Emma is here!

Born: 11:36PM GMT+6 (Doha, Qatar)

Weight: 3.48 Kg = 7ib 10 oz

Length: 53 cm = 21 inches



Kara’s water broke at about 3:00 pm this afternoon and an hour later we were at the hospital. This was amusing in the respect that I had just taken all of our stuff out of the car about 3 hours earlier because we were told to come back on Thursday. Kara called me at work and since it wasn’t a text message I knew it was something big. She told me that either her water broke or she just peed on herself. My first thought was I don’t want to tell anybody her water broke because what if it turns out she really did just pee on herself.



So we show up at the hospital and they started the inducement drip pretty soon after. There is a little monitor that measures the baby’s heartbeat and something else. When the something else is between 0 and 19 nothing is really happening but between 20 and 90 she is having a contraction. Kara was going between 40 and 60 a couple of times but didn’t feel any pain. I don’t know if this is normal or if she is just super woman. During this time we had moved from our room to a labor room and we had no less then 3 doctors coming in and out to see how Kara was doing. I always heard the stories of nurses doing all the hard work and the doctors coming in to catch but not here. They are running at 20% capacity so everybody has low stress and wants to help. Even though there were three it wasn’t overwhelming at all. I don’t know how they have done it but everybody in this hospital is smiling and has a calm positive disposition.



After about 5 hours Kara told me to take a nap because we both thought it was going to be a long night. I crashed on the couch in our room and two hours later a nurse got me and I went back to the labor room. Kara greeted me and said they were going to do a cesarean. It turns out Emma wanted to come now but the cervix hadn’t dilated enough to let her through. The doctor said we needed to do a cesarean ASAP. Dr. Risvy had said the whole time that she never did a cesarean unless absolutely necessary so I knew this wasn’t some time saving measure. So in ten minutes I went from being asleep to watching my wife go into surgery. Talk about feeling really really alone. I sent out text messages to friends asking for them to pray for their safety and a good friend came up to see me. By the time he made it there the procedure was over and I was in the nursery with my new girl.



I had seen him with his new boy a few months prior so this was pretty cool. We didn’t talk much but it was nice to have a friend there. After looking in awe at my daughter for a while it was time to feed her. The nurse was about to feed her when Josh suggested it was OK if I did. I’m really glad he did because I got to give her her first bottle and spend even more time with her. After this Kara came out of surgery and I walked with her as they pushed her bed back to our room. She was in some pain but as usual was toughing it out. She got to see the little blessing for a couple of minutes before conking out. So that’s the new news. Thanks for everybody’s thoughts and prayers. I’ll be sure to keep the site up to date with pictures as they come.



Emma’s first pics