Henry is here

Henry Carter Paulson
December 3, 2009 11:30 am
8 lbs 1/2 oz 20 3/4 in

My due date was November 29th, but Henry decided to stay in for a few more days until he was good and ready to come out. On the day he was born, I woke up around 5:30 am feeling a little pain and thought maybe this was it. About 10 minutes later the same little pain happened again followed by another one 5 minutes later and then I knew this really was it. Brett was still sound asleep but I sat on the edge of the bed watching the clock waiting for the alarm to go off at 6 am. When Brett woke up I told him what was happening and the first thing he asked was if he still had time to go to the gym. He was so sleepy! I nicely told him NO this is the real deal. A few minutes later I had a contraction and he said I needed to start timing them. I said YOU need to time them - that's your job. We didn't have a single watch in our house with a working battery and none of our other clocks had second hands so we had to break out the ipod to use the timer feature on there. We were cracking ourselves up at how unprepared we were for this! So, now that that was settled we started getting excited and ready to sit back and wait for the contractions to get close enough to go to the hospital. Only thing that threw a wrinkle into our plan was that my contractions were only a few minutes apart from there on out.

I took a shower but the contractions were so intense by the time I got done blow drying my hair I had no energy to put on even a dab of makeup. (Big mistake. I looked terrible that day and ended up not letting anyone take pictures of me - except one by a rogue nurse - and I wish I had taken some anyway.) We were on our way to the hospital by 7:30, checked in by 8 and seeing a doctor a few minutes later. I'll spare you the details of the next few hours but I will say that it didn't hurt as bad as I thought it was going to. Brett was such a trooper through all of it and I love that we experienced all of it together.

At 11:30 am little Henry arrived. Seeing that little guy for the first time was the best moment in my life so far. He was precious, perfect, and healthy. He was so alert and I loved it. I just held him for the first few minutes and stared into his eyes. I wanted to soak up every detail of his sweet little face and get to know him immediately. When I handed him to Brett to hold it was so special to see my husband turn into a father. That day was so magical. I can't tell you how many times Brett and I just stared at Henry and gave thanks to God for blessing us with such a wonderful son. This little Henry has changed us forever and we are so happy he is here.

-a