What happened? (this is an email we started sending on June 4)

Family, Friends & Colleagues Far and Wide -

Very few of you know any of this yet, so the mass email seemed appropriate.  Heck, plenty of you probably didn't even know that we were expecting a baby... but we wanted to update you on some major developments in our life during the last week.

On Monday, May 30, Marie was admitted to a local hospital with severe pre-eclampsia and HELLP syndrome.  We'll leave it to you WebMD afficionados to research some of that for yourselves, but it was bad.  As a result, our daughter Caley Marie was born by an emergency Caesarean section at 2:17am on Tuesday, May 31, 2011.  For those keeping track, Caley was only 27 weeks, 2 days gestational age at the date of her birth.

Caley immediately was transported to The Children's Hospital in Denver, Colorado, where she is now a patient in the NICU there, and is expected to stay for at least the next 3 months.  She is proving to be a little fighter already, and has weathered her first surgery well thus far.  Marie was discharged from her hospital today and will get to visit Caley in the NICU for the first time tomorrow.

The people who already have received this news have been quite random in scope, as we've just tried to survive these first few days.  But the showing of support has been overwhelming - we've been showered by beautiful flower arrangements, and have felt the power of your many prayers for both Caley and Marie.  So many of you have asked what you can do to help, and would like to know what's going on with us.  To that end, we've set up a simple little blog: http://prayforcaley.blogspot.com.  We'll try to post daily updates there of what's going on with Caley, so everyone can stay in the loop.  Please understand that with our focus on Caley's development and Marie's healing, we will limit our communications with "the outside world" primarily to blog posts for now.

In terms of what you can do to help us, all we ask for is a simple prayer, a happy thought, or an extra smile during your day.  You can post a note to the blog to let us know you're praying for us, or send us an email at this address we've reserved just for Caley:caley.m.williams@gmail.com.  We probably won't be able to respond to all of your notes, but please know that they are so welcome and appreciated at all times.  We look forward, together with you, to welcoming home our little girl later this year.

With much love, Marie and Kirk

P.S.  Please feel free to share our message and our blog with anyone you like - the more prayers for Caley, the better.

Happy Birthday, Caley Marie!

This wasn't how things were supposed to happen, Caley.

But today, at 2:17am, you were born by an emergency c-section.  It saved both you and your mommy.

You weighed less than a pound and a half, and were less than a foot long.  You were taken to The Children's Hospital in Denver, and you'll be spending time in their NICU instead of mommy's belly for the next few months. Daddy watches over you as much as he possibly can while mommy works on healing.  We love you, and wish you a happy birthday.