Owen Ivins Shamo

Owen was born Friday, November 13th at 11:05 am. He was 8 lbs 9oz and 21.5 inches long. We came to the hospital Thursday morning (Nov. 12) at 7:30 am. They started inducing me around 10 am with a procedure that took 12 hours and did nothing. So Thursday we sat around the hospital waiting while nothing happened. Thursday night around 11:30 pm they started me on pitocin and I was able to sleep off and on until 5:30 am Friday. I was having some painful contractions and got my epidural at 6:45 am then I felt nothing, quite literally. Around 10:45 am the nurse and resident came in saying she wanted to put an internal monitor on because they keep losing the heart beat during contractions. When they started the procedure around 10:55 am they were surprised to find that the head was already on its way out. I had been taking a nap and really had felt nothing - bless modern medicine. The doctor was paged I was told to stop laughing because he was coming out and after pushing no longer than 15 seconds he was here at 11:05 am. We feel very blessed that both of our boys have had such easy births, we know we are an exception, and we are very grateful for it.

As for the name Owen Ivins... When we were in the ultrasound room finding out the gender this time around and they told us it was a boy Rick said "Let's name him Owen," and I literally laughed because I thought he was joking. Needless to say the name has grown on me and we never even discussed another option. Since picking this name we have found a couple Owens in our distant family trees, but he isn't named for any of them.

Ivins is an emotional name for me to write about. Many of you know that my Grandpa George I. Cannon passed away this summer. His middle name was Ivins so he is named after my Grandpa. My Grandpa Cannon was sick when he found out we were pregnant with Owen and my Dad would spend nights with him; one day I got an email from my Dad letting me know that each night my Grandpa would pray for me and my other pregnant cousins by name and for our unborn children. For anyone who knew my Grandpa they knew that he was incredibly close to the Savior. It was after knowing that my Grandpa was praying for me and this pregnancy daily that I first started to feel like things would be okay and this healthy little boy would make it safely to our family. After reading my Grandpa's personal history this summer there is a little bit of a fun story to the name. My Grandpa's first name was George, the same first name as his father, so he was known by most people as Bud, but his maternal grandfather, Heber J. Grant, wouldn't call him Bud, and instead called him Ivins during his childhood.

We are so glad he is here and we love him lots. Luckily he came just in time for my sister, Karen, to see him before she headed back to Seattle just a few hours later. My mom is here for the next week and a half to take care of us. The only thing we are waiting for now is to introduce him to Wyatt. With the H1N1 going crazy in CT the hospital will not allow any visitors in the hospital under 18, so hopefully we will be able to go home soon so Wyatt can meet his little brother. When we called him today to let him know that baby Owen was here he just started screaming and running around, he is a little bit excited.
*This post was obviously written when we were in still in the hospital, but I could not get the pictures to work correctly. I have a new respect for anyone who tries to blog on a PC, I would have given up blogging long ago if it weren't about a thousand times easier to add and rearrange pictures on a Mac. We are home now and all doing well.