Katie's Story

Due Date: December 18, 2009


I had an induction scheduled for Monday, December 14. At my Dr's appointment on Friday, December 11, I started talking to my doctor about how I hoped she would just come over the weekend. His response to that was that he was on call on Sunday, and had to be at the hospital anyway, so if I happened to have some contractions and come in, he knew that I wouldn't be sent home. I jokingly said lets just move the induction to Sunday. He said that was great with him. Then, he checked me and I was dilated to 4. My blood pressure was high (140/90), so he sent me over to the hospital to be evaluated to make sure it wasn't PIH. Everything turned out fine, and they sent me home.


I then went into panic mode. Life as we knew it, as our little family of 3, Austin getting all the attention, was almost over. I decided that Justin was going to take the weekend off of working in the basement, and we were going to just spend time together. That night, we went down to see the Christmas lights and reindeer at Thanksgiving Point.


I didn't sleep well that night. I woke up around 2 feeling really nauseous. We were going to go to Park City on Saturday to see the Thomas the Tank Engine ginger bread display at one of the resorts. We left the house around noon, and I started feeling a little unsure about going out for the day. I still wasn't feeling good, and then not far from our house, I had a contraction that felt different from all the other contractions I had had. We got some lunch, ran a few little errands, and came home.


I had more contractions, totally irregular though. I fell asleep on the couch for a while. Around 5:30, I was contracting every 10-15 minutes, but they weren't getting any stronger. I had Justin call the hospital to see when they wanted us to come in since I was already 4 cm. They said not to come in until they were 5 minutes apart for 1 hour. So, I decided that we would go to our ward Christmas party so that we could get out of the house. At the party my contractions were about 10 minutes apart, but not painful.


We left the party at 7:30 to head to the airport to get my mom. The contractions were 6-8 minutes apart then, so I told Justin that we would take mom and Austin home, then head to the hospital. When we got home, I got out of the car to go inside and get my bag of bathroom stuff. As soon as I stood up, the contractions went to 1-2minutes apart.


We got in Justin's car, and made it from our house to the U in 25 minutes. We were getting on the elevator to head to up to labor and delivery at 9:35 PM (me in a wheelchair). They put me in the triage room, and asked me to get up on the table so that they could check me. I remember thinking "How on earth do they expect me to get out of this wheelchair and up onto that table?" I did get up and remember someone coming and putting pressure on my lower back and asking if it helped...which it didn't. I then have no idea how I got on the table. The midwife came in to check me. I heard her say, "There's the head, and the bag of water, and I don't feel any cervix." Then it was chaos. I heard people yelling, "She's complete," and the bed started moving.


They moved me to a delivery room, where there were tons of people...at least 4 nurses, 2 residents, and the on call doctor. The on call doctor, looked at me and said, "They called Dr. Sharp. He is on his way, but I really doubt he will get here in time." Then they asked if I wanted the anesthesiologist to try to get an epidural in since my water hadn't broken. I wasn't thinking very clearly, so Justin made the decision for me to have him try. He tried to place a low dose spinal block, but it didn't work! The resident kept telling me that I could push if wanted to. I kept telling her "No" because I knew it was going to hurt!


At 9:59 my water broke. Shortly after, my doctor walked in the room. Katie was born at 10:05 PM on Saturday, December 12th. Everything went very well considering...lots of screaming on my part, which I was highly embarrassed about. My doctor did tell me how impressed he was that I hadn't sworn though! It was definitely a different experience, and a darn good thing she is cute!! She definitely had her own little agenda!!


Here are our first pictures. I look absolutely awful, but it had been a rough hour!

Halloween

We had a pretty fun Halloween this year, all things considered. We started the day out just leaving the house and running a few errands. When we got home, we carved our pumpkins (a little late this year...we left them out a few days after Halloween to get a little more out of them!) I was very surprised at how much Austin enjoyed "carving" his pumpkin. He wasn't hesitant at all to dig right in. He especially loved taking their "hats" off and putting them back on.

Our afternoon/evening went a little something like this:

The boys both took late naps. So the rest of our festivities began later than I had planned. I made some homemade root beer to go with our pumpkin shaped pizza. Austin wouldn't even taste the root beer, but he loved watching it bubble and smoke.




Grammy made Austin's costume this year. I wanted him to be a dinosaur, and he decided that it needed to be red. (Not my first choice of a color for a dinosaur, but how do you resist a cute little boy saying he wants to be a red dinosaur?!? It turned out really cute too) The only problem was that this kid isn't a big fan of costumes. Last year, it took us several weeks of practicing to get him to wear his costume. So, we tried putting it on him a few days before Halloween, and he actually did pretty well with it (once I told him he had to practice "trick or treats" and gave him some marshmallows.)

The full costume

Cute little dino

Trying to get the costume on him on Halloween night. He wasn't very happy about it. He wouldn't wear the whole costume, but we managed to get (and keep) the main part of it on.

We finally made it out of the house (I just ignored the tears, hoping they would stop once he realized what was going on.) Thankfully, he did enjoy getting "trick or treats".





He didn't waste any time getting back into the house once we made it home though!

October

So, here goes the October rundown via pictures.

Thank goodness for Sarah being close enough to come play with and entertain my boy!

Working in the basement. The hope was to have the basement completed before the baby arrived...probably not going to happen, but we have at least started now! Austin loves to take his play tools down there and "help" Justin.

We had to make our annual trip to the pumpkin patch. Austin loved looking at all the pumpkins. He especially loved the little ones. His favorite was the pie pumpkins. I couldn't resist, so we let him get it. He seriously carried the pumpkin with him everywhere, and even took his "Little Fella'" to bed with him the first night.
Austin with his Little fella.

He tripped and fell right into a rotten pumpkin!

We had to take another trip to Wheeler Farm before it got too cold!

I love this picture of him! Such a handsome little guy, and beautiful fall colors!

Austin was just playing in the living room with his goggles. He uses them when he "works" in the basement, and also calls them his "helmet" when he is playing football!

Such a boy!!!

Just a little laying around, snuggling Underdog and Polly.

In hopes of getting him excited about Halloween, I had him try on his dinosaur costume and let him play in his Buzz Lightyear costume. Too bad it didn't make Halloween any easier!

September Recap

We got our new camera in September. So, of course we had to take lots of pictures just to try it out. These are a few of us seeing how well it would take pictures of a moving object. Plus, Sarah was over...and Austin LOVES when she comes to play.

Check out Sarah's hair! Awesome!

We love having Sarah around!!

Katie, Trever, and their kids were in town for a day. We decided to meet at Gardner Village and let the kids see the witches.

Cute boys!!

It was fun to have to have the kids together again. Austin wasted no time playing with the girls, and loved having another little boy around.

I think this picture is so cute!

I love the way this boy sleeps. Talk about kickin' back!

Austin also finished up swim classes. Of course, right as we were nearing the end he started to love them, and was doing really well with them. I was almost tempted to keep him in lessons all winter, but thought that would be an awful lot on my plate with a new baby coming and all. So, he is done for now. We will probably start back up again in the spring/summer.

This is a picture of him floating all by himself. I was so proud! It only took 7 months to get him to this point!!!

State Fair

Sarah won tickets to the State Fair, and very kindly invited us to go with her. I always enjoy going to the fair, but this year was a little more enjoyable because Austin had fun. They had an amazing kids section, called "Little Hands on the Farm." We took Austin in, and you work way through a bunch of farm "jobs," like feeding and milking the cow,

planting seeds, and harvesting your crop, gathering eggs,

driving your "tractor,"


It was really a neat little area, and Austin had fun. When you get to the end of the area, there is a store where you sell your farm goods and get "money" to buy a treat with.


We spent the rest of the evening wandering around all the exhibits, and looking at the animals. We spent a little time taking pictures in the silly cutouts they have.

One of the areas had a cutout of Guy Fieri. Justin made me get a picture with him, since I love watching his show!

We ended the night with a trip part the Nascar car they had there. Austin thought it was VERY cool...you know Lightning McQueen and all!!!

Bye, bye Binky!

The Final Picture with a Binky!!!

We finally got rid of the binky. I had to just take it away. After Austin woke up and set it down, I hid it. When he started looking for it later, I just said I couldn't find it. Honestly, we were a little shocked at how well he handled it being gone.

To help ease the adjustment, I kept him busy that day with a trip to the aquarium (I tried to get pictures, but the stinker wouldn't look at the camera) and playing outside. The day ended with a little trauma, as Austin fell on the back porch and took a face-dive down the steps onto the cement patio. He cried a lot, but I was strong and didn't even offer the binky! He did just fine without it.

Of course there were tears and he asked for it quite often for the first several days, but he is a binky free boy now! It sure does make him seem older!

August Rundown

August was a very busy month for us. Our house was full to the brim for most of the month. My family stayed through the first part of the month. Before they left, we headed out to the Bingham Copper Mine. I knew it was close, but it took less than 10 minutes to get to it from my house.

It was pretty cool. Austin loved the big trucks.

Sarah and James came out a few days later, and Sarah stayed with us until she could move into her apartment in Provo. It is always great to have someone around that WANTS to babysit, and insists on helping you clean (or doing most of it for you) your house!

During all this, Austin discovered how fun the camera can be. Unfortunately, he got a hold of it, and dropped it on the tile. So, we spent most of the month camera-less because pictures inside turn out like this:

and pictures outside turn out as a white screen! Gotta love it, right?

A few days before Sarah moved out, Justin's sister Jacki and her family moved up from Las Vegas, and stayed with us for a few weeks while they were finding a house to rent! So, we have been very busy hosting all sorts of family members in our home! It has been nice to get to spend time with everyone, and Austin has loved having other kids in the house for the last month, but I must admit that I am thrilled to have my home back to just us!