Dr. Edward Watson estimates that over the past 22 years he’s delivered upwards of 3,000 babies at Lawrence + Memorial Hospital, but there’s an extra-special delivery he’ll be following this spring.
“My girlfriend is pregnant with a baby girl and she’s due in April,” he says. “She’ll be having our baby right here, and I know all the people. I guess you could say even doctors are having their babies at L+M.”
As an obstetrician and gynecologist, Watson says there’s no place he’d rather have his baby girl, with L+M’s experienced team of clinical experts and a newborn intensive care unit just down the hall if ever complications were to arise.
“I’ve been very happy here over the years, and I really think, particularly, the nurses here, are working hard to make this the excellent institution that it is,” he says.
Dr. Watson is a local boy. He grew up in Ledyard, a self-proclaimed “band geek” who played the saxophone. He graduated from Ledyard High School and went on to Tufts University.
After Tufts, Watson spent time doing post-graduate work as a research assistant in the field of endocrinology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston. But he decided to go on to medical school.
“I pretty much thought in high school that I wanted to be a doctor,” he says, “but I originally thought I wanted to be a psychiatrist. When I got to medical school, I changed my mind. When I did my first clinical OB/GYN rotation in my third year of medical school, it was just a lot of fun taking care of pregnant women. And, for the most part, it was just a whole lot of fun delivering babies.”
Dr. Watson graduated from the University of Connecticut medical school. His residency was at Danbury Hospital, and shortly thereafter, in 1990, he returned to the New London area and joined the staff of Lawrence + Memorial.
He says his career here has been rewarding, and continues to be.
“I like that there’s a strong primary care element to the work we do in OB/GYN,” he says. “You can treat stuffy noses and strep throat, and you have to be sensitive to psychological components and people’s family lives and socio-economic issues.
“And,” he adds, “you can tell someone to quit smoking and they’ll actually listen to you. You have the chance to make some meaningful changes in people’s lives that, hopefully, will carry on for the next two or three or four or even five decades.”
And, of course, there are the babies.
“It’s still pretty much an amazing moment every time,” he says. “And after all these years, it’s still amazing.”
In the delivery room, “I’ve got to say, it’s like going to a party every time,” Watson says. “Everybody is psyched. Everybody is happy. It’s a big beginning. My best friend is an oncologist. He does a lot of endings. I do a lot of beginnings.”
Dr. Watson, who lives in East Lyme, has three children from a previous marriage, all boys: the oldest is a business analyst, the middle is a freshman at the University of Pittsburgh, and the youngest is a junior at East Lyme High School.
And the baby due in April will be his first daughter. Of course, he’s not actually delivering his own child. He jokes that an obstetrician at home is “just the guy who takes out the garbage.”
But, like any father, he’s pretty psyched for the big day.
“The birth of a child – it’s a party every time, and every time it’s unique,” he says. “I’m excited to have my baby here at L+M because I know the team here, and I can’t say enough about the nursing staff. They’re the backbone of all the safety and progress we’ve made in the last 10 years here. I have great respect for the entire nursing administration here. They’re really working hard to get it right.”
To learn more about Dr. Watson, click here.
