Christian's Birthday

I wanted to give some more details about Christian's birthday. Early in the morning, I started feeling some contractions but was able to dose in and out of sleep until about 6. By then, I realized today (last Thursday, March 4th) was probably the day because the contractions were increasing instead of going away. However, my parents weren't flying in until that evening, and I still had laundry and grocery shopping to do that day. So Joshua went off to work, and I thought/hoped I could last until the evening. But, the contractions started growing very close together and very painful, and around 9:00 I called a friend to come take the kids. When she arrived at 9:30 I was feeling terrible and knew I needed to get to the hospital as soon as possible. Joshua had rode his bike to work though, and I didn't want to wait for him to ride all the way home, so I decided to pick him up (the hospital is a couple blocks away from his work). Probably a dumb idea, because my contractions were about a minute apart, but luckily I made it and we got to the hospital about 10. It seemed like it took forever to get into the room and have the nurse see me, and all I could think about was the pain. Finally, the nurse saw me and said I was fully dilated and I waited a couple more minutes for the doctor to arrive, and then about 45 seconds later, Christian was born 10:32 am!

We love him so much; I am so grateful he is healthy and strong and here! It's amazing that my love for him is just as strong and encompassing as with Julia and Ethan when they were born--my heart just seems to expand in capacity for each child. I didn't think it possible to love so much.

Below are pictures of Julia, then Ethan as newborns. We're trying to decide who Christian looks like, if anyone.