On May 14, 2013, at 2:59, we witnessed the miraculous birth of our 3rd child and son, Keo Nozomu Luedecke-Kobiki. At 3680 g (8.1 lbs) he was nearly the same weight as Joa, his older brother, when he was born. Keo was around 51 cm in length +/- a few cm since nurses normally don’t measure the precise length. Anyhow, Shinobu did an excellent job during labor. Since Nina was born in roughly an hour after we arrived at the clinic, we wanted to make sure that this time we would leave a bit more cushion before the actual birth. As soon as Shinobu sensed that contractions were around 10 minutes apart, we made our way to the hospital, arriving around 3 AM in the morning. We left in the wee hours of night for all 3 kids so this was nothing new. We both expected to see our son before sunrise, but this was not to be the case. In the end, Shinobu used an inducer and we elected to use an epidural for the first time, since her previous two births were both completely natural. The actual due date wasn’t for another 5 days and once the doctor mentioned the possibility that today might not be the birth date, and that we may be able to return home, we both opted to do everything possible to have our son born this same day. There was also concern that the longer we waited, the larger the baby would be, and the more difficult the delivery.
After pushing for hours, at last we were able to meet our little guy, who popped his head out right before 3PM that afternoon, 12 hours since the time we checked in-- not what we anticipated.
Most importantly though, Keo was healthy, and Shinobu looked great even though she had just gone through the toughest delivery out of our 3 children. The rattling first cries out of Keo’s mouth were strangely enough a welcomed sound to our ears and symbolic of the genesis of a new member to our household.
Keo’s Name:
Since about the 2nd trimester of Shinobu’s pregnancy, we had been tossing around several names for our third. However, it wasn’t until a week later, that we settled on Keo, which depending on which source you use, is a form of Joseph(Joe) in Hawaiian, and means ‘God will increase/add to’ in Hebrew from the book of Genesis in the Bible. Joseph, who had the ability to interpret dreams, was also a man of character and faith, who rose to become the king of Egypt. In Khmer, his name means ‘superior, extraordinary, precious, exquisite, delicate, special, and uncommon. Quite the meaning. It is very close to Keon, which means ‘God is gracious’, just like our other 2 children, which we thought fit well. We also wanted to keep his name short as possible, given the length of our last name. As much as possible, we also wanted to select a name easily pronounced in both English and Japanese.
His middle name is from the same verse that the rest of our kids get their middle names from, Isaiah 40:31: but those who hope in the Lord
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.
His Kanji character is the word for ‘hope’ and is a single character just like all of our Japanese names are.
Thank you all for all your prayers and support and as you would say in Japanese, Yoroshiku onegaishimasu! Now we humbly ask and pray for wisdom from Above to somehow raise these 3 little ones of ours! Lord help us!
No comments:
Post a Comment