Meet Porter Ray

We are happy to announce the birth of our first little one, Porter Ray Gelter!

Porter was born at 1:59 pm today and he weighs 6 lbs 1 oz and is 19 inches long. His umbilical cord was too short to make it through the birth canal, so he had to be taken via C-Section, but he and Mom are doing just fine. We were also very surprised to discover that he has red hair like his Mom! Thanks to everyone who has come to visit already, it's been nice to see you!

an INQUISITIVE mind

I hope Porter is curious like his Daddy. We had to replace our lawnmower and Aaron couldn't wait to take the old one apart to see how it works. Thanks, Nate, for helping Aaron through our lawnmower troubles!

Goodbye, Sissy Girl!

I'm sharing this with a grain of embarrassment, but it's okay because I've learned a lot from this morning's excursion.

This morning after tracking contractions for 3 hours at every 2 minutes I called the nurse to see what I should do. She had me come into the doctor's office to be monitored and checked. I swear as soon as they put that monitor on me the contractions slowed down, but at least there were some. After being monitored for a while it seemed pretty obvious this was a sissy girl false alarm. I'm so lucky, though, because my doctor and nurse were wonderful about helping me feel like I did the right thing by coming in. It was also very educational because I never felt like I was in much pain so together we studied my contractions and they let me know the level of intensity to look for in my muscles based on the contractions I was having today. My doctor told me that since this is my first baby it's going to take stronger contractions to send me into labor, but that I really am having good contractions often. We talked and decided that for the last week and a half of school I'll be going part time. YAY!!! This feels like a fabulous compromise to me because I can still work and have a schedule but if the contractions get bad I can actually get off my feet and relax. Not to mention I might actually get to do more of the crazy nesting woman's cleaning that keeps wanting to bust out of me.

Overall this experience just ticked me off at myself. I know a lot of the anxiety I was feeling about the contractions was because we hadn't gotten the lab results back about the pre-eclemsia and I was scared my body might be hurting my baby. Well the lab work came back negative and we got to see how Porter responds under a decent size contraction and he's just fine. So, no more worrying, no more anxiety, and no more sissy girl! We're just going to roll and when this baby wants to come he'll come! Like Grandma said, "Put it in the Lord's hands honey, there's nothing you can do because it's up to him." I'm a little relieved because now we can talk about all the things we want to do with our 3 weeks remaining.

Here are some things that come to my mind:

Eat lots of chocolate, something like this would do

Make a few more visits to the temple

Finish painting this series of canvas baby jungle animals I've started for Porter's nursery. The giraffe is the only one I've finished.

I would like to go on a FANCY date with Aaron

Maybe get a few more dinners in my frozen pantry since there hasn't been any progress made on that.

Plant a flower garden
That would keep me busy and happy!

True Or False?

My talented sister-in-law put this amazing documentation of my pregnancy together. I can't believe I was that little and that I felt fat when she took the first shot. You should check out her blog, Rachael Tyler Photography, she does beautiful work. I can't wait to see the pictures from our maternity shoot last week!

True Labor or False Labor?

This is the hardest question I've had to answer in a long time! This Tuesday when Aaron and I were standing around the Babies R' Us customer service desk our little guy was moving around like an acrobat causing contractions, then all the sudden he dropped. I was totally freaked out. Where did my baby just go?! Was he okay? And why was by belly button not an outtie anymore? I made Aaron come poke around to try to figure out baby's position and called mothers. I know, such a simple thing but it made me nervous. The lovely thing about Porter getting into position has been the false labor...it hasn't stopped! I've been having contractions consistently from anywhere to 2-10 minutes apart, but nothing real yet. I've been awake since 6 this morning trying to figure out if this current go around is true or false. I'm thinking it's more false. I'm having contractions every 2 minutes but they aren't increasing in intensity so I think I'm going to start ignoring them again. Why isn't this like the movies where the pregnant woman just wakes up and announces, "It's time!" What a lie! I know I'm new at this; I'm not really sure what's going on. Hope next time is easier.

Oh yeah, if you're wondering why I'm worried 3 weeks away from my due date it's because when I went to see the doctor on Friday I was 80% effaced and she bumped my next appointment up so she could see me right after the long weekend. I don't know when we'll have this kid but he's toying with the idea of being born. My doctor did find some tell-tell signs of pre-eclampsia which has me a little worried. But why worry until the lab work is back? If I do have pre-eclampsia that would explain the swollen ankles. It would also mean being induced ASAP...which doesn't sound like much fun to me. So we keep waiting.

Another Weekend Scare

As many of you know, my father passed out while driving my brother to a baseball practice on Saturday. Luckily, they were going slow and didn't get hurt because of it. Later that morning he passed out again and they decided he needed to go to the hospital. In the ER, they hooked him up to monitors and everything seemed fine until it happened again. The doctor told him that when it happened his heart stopped for 15 seconds! As a result of this, he was given a pacemaker on Sunday to monitor his heart and make sure it behaves in the future. The surgery went well and he is home now. We are so grateful that our Daddy is okay and that he doesn't have any permanent heart damage! We love you, Dad!

Something Near To My Heart

It's been 2 years since my Father's suicide. It's amazing the difference in my emotions about the whole thing from a year ago. Life is so precious and I'm grateful all whom I love are considerably well. Aaron's father gave us all a scare this weekend and had to have heart surgery, but should recover quickly. This morning I found out my cute cousin is in the hospital with kidney stones and we hope she'll be home soon. I'm so tired of hospitals and there's definitely one looming in my future. I thought I'd post this poem I wrote shortly after Dad's passing and then later revised last year. I think the hardest part of this day is knowing I wont get to see my father holding my his Grandson. He would have been a fantastic Grandpa! I have had serveal sacred moments during this pregnancy, however, when it's been pretty clear Dad's already being a Grandpa!

a place within the Fatherless

You were my Dad
you were a man with dreams
but weakness would find you
you had your moments of victory
that's when you filled the world with your love
once it was for me, my birth, your freckled little meggy
but I also remember the times when you couldn't find that
damn line
you fought like Hell, you crawled through it all
and you let life take it's toll
until one day
my Dad was gone, all confidence lost, you had succumbed

The life you lived, the life now gone
replays itself on the ceilings of sleepless nights
I see the colors, i hear the sounds, i feel your touch,
I wrap up in your jacket to remember your smell.
I feel you near

a life without a father--
I never thought I would have to bear this
but now I am the fatherless and your mess is all that you left.
Our family was in crisis and to me they said,
"Be Strong, Be Proud!"
Your daughter YES, but
not always so strong

How do I survive this?
How do I go on?
How do I get back to where I thought I once belonged?
There must be a place that exists
within my heart where you can live...

Can I give it to you?
Will you treat it well?
Can I trust you to make it whole again?
Will you mend yourself,
so you with in my heart might dwell?

I wish you would, because right now
my heart has an empty space.
You see, you took it with you
when you left, before God said it was His will

I ask you Daddy, please
find yourself, find your strength,
and for once follow your natural tenderness and listen to Our Savior
I know what you can be,
I know the path that can lead you there,
I've been down it, I'll go down it again
If I promise to keep repenting and keep working on forgiving you
and you try too. I think...
I can
keep you in my heart,
there we will rest from this pain
and you will hold me there
in a fathers sweet embrace.

I love you Daddy, I miss you! I promise I'll keep trying.

Shower Pictures

We're at the one month mark today, wahoo! I must say I've felt very lucky with pregnancy. It hasn't been terribly hard and I enjoy being pregnant...that is until this week when my baby decided to get huge! :( He likes to wrap around my pelvic bone and then push his feet up past my ribs! It just makes me freak out every time. I still have to ask Aaron to confirm that he's actually in me like that, it just doesn't seem natural. This, too, will pass, but I just didn't believe people when they said, "You'll know you're ready to have the baby when the doctor tells you they'll have to use a chain saw to get the baby out and you think that sounds like a great idea!" I think I'm there which scares me because he's only halfway through his biggest growth spurt of the whole 9 months! Is it possible they miss calculated and I'm really due next week?! HA!

Alright, enough of complaining Meg. Look how lovely my shower was! Porter is already spoiled!

Thank you so much to all the ladies who put this together for me. I love you all so much!

An Answer

I just thought I'd let you know we finally received an answer to our prayers about the "Meg Work Situation". I'll be staying home with Porter! I feel so very at peace with this answer. It's been months but the timing was perfect, Heavenly Father truly knows best. I think if it had come sooner I might not have taught with all my heart and that has made all the difference in my experience. Tonight I'm writing my resignation letter. I'm staying active on the substitute list so if I need a day in the classroom I can still jump in. I'm so excited about the future as a stay at home Mother and also very nervous. There will be some major adjustments in our future, but we've got our answer so we move forward with faith that the Lord will show us the way.

Mother's Day

For the first time in our marriage Aaron celebrated me as a Mother! I was excited. Saturday he took me on a picnic to this wonderful park in an older mining community not far from our home. We had such a good time together just relaxing and enjoying this awesome town. Sydney had an even better time!

The boys in my life!
Don't we look great just after our nap? The best part of this picture is Sydney chilling in the background, can you find him?

Thanks Aaron for a wonderful Mother's day and for messing up my make-up with your note. I love you and can't wait to make you a Daddy!

Mom's are the best! We love you Mommy Nec and "Mom" (Judy)!
Thanks for loving us so well!

Look What A Little Early Labor Can Do...

I mentioned that Aaron and I had been to the temple to try to figure out the Meg working situation. As we left, neither of us had any impressions about work, but both of us felt like we needed to get the hospital bag packed ASAP. Well, we had a pile of things to be packed, but a little early labor and now it's in the suit case by the door. Hopefully our prompting was concerning this incident and we don't have any reason to use it until mid-June!
We also felt like this should be properly installed in the car. We need to tweak the level a little but it's anchored into the car; a few small adjustments and it's ready for Porter. It makes me so excited to think about actually having a little son to put in the car seat.

Here's the update on Me: I pretty much got the ALL CLEAR from my doctor today!!! HALLELUJAH!!! I had to go see the doctor Monday for persistent contractions and again was sent to the hospital for monitoring. This time it was more to monitor Porter than me, he had some drops in his heartrate when they were monitoring me in the doctor's office, but Porter passed their test with 10 points out of 10. He almost failed part of his ultrasound and then I asked him to kick me and he was kind enough to oblige. After that visit they were saying weekly visits to the hospital for fetal monitoring, but not after today. I saw my doctor again today to be monitored and Porter must be tired of the invasion of his space because he freaked out, but it helped him pass with flying colors. I'm experiencing more contractions than normal, especially when I'm on my feet, but they subside when I rest... thus no reason to be concerned. They also did this awesome screening on me where they can predict if you're going into labor in the next two weeks and that was negative. I feel very much relieved! I can't wait to get back into my routine and put this behind us. The labor thing made me excited to meet my son, but after researching premature birth I'll do whatever it takes to keep him in the womb.

Thanks for all the love and support! We've appriciated all your prayers!

Truck People, GRRRR!!!

We were in a car accident. I can't write it out, but thankfully my sister in-law has done a great job of already doing that so if you want to know the details read this. All I would like to add is truck people drive me crazy with their belief that they are immune to inclement weather conditions!

With that I want to document our little trip to the ER/Labor and Delivery. It's 2:30a.m. and I can't sleep anymore so this will hopefully distract me. As we were driving to a safe location off of the crowded freeway, Aaron's brother Tim had asked how the baby and I were doing and I told him I'd contracted a few times but nothing serious. When we were in a safe place I think the adrenaline started to wear off and I started to realized my baby hadn't kicked me like he normally does. I paniced and started walking around trying to wake the little guy up only to look down and realize my baby bump was lower and misshaped (the nurses said the baby was stressing and got in a weird position). We had Aaron's Father, Randy, come and pick us up and take us to the ER just so I could feel better even though I was positive I was overreacting.

We got to the ER and that was a fun experience...they're so slow! As soon as we started filling out paperwork, Porter decided to start acting like himself again, ironic timing don't you think? My baby acting normal again just made me even more postive everything was fine. Yeah, I was having contractions, but what do you expect? The doctor checked both of us out and after talking with me decided to send me up to Labor and Delivery to be monitored. When my doctor said we'll have you go upstairs I jumped up and asked for directions. He quickly told me to sit down and wait for the nurse to take me up. We probably waited another 45 minutes before we went upstairs and I was so hungry I asked Aaron to go find some food. The ER had these sack lunch things they gave him. He showed up with the food right as the nurse showed up with a wheel chair, dumb. I took the chips out of the sack lunch and started munching on my ride up. As soon as they turned me over to my Labor and Delivery nurse, she saw my chips and snatched them away from me, "I can't believe they told you you could eat!" I was the saddest girl in the hospital at that moment!

They only had me hooked up to the monitors for about 5 minutes before they came in to do an hour long ultrasound exam on me and the baby, but they could already see contractions in just those few minutes. The ultrasound tech checked all my major organs because they didn't want to do x-rays and then they checked the baby. The tech wouldn't tell me anything she just kept saying, "The doctor will determine that." grrr... So, she wouldn't tell me anything and she was way rough during the exam, triggering some major contractions. I was so happy when she finished. As an afterthought she asked if I wanted her to try for a profile picture of the baby I quickly turned her down because I didn't want her touching me anymore!

I was grateful to be turned back over to the good care of my Labor and Delivery nurses - such nice women! They hooked me up to the monitors again and we small talked a little. The nurse watched for a few minutes and asked, "How many of these are you actually feeling?" I could feel the contraction but wasn't in pain, just a little uncomfy. The best thing the nurse said to me was that I have an "Irritable Uterus" - it just made me laugh! It was easy to tell what was happening had the nurse a little concerned but she wasn't going to say much yet. We were in a room right next to the nurses station and I have mixed feelings about being that close. It was nice to know she was there but we also heard every phone call she made to the doctor with perfect clarity. Being able to eavesdrop was a little nice because she wasn't sugar coating anything for the doctor, but at the same time she wasn't sugar coating it. :) After an hour and a half on monitors, my contractions getting more painful, and consistently having contractions every 2 minutes, she made her third phone call to the doctor when I heard her say, "No she's not just contracting she's in labor." Then I heard the word labor 3 or 4 more times and didn't pick up on much more. Labor, this was labor? I could feel my contractions and I really enjoyed being able to look over at the monitor and know I wasn't crazy, my uterous was irratable, but Labor was suppose to be more painful. Come to find out I'm not a good judge of how much pain I'm in. Again mixed feelings, is this a curse or a blessing? I was having contractions at the top of the scale (120s, Aaron said 20 is normal) and I was talking right through them. I had to breathe they were uncomfortable but they were an annoyance to me more than anything. The nurse came in to talk with us while Aaron was on the phone with the on call doctor from my OB Clinic and they both said the same thing. 34 weeks was right on the line for just going through with a Delivery or trying to stop it. At 34 weeks they said the baby wouldn't have any major premature problems, but may need oxygen for a little while. I chatted with Aaron a bit because I wasn't really sure what I wanted to do, ride this wave and deliver, or try to stop it. Then Aaron pointed out that I hadn't dialated at all so that if I decided to go through with it labor would take a long time. We decided to just let the hospital's on-call doctor decide and since the hospital wasn't equipped for premies they went to work on stopping my labor. My physician seems pretty positive that if we would have been at a hopsital equipped for premies we would have had a baby 6 weeks early. I'm glad he's still with me, but the thought of having my son was very exciting to me. It's probably selfish but I kind of wanted to meet him. He'll be better off this way though!

Getting the contractions to stop was the worst part of the whole thing. I had one nurse injecting drugs into me on one side and a nurse trying to start an IV on the other. I can't remember the name of the drug they gave me but it was a muscle relaxer with the lovely side effects of racing heartbeat and the shakes. The drug hit my system before they could successfully get an IV line into me so I was shaking while they dug at my veins. I must have looked terrible by the look on my husband's face. At that point I really didn't feel good. I started sweating and they had to give me oxygen to help settle me down, but the contractions stopped almost instantly. I had to stay for another 45 minutes before they let me out. My cute parents came up and took me to dinner because I was so hungery and then dropped us off at home. (This whole thing started because the Escort broke down on the way to Kaysville, that's why Tim and Megan picked us up!)

So I'm back to the not being a good judge of how much pain I'm really in. The nurse assured me that if I started having contractions like I was I'd know it, but it's now 3 a.m. and I'm not sure if they're starting again. I know I've had a few since I woke up but now my muscles are all sore from the accident and I feel lots of tenderness in my uterus. I want to just say it's from early labor and the trauma of the accident, but now I'm questioning myself. I'm scared I'll be in labor again and just shake it off. The nurse was pretty positive my labor had started with the car accident which would mean I was in labor for 6 hours and had myself convinced that everything was fine! I don't know what to think and almost don't trust myself. I wish I had that little monitor to glace over at to confirm for me if I really am having contractions. Ladies, if you have any thoughts or advise on reading the signs/symptoms of my body I'd appriciate it.

By the way, Porter is totally healthy and unphased! Once he was over his little stress, I'm sure caused by Mommy, he was a happy camper. The ultrasound tech told us he's just under 5 lbs! He's big for his age and if we do go another 6 weeks he could get pretty big! I just love this little guy so much and am so grateful everything turned out so well considering. We're truely blessed.