PALOS HEIGHTS, Ill. -- Nine months pregnant and married to a
fervent Bears fan with tickets to Sunday's NFC Championship Game,
Colleen Pavelka didn't want to risk going into labor during the
game against the New Orleans Saints.
Due to give birth on Monday, Pavelka's doctor told her Friday
she could induce labor early. She opted for the Friday delivery.
"I thought, how could [Mark] miss this one opportunity that he
might never have again in his life?" said Pavelka, 28, from the
southwestern Chicago suburb of Homer Glen.
At 10:45 p.m. Friday, Mark Patrick Pavelka was born at Palos
Community Hospital after close to six hours of labor.
While her husband watched the Bears play the New Orleans Saints
at Soldier Field Sunday, Colleen planned to watch in the hospital
with the baby wrapped in a Bears blanket -- a Christmas gift from
his grandmother.
The couple named Mark after his father, who wore a "Monsters of
the Midway" shirt during the delivery.
"If he wasn't born by Sunday and the Bears won, I would have
named him Rex," after Bears quarterback Rex Grossman, joked Mark
Pavelka, 28.
Mark is the couple's second son.