A ball dropping to signal the start of a new year apparently signaled Lydia Rose Martin that it was time to be born.
“Right when the ball dropped, my water broke,” said Lydia’s mother, Kadie Watkins.
Within a matter of hours, obstetrician David Kemp had performed a Caesarean section that revealed a healthy baby girl, about 30 days ahead of her originally scheduled arrival.
Lydia weighed five pounds, four ounces, measured 18 inches long and was the first baby born Jan. 1 at Newman Regional Health.
Watkins and her fiance, Mick Allen Martin, were not anticipating having a daughter so early this month, but they were not surprised.
They’d gone to Dodge City and Sharon to visit family for the Christmas holiday, and Watkins, feeling uncomfortable, had ridden much of the distance on a pallet in the back seat of the vehicle.
In Emporia on Wednesday, Watkins’ mother, Tammy Fitzgerald of Council Grove, took her to lunch and to Dillon’s to get groceries. By then, Watkins was experiencing enough discomfort to think she might be going into labor, even though her due date was not until Jan. 30.
“It was so weird, walking past people, having contractions,” Watkins said of the trek through the grocery store.
She stopped in to get a quick check-over from Kemp, who didn’t think the birth was imminent and set a delivery date of Jan. 20. Still, he did not want her to go home to Morris County. The couple lives in Council Grove and is in the process of moving to Dwight.
“You’re not ready yet, but don’t leave town,” Martin said, recalling Kemp’s advice.
Watkins and Martin stayed in Emporia for a get-together of family and friends to usher in the new year. Watkins said she’d eaten her way through the evening, enjoying little smokies, cheeses, chips and salsa, before the rush to the hospital and subsequent surgery to deliver her first child.
She remembered being a little nervous and a little scared, but most of all she remembered wondering “How were we all going to get there?”
The group accompanied the couple to Newman Regional Health and waited; Lydia emerged at 3:30 a.m.
“They pulled her out and put her on the table,” Watkins said. “She started licking her hand. She wasn’t cleaned up yet.” She appears to be a natural-born thumb-sucker, and a well-behaved one at that.
“She’s a wonderful baby. Sleeps a lot,” Martin said.
Martin’s father, Michael Martin of Dodge City, and his friend Debbie Johnson of Guymon, quickly came to Emporia to see the baby, and soon there will be a trip back to western Kansas to visit another relative.
“She’s got a big sister back in Dodge that can’t wait to see her,” Watkins said.
As Newman’s first baby of the new year, Lydia received a basket of baby gifts from the hospital.