Friday: The Baby Has Arrived!

On Friday evening, we welcomed Aven Elizabeth O'Hara into our lives. Aven is very healthy, and she has made the rest of her family very happy.
Aven weighed 5 pounds, 15 ounces at birth (a pound lighter than Rory), and she arrived a few days early, much to the surprise of her parents.
In fact, at 6 p.m., Tim was mowing the lawn and Sarah and Rory were enjoying "happy hour" with friends. At 7 p.m., Sarah announced that she was having (what she claimed were) "false alarm" contractions. At 8 p.m., Tim's sister and brother-in-law arrived as babysitters "just to be safe". At 8:30 p.m., Sarah begrudgingly acknowledged that "these contractions might be the real deal". At 8:45 p.m., we left for the hospital. At 9:00 p.m., we arrived at the hospital. At 9:15, we learned that the hospital was totally packed (it was a full moon), and that Sarah would be placed in the "fishbowl", an alcove off the main hallway of the Labor & Delivery unit. And at 9:55 p.m., Aven was born. (And, yes, the very swift onset of labor meant that Sarah delivered Aven without the benefit of pain-relieving drugs, which was not as Sarah had planned.)
Sarah is doing fabulously well for a woman who has passed through hell and back. Tim is happy to be far away from the hospital (despite his return trip on Sunday evening, just hours after Aven was discharged, to see Rory get 6 stiches in her leg; she took a fall running in the backyard.)
Aven is a sleeping and eating machine. And Pippin (our manly cat) is trying to ignore the fact that the household balance of power has shifted decidedly feminine, with girls now outnumbering boys.