Happy Thanksgiving and Happy 5th Birthday, Catherine!

5 years ago at 11:45pm on Thanksgiving Eve I was trying to go to sleep when all of a sudden I felt a pop and I had my first hard contraction. Now I had been contracting pretty regular for days, but those contractions were very tolerable. These, however, were a different story. After several of them 15 min. apart, I woke up Dan and told him I thought my water had broken. He got up with me, helped me time contractions, and then after a while asked if he had time to take a shower and shave. I said, oh sure, it'll probably be hours. The contractions kept getting closer and closer and lasting longer and finally I said we'd better go to the hospital. This was at about 2:15am and I thought we'd get there and they'd laugh at me for coming in too soon.

So we got to the hospital and it took forever to even get up to the OB floor. Luckily Dan had memorized my SSN so I didn't have to answer any questions. Finally I get up to the little observation area and by the time they finally checked me, I was 7-8 cm. That got some action! 40 minutes later, after 10-15 minutes of pushing, Catherine Elizabeth was born, at 3:40 in the morning on Thanksgiving Day. So instead of a big turkey dinner, we got a precious little baby girl! Hooray!

Here is our little turkey, posed next to "Yellow Baby:"
Catherine at a few weeks old:

Here is our princess at almost 5 years old:

She is such a sweet girl and loves to help Mommy.

We love you Catherine, our big 5 year old! Happy, Happy Birthday!