Henry Arrives

Rachel went into labor last Thursday, Sept 27th, in the morning.  She started having contractions around 6 am in the morning.  We made it to the hospital shortly thereafter.

Rachel timing her contraction in front of hospital

The doctors initially said she was just in pre-labor and discussed whether or not we needed to stay.  However the testing showed that our baby was getting a little stressed inside of mom and they decided to admit Rachel for monitoring.
After getting our own room - the nurse discovered that Rachel was indeed in active labor as she had progressed to being 4cm dilated in less than 2 hours.  At that point things went really quickly and she was fully dilated by noon - less than 6 hours since labor began.
Henry's heart rate was bouncing around during the delivery and the OB had some concern that the cord was getting stressed.  The delivery took about 2 hours which was intense.

I believe this picture was after the epidural...

Henry Andrew Taber was born at Alta Bates Hospital in Berkeley, CA on September 27, 2012 @ 2:04pm - 5lb8oz and 19 inches tall.  He initially was limp and not breathing.  It was probably the scariest experience of my life.  He was attended to by the Peds staff at the hospital and required suction to get some of the meconium (if you do not know what this is - I will let you look it up) out of his chest.  He responded well to this - though it was the longest 5 minutes of my life!  From there it was off to the ICU for what would be a 6 day stay.

-Bret