Welcome to the World, Declan!

We'd found out a few weeks ago that our unborn son was breech (head up, not down) which meant we required a c-section for the delivery. So a due date of September 7th became a scheduled surgery of August 28th.

Saturday, August 19th at 8 am Libs jumped out of bed yelling "MY WATER BROKE!!!". While I blearily rubbed my eyes to understand what was going on, she ran to the bathroom continuing her exclamations, "HOLY SHIT! IT'S GUSHING!" "GET ME THE PHONE!"

Neither of us had any practical experience with this but our midwife surely did, so our first instinct (the right one) was to page her and find out what she thought. (Although we were having surgery, our midwife would still be our post-operative caregiver. Five weeks of having someone stop by every couple of days to help and give advice is a good thing) I digress. Fariba's instruction was "Get to the hospital...now. I'll meet you there."

The rest of the story is exactly the same with minor differences, except for one. Once our baby was delivered safely, the doctor said, "There's a true knot in the umbilical. Wow... Look at this. There's a knot in the umbilical."

I did look. it was incredible. Loosely tied though it was, there WAS indeed a knot in the baby's umbilical cord. Which is, if tightened, a potentially brain-damaging if not fatal thing. Luckily, very very luckily, the knot never tightened so the blood and nutrient flow throught the umbilical was constant.

And so, little Declan John Elliott was born at 10:52 am. Weighing in at a whopping 7 lbs. 12 oz. and measuring a gargantuan 49 cm (19.29 in) we are on cloud nine. Please enjoy these pics as much as I enjoyed taking or watched them being taken. He's a handsome little devil.