How did 7 years fly by so fast?

Today Katelyn turned 7! 7 going on 17 that is :).
Anyhow, we normally do a family dinner on their birthday's but, because Daddy had to work tonight we pulled them all out of school and went out for lunch. Afterwards as we were getting into the van, Katelyn turns to her dad and says "Thanks for my birthday lunch daddy," then she turns to me and says "Thanks for giving me birth mommy." I wasn't sure whether to laugh or cry! But it got me to thinking about her birth and the blessing that this little girl is in our lives.

When I was pregnant with Katie I had complications: hypermesis gravidium, placental previa, high blood pressure that required me to spend 2-3 hours lying on my left side a day. Add to that a husband who decided to uproot the family and move me in with my parents and live in his car in Toronto until I had the baby and it was a crazy time.
Just about 36 weeks along, I go into labour. Jeff jumps on a plane, his brother drives from Edmonton to Calgary to pick him up and then brings him down to Raymond only to find that the doctors have determined that it's too early so let's give a shot of Demerol and see if we can't slow down the labour. (Forget the fact that they have been telling me for months that this kid is measuring off the charts). Needless to say the next morning I am sent home.
Fast forward to 39 weeks and the doctors decide that I need to be induced because she is measuring too big to go any longer.(DUH!) With the warning that at her size and with the complication's I've had, a C section is likely if they have to induce, I am scheduled for an induction on the following Sunday.


4:00 Sunday morning I wake up in labour, Yay! no induction! By the time we get to the hospital @ 7:00 I am 3 cm dilated, the nurse says walk for a bit, we'll call the doctor and then we'll break your water. At around 7:45 the doctor comes in,excited about the progress being made and the fact that we have avoided induction. She breaks my water and all heck breaks loose.
My mom is backed into the corner, the nurses are calling in the on call ob/gyn surgeon and I'm being prepped for surgery. Turns out that sometime prior to Sunday, I had a placental abruption and blood has slowly been filling the amniotic sac. So I'm rushed into surgery (still in labour mind you) , knocked out, woken up cause apparently emergency surgery is not the time to have an allergic reaction to anaesthetic, intubated awake (not fun!), then knocked out again.
Fast forward to 9:30am, I wake up to a nurse telling me that I have a beautiful baby girl (who weighed in at 9 lbs 7 oz) but that she is in the NICU because she had aspirated the blood, could not maintain a BP on her own and was having seizures. After a few hours I get put into a room and the nurses bring me pictures of Katelyn. I didn't get to hold her until the next day, but then again I'll consider myself lucky cause there were mom's that had babies that couldn't be held at all. When I finally saw her for real it was amazing! Here was this huge baby, squished into her little incubator,with an oxygen hood and IV lines in each arm and her stomach. She was literally 3 times the size of the other babies in there.
I got a leisurely week in the hospital, spending my time getting blood transfusions and sitting in the NICU, praying that she would be able to keep her blood pressure up and avoid additional seizures. On Saturday I got the all clear to take her home, which was great 'cause Nathan's birthday was the next day. I know that it was because of those late night visits that her daddy made, quietly standing by her incubator, giving her a priesthood blessing, that she improved so quickly. She's never had another seizure in her life, and while she does have an auto immune disorder, it is manageable and there seem to be no lasting effects on her health and development.

This is my little girl who, when we went to Palmyra this summer, knelt to pray 4 times along the path in the Sacred Grove, and said "Mom, I can feel Jesus here". The little girl who started bawling in the van one day, so hard I had to pull over, only to find out that she was crying "cause Cinderella got married" on the in-van DVD player. The kid who breaks her arm rolling off the couch on her 4th birthday, and the kid who tells the nurse " I see flying unicorns" while the ER doctor is trying to reattach her finger (oh the wonder's of Valium) after an "incident" with a church door. So today I share with you something very few people have seen, I don't know why, but I've kept it to my immediate family. A then and now of my little girl:
In the NICU

Before Taylor Swift