Simon Says!

Well, folks, life has forever changed for us. But before we get into that, here's a cute photo of Rachel and Theo before heading to the hospital this morning.



Ok, now on to the hospital. We arrived at 8am and Rachel was feeling pretty good.





Next we have the birthing ball. It helped Rachel a great deal during the rough patch of labor, but she couldn't use it until it was put together. Here's the master engineer at work.











This is the last picture of Rach with baby in womb. She has a smile on but labor was getting rough here.



Rachel was a serious trooper during labor. She arrived at the hospital one centimeter dilated and after 12 hours she made it to about four centimeters and then opted for the epidural.

After a few minutes the baby's heart tones became very low, so we headed to the operating room for further monitoring and to prepare for a C-section just in case. The heart tones improved a bit but not to a level that our doctor was comfortable with, so she advised the C-section and we concurred.

So, at 8:10pm CST on 12/26/2009, our little Simon Oscar Laven was born. He was a robust 7lbs, 13oz, and measured 19 1/2 inches.









With Grandma Janet