The Butlers

I can't believe Oliver is already 4 months old. You would never know he had such a rough start by looking at him. We are pretty spoiled to have such an easy baby. He has always slept through the night, is happy 98% of the time, loves to cuddle, and only fusses when he is hungry. It took Jonathan and I four years to get him here. Throughout the process I was so frustrated with why it was taking so long and required so much effort when those around me were getting pregnant so easily. Now that I am able to look back I can see exactly why. This baby has saved me in so many ways and I am eternally grateful for him. It has been awesome to watch how such a small baby can change the lives of so many. He truly is our miracle.

I admit it. Jonathan and I are a bit obsessed with movie popcorn. It's a problem really. Half the time Jonathan will take the bucket from me during a movie with a brief "you're done." Or, if I am not fast enough he will eat most of the bucket. Sometimes we go to the movie theater, buy the popcorn, then just come home and watch a movie. It's cheaper than doing both and we still get to enjoy the salty goodness. I have also recently been introduced to caffeine free vanilla cherry diet coke. One word--Amazing. Unfortunately you can only get it out of one of those fancy touch screen coke machines. Lucky for me they just put in at the Thanksgiving Point theaters! So here it is, a picture of us enjoying our lovely popcorn and amazing soda from the comfort of our own home.

On Saturday the 8th I had big plans while Jonathan was at the BYU football game. I wrote all out my thank you cards, watched a movie with a friend, and played the piano. I started having random contractions around 9 pm, but didn't think anything of it. We took this picture around 1 am before going to bed to show my belly at 35 weeks.

My contractions continued all night. They hurt. A lot. The thought of being in labor never even crossed my mind. Around 3 am I thought I should start timing them to see if they were at regular intervals. They were about 6 minutes apart. I let Jonathan know and decided to keep trying to go to sleep (which never happened, by the way). By 7 am I was pacing and my contractions were 2 minutes apart. I still didn't think I was in labor. Jonathan wanted to go to the hospital, but I refused because I didn't want to be sent home if I wasn't. Jonathan finally convinced me to call the hospital. They recommended I come in to be checked, but said it was probably nothing. We got the hospital at 8 am and my contractions were 1 minute apart. The nurse checked me and said I was dilated to a 6. Up until that point I never thought I would be having our baby that day. From there we went straight to labor and delivery. I got my epidural, perhaps the best invention in the history of the world, and things got much better.
Our baby came at 2:09 pm in the afternoon. The doctor said there may be problems because he/she (we still didn't know at this point) was early, but not to worry. After 1 hour of pushing our baby arrived. Jonathan announced that it was a boy and we were both thrilled. He was 7 lbs 3 oz and 19 inches long. The nurse immediately took our baby to the other side of the room and started doing things that I couldn't really see from my vantage point. Within seconds there were 12 people in the room working on him. I could see they were doing chest compressions and I could hear them talking about him not breathing, but I was never worried. They zipped him off to another room and I didn't get to see him. A while later a nurse came in and said they were life-flighting him to IMC. No one really told me what was going on. Jonathan went with the baby and came back about an hour later. He told me he was calling him Oliver and asked if that was OK. Oliver was hooked up to a ventilator and was very sick. Before he went in the helicopter they brought him back into the room so I could see him. The first time I saw him he looked like this. I was able to hold his hand for a minute before they zipped off.
I spent the night at the hospital and was discharged the next morning so I could go see Oliver. The next 2 weeks we spent about 12 hours per day in the NICU. We had some horrendously awful nurses and some amazing ones. Oliver came off the ventilator within 24 hours. They found he had a viral infection and a form of meningitis. He also needed to be under lights for bilirubin for 2 days. The poor little guy had to have a spinal tap, MRI, and PICC line. Over the course of the weeks he had IVs in his head, belly button, hands, arms, and feet. We got to hold him for the first time after 4 days and saw his eyes open for the first time after 6. Throughout the whole process Oliver proved everyone wrong. They said he would take weeks to eat and he downed a bottle in 5 minutes on his first try. They said his MRI would show brain damage and it came back fine. They told us he would be there for 5 weeks and he was only there for 2. The list goes on. We saw an incredible number of miracles during his stay. Oliver is one tough kid.