We have amazing family and friends who came to support our sweet little boy.

Tyler started his new job at SEO.com at the end of January and I went back to work at the beginning of February.  Things have been going great with our jobs so far.

Parker is growing stronger every day!  He rolled over from his belly to his back for the first time on January 20th  And finally he rolled over from back to fron on April 5th.  Pretty big gap, but that’s alright.  He prefers his feet over belly, back, or bum any day.  He started sleeping through the night on the 6th of March so sleep has been better for all three of us. He had solids for the first time on April 1st.  He has been getting rice cereal in his bottle for a while before that.  He has even giggled a few times for us too just in the last week or so.  It is amazing to watch him grow stronger every day.

For a while things got super busy.  In March, my Uncle Don passed away.  My mom and dad, Katie and Brennan, and myself and Parker all drove to Idaho for the funeral.  It was so nice to sit and remember what an amazing man he was.  He was such a sweet man and I’ll always remember the hugs and way he would say, Well how are ya? It was a fun trip, bitter-sweet, but fun.  The next week my little brother came home from his mission in Peru.  Which means we had a lot of family stuff going on.  To add to our stress we blessed Parker the sunday after he got home. Which was a little stressful but an amazing day.  More family stuff as we drove to Idaho for Rachel’s graduation.  What a fun packed few weeks.

There’s our quick family update… pictures to follow.

Parker Kent Brown

Born: December 8, 2011 at 5:57

5lbs 14 oz 19.5 inches long

For those of you who would like to read the story, here it is.  If not hopefully you enjoyed the pictures of our cute little boy.

It started out like a normal day.  I woke up and went to work.  I ended up working about an hour later because we were short handed.  After work I headed over to target to get Tyler a few last Christmas presents.  Then I met Tyler over at the doctor’s for a normal check up.  It was my 38 week check up. They took my vitals and my blood pressure was 146/95.  They normally are able to wait a while and take it again and it goes down, but this time it only went down just a little bit.  As we met with the doctor he checked me and then told us to head over to the hospital for monitoring.  We didn’t think twice about this because we had been to the hospital for monitoring a month before.  We went over and they monitored for about two hours when the doctor came back in and told us it would be our baby’s birthday tonight or tomorrow.  Needless to say Tyler and I were both terrified and excited about this.

The next 20 hours are a little bit of a blur for me.  The nurse came in to put in the IV.  After trying in both arms, I told them to wait because I was going to pass out.  Third times the charm I guess.  She got the IV in and started me on pitocin, fluids, and magnesium sulfate (a drug used to help with the blood pressure, which has fun side effects like nausea, blurred vision, and other flu-like symptoms.) They came in around 10 pm and broke my water.  About an hour and a half later they came in and gave me the epidural.  Amazingly enough, getting the IV was worse than the epidural.  Which if you know me, you would know that was the most terrifying idea ever to me- I didn’t want an epidural because it terrified me that bad.  I was so glad I got it though.  Anyhow, they came and checked me periodically and things were not progressing.  I came in dilated to a 2 and by the morning I was barely a 3.  They decided to take me off the pitocin for a while to get it out of my system.  So an hour and a half later around 8:30 AM they put the pitocin back on.  From there it took me until about noon to get dilated to a 5.  It was slow progress but there was some progress.  I had an excellent nurse.  She had me lay on my side with the opposite leg in the stirrup.  It looked super awkward but from what the nurse could figure is that the baby’s head wasn’t quite in the right place meaning turned a little bit so he wouldn’t have been coming down straight.  But after a while in that position it helped.  By 2 that afternoon I finally got to a 6.  From there things began to speed up for sure.  around 3:30 I started having really bad pains.  The epidural wasn’t working right.  It was still numb to an extent, but not as much as it should have been.  Around 4 the anethesiologist had to come in to give me a booster and again about 15 mins later.  It was in the time that I could feel the pain that i scared Tyler really bad.  I would forget to breathe during the contractions and the baby’s heartbeat dropped.  After they gave me the two boosters things were great.  I actually almost fell asleep.  I was in my own little world and could hear everyone talking, but I was too tired to respond. They had to remind me to keep breathing again, but at least this time I wasn’t in pain.  Around 4 is when I was finally dilated to an 8.  Just before 5 the nurse decided to have me push a little bit.  I pushed about 4 times and he was crowning.  That’s when the nurse told me she would get the doctor but when she came back in she told us that the doctor was just leaving the Orem hospital.  Half an hour later I didn’t think I could wait anymore.  Luckily the doctor walked in around 5:40.  I pushed for about 15 mins and the baby came! The doctor said I  was a champ.  He kept telling me throughout the day that patience is all it takes. He did have to cut me about half an inch, but hey, it’s better that he cut me a little bit rather than push longer than I did.  By the end though, the epidural had begun to wear off just a little bit though because I could slightly feel the doctor stitching me up.  Weird.  But as soon as they got the baby cleaned up they put him on my chest.

 I was so happy to have this sweet boy in my arms.  Both Parker and I were so exhausted.  Every muscle in his body was limp.  His back was like a wet noodle.  Thinking back now it makes me sad to realize just how big of an effect the magnesium had on him, but he was alright.  He was just really tired.  Tyler and Parker went down to the nursery.  I was left upstairs to clean up and order some food.  I hadn’t eaten anything since 1 the day before and I had eaten a frozen burrito.  I was super hungry.  After I ate they took me downstairs to be with my family. Tyler and Parker were still in the nursery, but I was able to visit a little with the Browns, Nolan, Grandpa Walker, Deanna and Trent, and my mom.  They finally brought my baby in and he was in a stocking, it was cute.  It had been a long 24 hours and we had a super cute baby to show for it.

We are so glad this sweet little boy has joined us and can’t wait for all the happiness he will bring in our lives.

This year we were able to spend time with my family.  It was just my family (minus my two brothers and sister-in-law, who we missed dearly) and my grandparents.  It was fun to sit and listen to stories from my grandparents and listen t

o them tell us what they were thankful for.  The things they said were so simple, but I know they mean so much to each of us.  The food that was made was great!   Tyler and I attempted (I only say attempt because it did turn out great, but it was a little dry because it cooked a lot faster than expected) to make the turkey.  We had a 24 pound turkey that we started to defrost on tuesday night.  Wednesday night we started brining it.  Then we had to figure out something to put that super big bird into cook.  It said it would take 4 1/2 to 5 hours, we decided to check it at 4 hours.  Well, it was done.  The white meat on top was a little dry but the dark meat was delicious. All the white meat needed was some of our awesome gravy.  Everything turned out great.  We even convinced mom to let us put apples in the stuffing.  So tasty!  Everything was awesome.  It is always so much fun to sit around with the family, talk and enjoy each other’s company.