As I mentioned briefly, the 29th of May brought the debut of my assistant, Catherina''s baby. (I'd give the link for my short announcement, but apparently it was so short that there's no way I can call the story up to get a link. Strange ... )

Holly, for one, has been patiently awaiting details, so here are some:

The little guy weighed in at 2.7 kilos, just a touch under 6 pounds, was 19 inches long, with a full head of hair and as healthy as anything.

As you know if you've been reading here long, I was working with Catherina on labor and delivery tips and exercises ... thanks to Holly's donation of a couple of books ... and we'd planned for me to be her labor coach, so when Catherina's parter, expectant dad, Richard, came over on the Tuesday morning to let me know he'd taken her to hospital that night, I quickly made arrangements for my kids, then headed off to town.

A bit of blood from the mucus plug had prompted the trip to hospital, but not much had happened since. When I arrived, a nurse in the labor area sent me packing to the ward where they'd put Catherina, as "she's a long way from being in real labor".

I found her in bed, just beginning to have mild contractions every fifteen minutes or so. I tried to convince her to let me walk her up and down the halls for a while, but she was tired and just wanted to sleep.

Since there wasn't much going on, I left about 1:30 to be home in time to pick Sam up from school myself, planning to head back when Mark came home from work at about 6pm.

At 5:30, Catherina phoned me with the news that the baby had been born at 3:45!

Wow!

Apparently, she had to do some pretty loud talking to get anyone to notice that she was very close to delivery, since no one ... me included ... expected a first baby to come after only a couple of hours of mild labor and two pushes!

So, she's a mom, and baby is just the sweetest, as you can see. There's no official name yet, as that happens later rather than sooner here, but he'll be known as 'Rocky' in our house.

That's the newsy part of the story, but check the next post for how these developments hit this middle-aged (Yeah ... right! Like I'm gonna live to be 110!) adoptive mom who LOVES babies. I'll warn you, it's not pretty.