Cutler Family Journaling: March 2015

The story begins with Peter being no accident. We went through the fertility clinic and specific timing of hormones and trying to conceive before we got him. So, with a high degree of accuracy we knew the due date. The date that Dr. Judd's office initially reported got changed from March 17th to March 11th, and then finally, a week before the 11th we got approved for an early induction of the 5th.

This was fortunate, not only because Alene doesn't want to be pregnant any longer than she has to be (of course!), but also because Peter was feeling like a bigger baby than our other two, AND March 5th is an awesome date for a birthday because 3*5=15 or 3/5/15!

Peter's Eve came (as Miga and Poppa called it) and we took the boys out to eat at Mooyah's. They had a GRAND old time (see pic of them drawing on the chalk wall). We dropped them off at Alene's parent's house for the night - excellent idea hon! Xan, of course, (still going through some serious separation anxiety) got teary eye a few times before we left them and told us he loved us, that he'd miss us and that he wanted to be with us. But, all in all, everyone was happy.

The 5th came and we got to the hospital at 7:30am as instructed. Shortly after 8 they got the IV in and pitocin started. She was already progressed and dilated to a 4. Alene was feeling as good as she could (just a bit of nervousness/anticipation), when about a half hour later we found out that Dr. Judd was there and could break her water then, or later at 12pm when he was planning on coming back. That threw us a curve ball for which Alene was hesitant (she's had the epidural for the prior water breaking experiences and she wasn't going to get her turn for the epidural for another 30+ minutes). We did it and she was pleasantly surprised to find it wasn't that bad.

The epidural came about 45 minutes later, ~9:45am, and she was already progressing to a 7. Still progressing quickly at about 10:40, our nurse Shannon determined she was "complete" (to a 10 and 100% effaced), but that Peter hadn't "dropped" much. So, Peter needing to descend a bit more and Dr. Judd coming anyway in an hour and a half or so, Shannon called in the anesthesiologist to give Alene some "rest and descend" time by giving her the "big guns" of epidural shots. At 10:50 she got the big gun and was told it would kick in in about 20 minutes and to stay upright until then so that the numbing didn't affect her lungs and that the numbing would last a good 2 hours. Well, in 20 minutes Shannon walked in with a surprise... Dr Judd!

It was time to deliver! Not much time to really relax or to let Peter descend, but it was time. Alene being so absolutely numb (normally through the regular epidural she can still feel her legs a bit and the pressure of the baby), was instructed to "push", "push hard!", and "get angry!" (Dr Judd's). She did and pushed well, but it was a strange and hard thing to do so without feeling the feedback and knowing how hard and in what way she was actually pushing. All the same, Peter came out with a significant episiotomy, but no tearing. He surprised us all, to the point that I questioned for a second "were we off on our due date?" He looked like a baby who went way past his due date. But of course we knew exactly when he was conceived, so, not the case. HE WAS HUGE!!!

11:27am 10 lbs 3oz and 21inches long!!!

So after thinking over this week we've noted having just a couple more notable things.

First, I had progressed just a little/enough to get an induction date set for this baby! Yay! So 3/5/15 is on the books at 7:30 AM for us to be induced at Orem Community Hosptial. We are just really excited to meet this baby and look forward to having him join our family. We got a few more baby things sorted out and other than a few little things here and there, we are ready! (... At least as ready as you can be for the life changing event of having a newborn).

The boys had a great day with daddy yesterday, riding bikes on the Provo trail, playing at playgrounds, floating things down the river, and playing with the ducks. Kelv also got some necessary car checks/repairs done, and we had a good day. Alene got to finish her book "Firefight" the 2nd book in Brandon Sanderson's Reckoners series and loved it. BYU basketball also beat #2 Ganzaga on the road which as awesome.

Kelv had a busy week working on the ancestry Hack Day. His team worked for roughly 36/48 hours on a project called BrickWall. The idea is that when someone on the Ancestry page runs into a brick wall or road block in their family history, they can hit a button and ask the Ancestry community for help. They put a lot of fun features into the project and Kelv feels like if it had been presented better, they may have won a higher prize. They did still get Honorable Mention/4th place out of 30 teams competing so still a really awesome showing. Regardless of how it turned out, it was a great team bonding/growing experience and he enjoyed the project.