North Bay’s New Year’s Baby has arrived (updated with Photos)

News Year's Baby Damian Yvon Lavoie surprised mom and dad by showing up a little early.

Anxious to see what the world has in store for him the area’s first baby of 2008 arrived unscheduled at the North Bay General Hospital this morning.

Weighing in at 7lbs 5 oz Damian Yvon Lavoie surprised both Cathy Cassista (mom) and Raymond Lavoie (dad) and 5-year-old sister Mercedes with his appearance at 8:03am.

“I woke up at 4am with pains and didn’t think much of it at the time but the pain didn’t go away, and when I told his dad that I might have to go to the hospital he started timing the pains and at that point they were 4 minutes apart.”

“I wasn’t expecting him to be early at all,” explains Cassista.

Cassista also explained that with her contractions so close together the couple had to hurry to get to the hospital before baby Damian made an appearance.

“We live in Redbridge,” says an exhausted mom.

“But before we could get to the hospital we had to make a pit stop to drop off Mercedes.”

“At home I don’t even have the crib up yet because his due date wasn’t until January 23rd. I thought I’ve still got a couple of weeks to put it up slowly and get things in place ... apparently not,” she adds.

Cassista says regardless of the timing she is ecstatic that her son came into the world healthy and sound.