Merry Christmas 2013

Dear Friends and Family,

This year has gone by so fast.  Every year it seems that time speeds up and we quickly find ourselves at the end of the year and preparing for the next before we know it.  Per the norm for our family we have again failed to allow enough time to get a cute family photo done and then enough time to actually get it printed, to write on it to each one of you and then to get it to the post office.  Once again an electronic Christmas letter will have to suffice.

This year has kept us busy, busy, busy. 

In February Novalee and Wesley turned another year older.  This was that wonderful year for both Wesley and me where we said goodbye to our 20s and hello to no longer being cute, spunky (well Wes may never have been that) and alert after 8pm. 

  On March 2^nd we found out we were expecting baby number five.  We were elated and scared at the same time.  In March Jared started baseball for the second year in a row.  Wesley also started baseball after being roped into being the coach for Jared’s team.  Every Monday and Wednesday from then until early June was spent on a baseball field.  Wes was actually on the field and I only found myself out there when I had to chase after Kinsley who didn’t realize she was too little to play baseball.

 

We also spent Mondays and Wednesdays during that time watching Novalee improve her swimming skills at swim lessons. 

On May 25^th Kinsley turned 1! 

Also Novalee spent her first official night away from us not with family when she attended her first Girl Scout Summer Camp.

In June Novalee graduated from Kindergarten.

On June 25th we found out we could FINALLY use the name Hyrum for one of our children and began preparing to have him join our family. 

In July we finally finished painting the exterior of our house which was our BIG project this year.

On September 8^th we added a Labrador to our family and named him Trooper after Wesley’s SUV from his “glory days.”

On September 9^th our little Sadie turned 3!  And she decided the terrible twos probably would have been a fun thing to experience and made a resolve to make her horrible threes memorable for everyone. 

October came without anything too exciting happening except I turned 30…yeah not much to say about that.

November was much anticipated.  I impatiently awaited the arrival of Hyrum.  I’m pretty sure I whined, cried, whimpered and was an overall grouchpot until the 12^th when Hyrum was born.  He was born at 9:17am on 11-12-2013.  7 minutes earlier he would have been born 9:10 on 11-12-13.  He has proven to be our easiest newborn so far.  We aren’t sure if we are just pros now at the crazy, hectic, semi organized life we live or if he is actually an easier baby.  I’d like to think we just rock as parents.  

November also brought Wesley’s mother here for a week.  And for a whole week I was spoiled rotten.  I can’t remember a time since having kids when I’ve had to do so little.  It was lovely.  I’m currently racking my brains to come up with a plan to convince her that Oregon rain is lovely and that she wants to be neighbors with us. 

On the last day of November Jared turned 9 and celebrated his birthday, true to his style, with a Pokemon party with friends. 

And that brings us to December.  This magical time of year is such a cherished time for our family.  We love the Christmas hymns sung at church, the Christmas lights twinkling on homes and trees, watching our kids check each day to see if a new present under the tree is marked with their name and most of all we love the extra spirit of peace that settles in.  We as a family love our Savior Jesus Christ.  We hope each and every one of you is blessed with happiness, joy and peace this Christmas time and throughout the coming year. 

Merry Christmas!

The Crocketts

Family Christmas Tree

We cut our Christmas tree this Friday.  We always go to Ryzn Creek Farm.

 Per the norm we walked around forever searching for the perfect tree.

 We found one!

 Jared and Novalee surprised us and they carried it themselves!  

Now all we need to do is set it up and decorate it. 

Jared's 9

Jared turned 9 today.  

I say it every time there is a birthday in our family but time flies.

I love the smart, funny young man my little guy is turning into.

Tonight he celebrated his birthday with a Pokemon themed party.

They kids played Pokeball Golf, Nerf target practice with a Pokeball Bullseye and Video games.


Jared asked me to make him an ice cream cake.  I said sure.  But I had no idea what I was getting myself into.  I had no idea what I was doing.  I was over it by the time it came to frosting it. So here is my sad attempt.

I like buying cakes. :) 

  Here he is with his friends.

Overall I think he had a good time. 

2 Weeks Old

Here are some pictures of Hyrum at 2 weeks.

 I kind of want to line all the kids up sometime like this just to see the difference in sizes.

 2 weeks

At his two week doctors visit he was 8lbs 13oz

Here's what has been going on the last two weeks at home.

I got Jared to flash his fabulous smile while holding Hyrum.

He's pretty cute.

Kinsley had a brief moment of being a concerned bigger sister.

 She was rather obsessed with giving him his pacifier and sometimes stealing it from him. 

 She also loved to swing him in his swing even when the swing was already doing a good job of it.

 She also would come and find him anytime he started to cry.

 Hyrum spent a good amount of time enjoying his swing and being cute.

 On Sunday Wesley wanted a picture with the girls in their new dresses, Trooper insisted on being part of the picture too.

 Sadie decided this would be a good place to "sleep."

 Kinsley, after serious regression, finally had to give up the pacifier.

 Not a happy child.

 And Hyrum finally got a real bath.

Introducing Hyrum Wesley Crockett

We had our sweet Hyrum on Tuesday this week.  He was born at 9:17am on 11-12-13, his due date. Which considering I've gone over my due date with the last four kids, is a miracle.  He was 8lbs 2oz and 19 1/2 inches long.

Here are some pictures of him.  Below the pictures is the story of his birth.  I thought I would post pictures first so if you didn't really care to read the story of how he was born you could skip it.

He wasn't a really happy person at first.

But I was.  Here I am just happy to be done being pregnant. 

He had kind of an ugly little mug at first.  He was seriously bruised up, poor boy.  

Wes is kind of cute, huh? I like him.  :)  Here he is holding Hyrum for the first time.

I really just love him so much!

Thankfully his bruising went away quickly.

Kinsley meeting him and giving him a loving pat.

Sadie and Kinsley with my mom.

This is the outfit we've had since before we had Sadie.  Wes refused to let me give it away every time we had a girl.  I'm glad we kept it.  (Do you see that it's an eye chart.  It totally works with our family.)

Novie and Jared meeting Hyrum.

Going home.  

At home we had family there to meet him.  Grandma and Grandpa Pectol and Grandma Crockett

I think that Hyrum might be Wes' twin.   He totally looks like him to me.  We will see.

So here's the story.

Can I just say first that I was wondering if I would have anything new or special to say about Hyrum's birth since we've already done this four times. 

 But I guess it's true what they say about every pregnancy being different.

On Sunday the 11th, right after church, I started to feel really sick, really fast.  I had chills, fever and terrible stomach and back pain.  So I told Wes I needed to rest and spent pretty much the next full day and a half in bed trying to feel better.

Monday afternoon my step dad Larry and Wes gave me a blessing.  I was told I would feel better by the morning.  That my body would be healthy enough to perform what was necessary and the baby and I would be healthy.

Things just continued to get worse.  I felt like I had torn every muscle in my stomach and my fever kept rising.

Finally at 6pm I told Wes we should probably go to the emergency room.  And if I say to someone we should go to the emergency room, I am thinking it's an emergency.  Well, Wes I don't think understood that exactly and proceeded to change his clothes, brush his teeth, change Kinsley's diaper and a zillion other little things I didn't think fell under the category of things to do during an emergency.  To my shame, each time he did something non-emergency related I made it very clear that I didn't approve.  (I'm slightly smiling right now thinking back about this because it's a little embarrassing.  I'd like to think that think I'm not normally a horrible monster but I'm pretty sure this was me at my worst and Wes was gracious enough to deal with it.)

We got to the hospital at about 7:30pm.  The emergency room asked what was going on, I love that at St. Vincents, they never make you wait long before they are at least trying to figure out what is wrong with you.  I explained that I was sick.  They asked if I was pregnant.  I said yes but that I wasn't in labor, I was just having a fever.  I then went on to explain that I was due the following day and was having severe pain in my stomach and back.  The lady questioning me laughed and said, "Oh, honey, you need to go to Labor and Delivery," as if she knew I was in labor.  If I had the energy I would have said back, "You will see lady, I'm not in labor, I know what that feels like, I'm just freaking sick!"

Up to labor and delivery I went.  I started crying.  I told them I was sick with a fever.  They took me to a room to be monitored FAR AWAY from all the other moms in case I was contagious.  The nurse tried to figure out what was wrong with me.  She seemed confused and asked what was causing me so much pain that I would be crying.  I seriously didn't even know, I think it was part embarrassment that I was there and a small fear that they wouldn't find anything wrong with me, besides me being a big baby over being sick and would send me home with no relief and partly I was just tired of feeling like crap and relieved that I might actually get help and have it end soon.  And of course I had a temp of 102 degrees and my stomach felt like it was ripping in half.

Thankfully I wasn't just being a big baby.  Turns out I had some sort of infection.  They never figured out specifically where it came from but they were leaning towards a uterine infection because of the abdominal pain.  I had a high fever and the babies heartbeat was high, suggesting he was under distress.  They drew blood and I had a slightly elevated white blood cell count.

They said that since I was due the next day they would probably hook me up to antibiotics and fluids and keep me.  I didn't really know what that meant.  But Wes figured it meant we were having a baby soon. Sure enough, they later explained their plan to induce and get the baby out of a not so perfect environment.

They checked me at some point and found I was slightly more progressed than my appointment on Friday.  I'm going to chalk that up to taking Castor Oil on Saturday.  (Don't judge me, I get desperate towards the end).

While waiting for a room, I noticed I was starting to have contractions on my own about 7 minutes apart.

We didn't bring a camera so at some point Wes left to get a camera.

It started to feel better as soon as they started pumping me full of fluids, antibiotics, and giving me some more Tylenol.

About 1 or 2 on Tuesday the 12th they finally made room for me in labor and delivery.  The nurse asked if my contractions were increasing in pain and I said not really, and she said that was a bummer because she was hoping not to need to give me Pitocin.  A little while later before they started the Pitocin the nurse rushed in and moved me around quickly and gave me oxygen.  I guess the baby's heartbeat was having "dips" after each of my contractions.  With that resolved they started the Pitocin.  They started low, at a 2 (which I'm told they can go up to 20 before needing special approval to go higher).  About 30 minutes later they had to turn it off because of the "dips" in the baby's heartbeat.

At this point the "dips" were pretty mild but the concern was that they were happening after the contractions.

A little while later things seemed to have resolved again so they started the Pitocin at a 1.  They got up to 4 but would periodically need me to change positions to stop the baby's heart rate "dips."

I must have been around 6am when I asked for an epidural.  The contractions weren't really that strong but I was kind of just sick of feeling so sick and hurting.  With already having abdominal pain for more than a day that felt like torture, I was kind of over it.

At 8:15am the anesthesiologist came back to turn down the epidural because I was feeling too numb.

At about this point Wes asked if he could go get some breakfast.  The nurse said it was probably fine.  I think I was a little less than halfway to being complete.

I just told the nurse that I was happy to finally get some sleep.  They turned out the lights, I was laying there for about 15 minutes when my water broke and things got crazy.  The midwife checked me to find out that I was halfway to being complete, so a 5.

But at the same time Hyrum's heartbeat started dipping during each contraction.  Which a little dip during the contraction can be considered normal from what I understood but Hyrum's heartbeat was dipping from 150 to somewhere between 30 to 60 beats per minute.

Holy Scary!

I was all alone, in the dark, unable to move my own body around because of the epidural and madly sucking in the oxygen they provided me hoping it would help the baby.

Nothing seemed to work.  They started to mentally prepare me for a cesarean.  They told me how the procedure would work, where the incision would be, how long it would take, etc.  Then they said that we should probably call my husband to let him know he should be closer.

They called, he didn't answer.  But thankfully he walked back in less than a minute later.

The midwife consulted the on call doctor.  He told the midwife to just hope I progressed quickly and to watch the monitor closely for any change.

So there we were, Wes and I holding hands in the dark, watching the monitor like hawks, praying with each contraction that the baby's heartbeat would go back to 150 and not stop.

We finally just looked at each other and asked why we were waiting and risking our baby's life (maybe that's dramatic but it felt like that) instead of just getting a c-section.

So we asked the nurse and the midwife.  They were leaning towards that as well.  Just then I had a contraction and I thought I felt pressure.  The midwife said we should just check where I was at and then call it then.

They checked.

I was complete.

It was about 9am.

I went from a 5 to a 10 in about 30 minutes. 

I call that a miracle.  

I was told I could push when ready as soon as the lady shadowing the midwife was prepped.

Hyrum Wesley Crockett was born at 9:17am.

He came out with his hand on his face, which I think is kind of just a neat little detail about his birth.

The crazy thing was that as soon as he was engaged and I was pushing, his heartbeat  was no longer dipping.

Sure enough just like I was told in the blessing a day before, I was healthy and Hyrum was healthy by morning.

We sort of love him with all our hearts.