He's gr'Owen!

At three and a half weeks old, Owen is starting to outgrow some of his tiniest baby clothes.  We tried putting on some newborn footie pajamas last night and he couldn't straighten his legs!

One week

Two weeks

Three weeks

It's a boy!

According to the specialist who performed our ultrasound, we were among the 10% or so of new parents who decide to wait to learn the gender of their baby until he or she is born.  We were pretty sure, however, right from the start, that Owen had received a Y chromosome from dear ol'Dad.  We thought this picture just looked like a little boy, but we had a few other reasons to suspect a "he" as well...

My mom, Owen's Grammie, told me and also-pregnant sis Tera about the "ring on the string" test - an old wives tale for gender prediction that had been foolproof for a family friend.  Tera and hubby Brett, and Kyle and I had gathered at Grammie and Pops' place in Oregon in January.  I was about 5 months pregnant, and Tera had just told everyone that she was expecting.  Tera and I got comfy lying on the couch while Grammie found a ring of suitable heft and a good piece of string.  The tale goes that if, when the ring is suspended above the pregnant belly on the string, it moves back and forth, it's a girl, and if it moves in a circle, it's a boy.  Tera's baby's gender is still a surprise so we'll keep her ring result a surprise for now too, but it told me I was having a boy!  Fast forward one month and we all reconvened at Great Gramma and Papa's in Florida and of course had to repeat the test for Gramma.  Again, it heeded the same results for us both!  I held off on buying any blue but did start to think a little more seriously about boys names.

Nearly all of the men in the Norton family have birthdays that fall on the 4th or 24th of the month.  When we learned, way back in September, that his due date was May 24, Kyle's first reaction was "well, it's a boy!"  He also would have shared that birthday with Kyle's cousin, Corey - a very manly man indeed.  Since then, we both had a strong feeling he was a boy, but started to doubt a little bit once May 24 came and went, and we scheduled an induction for May 31 (Aunt Tera's birthday...a very girly girl!).  May 31 came along and we didn't feel like the timing was quite right yet, so we put off the induction until June 5.  That date wasn't meant to be either, and when we went in on the morning of June 3 for monitoring and learned that his amniotic fluid was dangerously low, we checked into Hotel Hopkins for an induction, and more importantly, the birth of our baby! We took an informal pool amongst ourselves, our doula and nurses, and most of us predicted he'd arrive on the 4th.  Labor progressed pretty quickly but had to be slowed artificially around 10 PM on June 3 because Owen's heart rate was dropping with each contraction.  By midnight it was back in a healthy range so with a little dose of pitocin to get things moving again, he wasted no time and joined us at 1:39 AM on June 4! 

Most of the labor and delivery process is not at all like you see on tv and the movies, but that one moment of the doctor holding him up and proclaiming "it's a boy!" came pretty close.  It was far better than can be portrayed by actors though - truly a moment I'll never forget. We would have been equally thrilled if he had been a boy or a girl, but it was awesome to learn that in addition to the superstitious ways of predicting Owen's gender, our dreams and gut feelings about him had been correct.  After just a few days at home, we already felt like just belonged here, and had a hard time remember what life was like before he was here with us. 

We love you, little O!

Announcing...

We couldn't be happier to have welcomed little baby Owen into our lives a couple of weeks ago, and look forward to sharing our family's adventures, trials and tribulations, and daily joys with you here.  Please check back often for photos and updates!