It's a BOY!
Asher Fielding Toman
born 9/3/2011 6:09pm
7 lbs. 13 oz., 21.75 in.

Asher is a biblical name that we liked (Jacob's 8th son) and means "happy, blessed" and Fielding is a family name. It took us a while to finally settle on the name but it seems to fit him well so far.

The story:
Asher's due date was 9/11 and we were not expecting a baby for at least another week as Cadie had to be induced at 42 weeks. Needless to say we were not quite prepared when my water broke at 1:00am Saturday 9/3 morning. I found Eric downstairs watching US vs Costa Rica men's soccer. And his response, "well I guess this is why I couldn't sleep." Our night-time emergency person was out of town for the weekend and so we called an awesome neighbor to come stay at our house with Cadie until morning. We got to the hospital around 3:30am and basically waited around until Saturday afternoon for contractions to become more significant. Me in the L&D room at 7:30am trying to pass the time:

Luckily we had the crazy football fans to watch out the window and plenty of football on TV to watch. This is the view out of our room - that is the football stadium with the Goodyear blimp circling overhead. Glad we arrived at the hospital before game day traffic. (for those of you not fooball inclined - the horseshoe, OSU's stadium, seats 105,000 people and Saturday was the season opener vs Akron. OSU fans are crazy.)

At 3:00pm we made the decision to start pitocen to induce labor as I was still not very far along. This took about an hour to kick in and then boy did it ever! Hard labor lasted about 2 hours and I was so grateful to have Eric there to lean on (literally as he totally supported my standing body) and to coach me through it. Progression was so quick that no one was ready when Asher wanted to come out. My nurse-midwife did not make it in time and Asher was delivered by the resident MD. Ask Eric to tell you a funny story (funny now but not at the time) of our nurse throwing her phone across the room as she was trying to call someone (anyone!) to help.
Cadie spent Saturday and Saturday night with two neighbor families - going to soccer practice, farmer's market, and the pool. She thought she was on vacation. Eric chose to spend the night at the hospital with me.

Cadie came to meet little brother and gave him tons of love (even though he is a boy):

She made a picture to hang in his bassinet.

We are still getting used to having Asher here, there is definitely going to be an adjustment period, but I think we make a nice little family.