck. We didn't really know what was going on, but before she was even all the way out I heard the doctor say "Get NI" which I knew meant the NICU people. Something was definitely wrong. Three or four people came running into the room and grabbed Joy and began working on her. She had made one small cough when she first came out, but other than that she seemed lifeless. She wasn't breathing, she was blue and she wasn't moving. I felt so helpless in that moment. Kimi didn't know what was going on, because she was kind of out of it. But I knew things weren't good. All I could do was watch the nurses faces as they looked at each other and communicated with each other about what was going on. The real scary moments were probably less than a minute long but it was the longest minute of my life. Finally they brought Joy over to Kimi and she got to see her for a minute or so and then they took her off to the NICU. I followed them over there and spent some time with her and watched as they continued to have her on oxygen and hooked up to heart monitors. It was definitely a scary time. I felt like God was definitely present there with me and helping me to trust him. Joy stayed in NICU for about 4 hours. I made a few trips back and forth between Kimi and Joy, trying to make sure that both were doing well. When they finally wheeled Joy into our room I literally felt a load lifted off of my shoulders. Joy had entered that room in more ways than one.

So now it's been almost a week since she was born. She's eating well and sleeping a ton. We are really blessed. Hannah loves her new sister and is so proud of her. She loves to show her off, show people her room and help in any way she can. We've had people bringing us food every night which is awesome. We've been eating really well!

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