Welcome To Our World

Our sweet baby girl is finally here! Rachel Joy Drapeau arrived at 4:11pm on Friday, July 24th. Here is one picture of our sweetie, before we chronicle her arrival story!



The phrase is usually "to make a long story short," however with Rachel, though we waited a long time for her in pregnancy, her arrival story is nothing but short. VERY short...and very quick. So, we'll tell the whole story.

We anticipated having Valerie induced at 7am on July 24th. Here's Val's final photo at the house before we left for the hospital.



The hospital was apparently slammed the night before/morning of, so they postponed our labor induction until 11am. Here's Val prepped and in the hospital shortly thereafter.



The induction began at approximately 1:50pm. At that time, Val was 3cm dilated already. Here's what that looks like!



The laboring began, and the intensity of contractions gradually built until approximately 3:20pm, when Val's water broke. Unfortunately, we don't have any pictures of that...further, those who would desire pictures of that event have something wrong with themselves (that's nasty, guys...seriously)! At around the same time, the doctor examined Valerie, and found that she was still only 4cm dilated. Due to the increasing pain of the contractions, Val asked for an epidural (which never came...more on that below!).

The epidural preparation took a little while, as the medical staff was being located to perform this procedure. Right as the epidural needle was being inserted, Valerie felt Rachel's head begin to arrive. To almost all medical personnel present, this was deemed improbable, since not even 1 hour earlier Val was only 4cm dilated. However, Valerie was right, the epidural preparation was ceased, and after approximately 4 or 5 pushes and more pain than she had ever experienced in her entire life, Rachel arrived! Valerie was quite simply AMAZING in persevering through much more than she anticipated, and God is inexplicably merciful in allowing for the entire process to be short and endurable. We all praise Him for this remarkable day!



So, the VERY short of the already short story is this: Total Labor Time = 2 hr. 21 min.; Total Pushing Time = less than 5 min.; Statistic of the Day = 4cm to baby in less than 1 hour. Yeah...if we are planning on having any future children, we're going to have to go from early labor to the hospital faster than Uncle Ben's minute rice!

Enough of the story...here are some more pictures of our sweetheart!










Caleb is simply fascinated by her. He has seen other babies before, but for some reason he seemed to know that this one was different from the beginning.






He is still learning how to act around her, but one thing he has absolutely no problem doing...giving her kisses!





We thank you all for your consistent prayer and encouragement during our time carrying and delivering Rachel. Please continue to pray for us as we adjust to being an unbelievably blessed family of 4!

Tri-Family Finito!

If Rachel were a book, we'd owe approximately $1.25 in overdue library fines. Nonetheless, since she is not yet here, we have been blessed with opportunities to enjoy some final time spent as a three-person family doing all kinds of fun things. Below, you will see some of our fun family activities as we have been patiently waiting for Rachel's arrival!

Caleb and I (Jason) at the beach.

Check out this guy's sweet flip-flops!

He sure is quite the adventurer!

Find any gold, Caleb? Nope...just some cool lookin' rocks!

Here is a photo of our visit to Hammond Castle in Gloucester, MA.

Caleb (and all of us) loved the beautiful ocean view.

Hey, this coat of armor is just my size!

Beautiful atrium...

...and grand organ room.

Here's Valerie and Grammy, the soon-to-be Mother
and excited Grandmother per duo!

Grammy, Caleb, and Pops...they will be Caleb's
champions this weekend, while Valerie and I will be
welcoming Rachel in the hospital.

Even though Caleb will soon be one of two, he will
always be our lion king!

One final photo of the three of us. If God wills it,
we will welcome Rachel to our world tomorrow.
We love you, Sissy, and can't wait to meet you!

Crammin' it all in!

So we are just over a week away from our due date with Rachel, and although we feel like she is going to come late, she really could come at any time! Jason finished teaching at the end of June, so the last two weeks we have had some awesome family time with just the three of us. We have been trying to squeeze in some special Caleb activities as well, before Rachel joins us and things get crazier around here! :) So here are a ton of pics of some of the recent stuff our family has been up to, from seeing some fireworks on the 4th of July to going to the Boston Children's Museum, and even going to a Red Sox game a few nights ago. We're actually headed to the beach this afternoon...as I said...we're really trying to cram it all in!

This picture was taken this past Sunday when I was 38 weeks.

Caleb loved seeing the fireworks this year, he was pointing at them and saying, "Wow!"

As you'll see, he loved pretty much everything about the Children's Museum. He actually got upset each time we left an exhibit, he just wanted to keep doing whatever fun thing he was doing at the time. It was so cute!

This was the Red Sox game we went to this past Wednesday night. Caleb was so good the entire game, we only had to leave our seats for one diaper change! :) Big Papi hit a 3 run homer and the Red Sox won 5-4. This was Caleb's second game, and I think he's a big fan! Check out the videos at the end of us singing "Sweet Caroline" (a tradition at Fenway) and of course, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame!"