In Honor of Noah

Since my blog is primarily to share with family and friends about my beautiful baby boy, I thought it only fitting to start from the beginning. "And in the beginning God created man..." haha I'm sure just the beginning of my bad jokes :)

I never felt compelled to blog or really even share about my pregnancy 13 months ago because well quite frankly, my pregnancy sucked! I didn't really start to show until about 5 months so those first few months when I wasn't sharing, I just looked like I was getting really fat and at the same time having morning sickness EVERY day. Yes, that's right-my morning sickness decided to last for the full 9 months - fabulous! But on the positive side - those first few moments when Noah started to kick and I felt those butterflies in my stomach I just kept reminding myself at how awesome God's grace was to grant me this child and I decided to stop complaining.

At the 30 week mark of my pregnancy I noticed some bleeding but later found out false alarm but thankfully got me to the doctors office where they decided to hook me up to all those fun machines and realized that I was having contractions 2 min. apart although they were very small and I could not feel them so they sent me straight over to Reston hospital for observation and were very concerned because it was way too early for him to be born. Thankfully they got me on medicine to stop the contractions and even let me go back to work on mild bedrest.

Then I hit my 36 week checkup - June 9th to be exact. The doctor took me off the medicine and within an hour the contractions had started back up and my blood pressure was through the roof and I was entering preeclampsia. They sent me back to the hospital and this time said I had to stay overnight and that was it, I was done with work (I only had 3 days left-but had planned on it being a busy 3 days so pretty distressed to say the least)

The next morning my doctor came in and said she couldn't let me leave because at this point my body was headed towards toxemia - which can be fatal for both mother and child and so just like that she said, "you're gonna have a baby today" and they started to induce me! Of course I completely freaked out and water works started flowing because I was NOT READY and of course God was looking down at me and laughing and saying this isn't your timing -it's mine. But it was certainly difficult to realize I thought I had a month to go and there I was in the hospital with no bag packed, no clothes washed, no nursery finished and all I wanted to do was see my cat! I know the nurse thought I was quite odd on that account.

Without all the "details", the rest of the day went pretty smoothly. I feel bad saying that but it's really true. After all we had been through the past 9 months, baby day had arrived! They started the potosin at 9am, broke my water after that (while Jason was at home getting a bag together), rocked in my rocking chair for a few hours with my parents and Jason and my guardian angel of a nurse Katie by my side. My mom finally convinced me to call the anesthesiologist around lunchtime (don't try to be a hero Kim) when the contractions were so close together that I could no longer take breaks and they had me take a nap and rest up and sent everyone away for my body to "get ready." Around late afternoon, the amazing news came that I was completely dilated and ready to start pushing. And so we did...for 2 hours we did. I thought this baby would never come and I was ready to put him back! I knew the whole pregnancy that he was head down and REALLY down but what I didn't know was that he was face up and not face down which is much more painful and harder to get him to cooperate -one last bit of fun for me but finally at 7:34pm Noah Carter Watlington arrived safely weighing in at 6lbs 14oz and 20.5 inches. Here are some pics to share that special time. Of course look forward to many fun Noah posts in the future!