OUR PRECIOUS LITTLE BABY NOAH ARRIVED 4/10/09 AT 11:42 WEIGHING 7.1 pds. and 20 in. LONG! HAPPY AND HEALTHY!! WHAT A BLESSING!!

NOAH PATRICK VAHJEN Thursday night at about 11:30, I woke up with some pain. Brian and I waited as my contractions started. We smiled at eachother and said, "is it really time, is this really it," because I was at 39 weeks. As we sat in bed for 2 hours, my contractions worsened and became closer together (5 minutes apart) So off we went to the hospital at 2:30 am. They put us in a room, but they were not going to admit us yet. They checked me and I was 3 cm dilated and 90% efaced, which is what I was already at the doctor a couple of days earlier. My contractions worsened to ever 3-4 minutes, but I was still not dilated anymore. As most of you know by now I was in severe pain with no drugs, because they still had not decided to admit me since I had not progressed with dilation. It was now about 6:00, still no drugs were given to me and they told us to walk the labor and delivery halls for an hour, yes an hour to see if I would dialate. As Brian and I were walking, my water broke in the middle of the hallway in front of everyone there to see. How embarassing!!! We told the nurses, so of course now they were ready to admit me. Shocking! So to make a long story short, I labored for 8 hours with no drugs, not by choice! I finally got my epidural and 30 minutes later I was already 10 cm and they told me to push. BRIAN AND I RIGHT BEFORE PUSHING Noah ended up being "sunny side up" (face up), so it took over 2 hours of pushing to get him out, but what a glorious moment in our lives, this little miracle. He was absolutely precious!!! We cried and thanked God for our little Noah. They had to take him from us, as he swallowed a bunch of fluid during labor, but off Brian went with him to the nursery, so I knew he was in good hands with his new proud father. We were transfered to a room and all our friends and family were there, which was so wonderful to have! They were all so proud of our new little Noah. Our postpardum stay was wonderful at Baptist. Noah was born on Good Friday and we brought him home on Easter, how fitting to the new beginning of our miracle son's new life!!! Brian and I feeled so blessed by God to have our new healthy son and are just enjoying being a mom and a dad! WE ARE HAVING THE TIMES OF OUR LIVES AND CAN'T WAIT FOR THE TIMES TO COME!

WAITING FOR OUR LITTLE MIRACLE...BABY NOAH :)

OUR STORY OF HOW WE GOT TO THIS WONDERFUL PLACE IN OUR LIVES... Brian and I wanted to be married for a while before we decided to have children. So after being married for a couple years, we decided to start trying. We thought that getting pregnant would be easy, but low and behold it was probably the biggest test of our relationship with eachother and our relationship with God. I only tell this story because going through this was extremly hard for us, yet we thought we were the only ones because it seems like nobody talks about the bad, just the good. So I tell this story to maybe help out others having a tough time, because in the end the result is so amazing how God worked in both of our lives through it all. To make a long story short, we basically were off birth control for about a year and a 1/2. While we have been actively trying to get pregnant for about 5 months, my period dropped off the deep end. We ended up going to the doctor where he put me on fertility medicine, as he told us there was no way that we would get pregnant. He put me on Clomid for 4 months. Each month uping the dose, because each month my body failed to ovulate. This was tough for me, because I did not know what was wrong with my body, for crying out loud I was only 27 years of age (my eggs should not be acting this old)! Each month we had to do a blood test to check for ovulation and each time, my numbers were very low, meaning I never ovulated. In the last month he had to put me on the highest dose of clomid. I began to have problems,like weight gain and pressure, so Brian and I went to see the doctor and he ended up doing an ultrasound to find I had cysts on both ovaries the size of a fist. Of course Brian and I were scared and upset, as the doctor told us we had to go off all fertility for 6 weeks. Since we had now been trying to get pregnant for a year, we basically had to stop trying and take a break. We were so upset and asked God why this now? As all of us question God, he always has a plan. 6 weeks later we went back to the doctor and the cyst had gone down, so we were ready for the next plan of action, but the doctor wasn't. He wanted us to see a fertility specialist, since I had reacted to the fertility medicine badly. Again we had to wait, so we made an appointment. Well Brian and I looked at this waiting period as an emotional break that we needed. Low and behold during all this time, God had his plan. During this break is when we concieved our little baby boy, Noah. While we were coming home from a trip from Brian's hometown in Greenwood, I was up all night with just a wierd feeling that I might be pregnant, which I knew I should not get my hopes up just like everyother time. On the way home I told Brian to stop so we could buy a test. He really didn't want to, as he did not want us to get our hopes knocked down once again, but he agreed to get one. Right when we got home I asked Brian if he was ready as he replied, "right now?" I laughed and said yes I can't wait. Brian was the first to see the test and he replied, "it can't be, there is no way, that can't be positive!" (We did not know what a positive test looked like as we had just seen so many negative tests!) 7 WEEKS PREGNANT IN MEXICO! Words cannot express how happy we were jumping up and down, with tears running down our face, but "God is Good!" We were tested so many times in that year, but our faith only grew stronger and we only grew closer together. As tough as it was, God has his plan and he will always come through, not sometimes how we want him to, but in his time. Brian and I can't express how excited we are for our little baby Noah to make his entrance into our lives and our family. We can't wait to touch him, meet him, and kiss his little tiny hands all over. All we can say is GOD IS GOOD, HE IS SO GOOD!

OUR 3 LITTLE FURRY LOVED ONES...MIA~KAILI~BUDDY

Mia~Our precious blonde female lab/sharpe mix. Mia was our very first baby who we got for me to have a companion while Brian and I were apart during his first year of medical school. Mia was a lucky girl spending the first year of her life living in the "soccer house" my senior year of college. We rescued her from the humane society when she was only 9 weeks old. She is an independent soul, but one of our best behaved babies. She is the type of women everyone wants to be blonde, skinny, beautiful, and all muscle, not an ounce of fat! Kaili~ She is our loving, yellow female lab/golden retriever mix. We found Kaili one day with her litter of 9 puppies only 8 weeks old. We picked all of them up and took them to Pets Inc. so they could be adopted. We dropped all the puppies and Kaili off, but as we were leaving, Kaili jump up on the counter crying out of control for us to come back to her. With tears rolling down our eyes, we went back into Pets Inc. and adopted her immediately. She was the third of our dogs we took in and what a blessing Kaili has been to our family. Even though she had some separation anxiety, she is the most cuddly and loving dog! Buddy~ He is the sweet, fun loving and only male of the bunch. He is a white lab/hound mix with black spots. He is such a beautiful dog and always gets compliments from all the ladies. He is our adopted son, who's biological father still keeps in touch and visits all the time with treats galore. Sometime we wonder what goes on in that head of his, but he has the biggest heart out of all of our loved ones. Buddy is the most loving dog and always wants to be by our side just waiting to give us some pure lovin'. We have been so blessed to have him in our lives, because when your having a bad day, just looking at Buddy will always put a smile on your face