Garrett's Blessing Info.

Garrett Benjamin Hulse will be blessed on Sunday, August 7th at 9:00am at the LDS stake center in Hemet, CA. Please let me know if you will be able to make it and I can give you the exact address.

I am still in basic survival mode but I will update my blog soon...I hope...

Living the Bachelor Life

Johnny has been living in Bakersfield as a bachelor for over a month now. He has even had a room mate. Another lineman from Tennessee has been crashing on our couch. When I found out our trailer-guest was going to be heading home for a week I decided to go visit Johnny for the holiday weekend to give the boys some much needed daddy time. He has not had much of an opportunity to bond with Garrett and all the boys really miss him. Plus, I miss him a ton too!

The first time I opened our freezer I could not help but laugh.

These two guys really have been living the bachelor life! Our freezer is smaller than a small food cooler but somehow he managed to fit in a gallon bucket of cookies and cream ice cream. Hilarious! I also had to invest in some air wick and scrub the bath tub RIGHT AWAY! I forgot how stinky boys can be when there are no women around to encourage cleanliness!

We plan to move up here for good in a few weeks. I am excited to live together again. Being apart is really hard!

Lizard Tongue

Anyone else have kids with cute lizard tongues? I have always laughed about the little slit at the tip of my boy's tongues and thought nothing more about it. Anyone else not know its a sign your kid is tongue tied? Apparently 3 out of my 4 boys are and I never knew. They were all thin kids on the lower portion of the growth charts, and not very great nursers (which I just assumed was my milk issue not their tongue issue).

While we were in the NICU the nurse mentioned she thought Garrett was tongue tied and then at his check-up the pediatrician did too. The next day I found myself at the ENT's office having Garrett's tongue clipped because he is in fact not just tongue tied, he is tethered, which means it will probably affect his speech and require corrective surgery later. I know this is a sad picture but I had the assistant take it right before they clipped his tongue so I could compare it to my other boys. He still has never put his tongue out of his mouth but he is nursing better than before. They were only able to loosen it a little due to it being tethered.

I mentioned my other boys to the ENT and go figure, he thinks they will need to have it corrected too. Now when Jaxon says "shawshage" instead of sausage it is not quite as cute! Wesley is blowing an extreme amount of raspberries at me now because I keep asking to see his tongue. All and all their little lizard tongues are still cute to me, but not as cute to my pocketbook!

Garrett Benjamin Hulse

Garrett Benjamin Hulse was born on Thursday June 16, 2011 at 2:43am. 8lbs. 9oz. 21 inches.

I knew things were getting going Wednesday morning when I started losing my mucus plug and having stronger contractions, but they were not steady. I took the boys for a walk, watched them swim, cleaned the floors, and ran a few errands. For some strange reason I had it stuck in my head that I absolutely required Chinese food before having the baby. I had called Johnny and told him to head home, but after eating Chinese food and laying down for a while my contractions completely disappeared and I called back to tell him not to come. Of course because he is amazing he told me he felt the baby was coming tonight and had a good feeling about coming home. Good thing he did. After he came home we went on another walk, ate fajitas and ice cream, and were pleasantly surprised when my contractions returned strong and consistent. We headed to the hospital about 10pm, checked in by 11pm and promptly requested my epidural. I was already 4cm when we checked. My water broke about 1:20am. I could tell my nurse was new, very nervous about some things, and unsure about others. She kept asking me the same questions over and over again. My epidural was wonderful at first, but then my self medicating button would not work. It just flashed "disconnected" every time it was pushed. I was promised the anestiesiologist would be by to fix it, but he was not there in time. By 2:20am when the nurse checked me I was still only 5cm. The nurse put me on oxygen because Garrett's heartbeat dropped after every contraction. I rolled over once and went from 5cm to 10cm in two seconds. The doctor was called but didn't make it for 23 minutes! It seemed like forever. I was telling them I was going to push and I didn't care if he was there. The doctor walked in just in time for two pushes and Garrett was out.

After he was born we found out why his oxygen levels and movements dropped over the last few weeks. He had a gigantic knot in his cord!

Too bad the pediatric nurse was terrible. She didn't let me hold Garrett during her exam. Johnny had to stop her cutting off the umbilical cord so he could do it himself.

After only an hour with him she took him to the nursery to test his blood sugar levels promising he would only be gone for half an hour, but then never brought him back and never came back to tell us what was going on. We had fallen asleep and by 6:30am when the nurse woke me to clean me up and move rooms my baby was still gone.

After we moved rooms I sent Johnny to the nursery to find Garrett and bring him back. He was told to come back after shift change! When I sent him back again he was told they were going to transfer Garrett to a NICU 90 minutes away because he was hypoglycemic. They had even bottle fed him and given him his first bath without ever asking me or telling me or inviting me to come watch. I was SO MAD! They wouldn't even let me nurse him.

Total and complete lack of communication. I made a complaint with the social worker and talked to the head nurse. Maybe that is why they arranged for me to be released only 12 hours after delivery. Johnny had gone with the medical transport team to the NICU with Garrett and I followed that afternoon. I have since spent the last 3 days driving 3 hours round trip every day to sit by Garrett's bedside, nurse every 3 hours, and hold him when possible. His sugar levels steadied out and he was taken off antibiotics yesterday but he was not released due to his billirubin levels (jaundice) until this morning.

I hated leaving him every night! It was so sad. I know a lot of women have sat by their babies bedside like this for much longer than 3 days. It is awful. My heart goes out to all women who don't get to take their baby home right away!

He is home now and my other boys are absolutely in love with him.

Daniel wants to learn to change diapers and asks to kiss him all the time. Wesley just growls at him, but does say Garrett's name and I love you. Jaxon was the first to ask to hold him. Looking at him reminds me of each time I have brought one of my other boys home. How were they ever that small? They all look so much alike it is hard to tell who he looks like more.

Amazon Kindle

For Mother's Day I got a new Amazon Kindle. Love it so far! You can loan books to others who have a Kindle to save on buying them all yourself. Anyone else have one that might want to start loaning back and forth? Email me if you are interested.

New Family Picture

This is the only family picture I have so far from my broth-in-laws wedding in March. I am not too excited about my akward smile, but overall not too bad for the five of us and me being prego. The three boys were actually cooperating. Wesley was just bored and eying the cool motorcycle behind the photographer. They look so sweet and innocent, don't they?
This one happens to be the only family picture with ALL of the Hulse's. I am not sure how many of us there even are any more. Johnny is the 4th of 8 children, 6 boys and 2 girls. So far there are 19 grandchildren (21 by the end of 2011). Isn't Ben's bride Stephanie so beautiful? I have only talked to her twice but I did vote for her to be "the one" after the very first meeting. When Ben first told me about her he called her a "lovely little lady." So sweet!
Here are 17 of the 19 showing their true personalities. My boys were a little confused when they were told to be silly for the picture. Usually I am telling them to knock it off while I snap a photo.

Some real family pictures of the 6 of us will be coming after the baby arrives.

Visit to Bakersfield

Despite having semi-mild contractions every 3-5 minutes for 9 hours Sunday night I took off Monday with the boys to visit Johnny in Bakersfield. I said a prayer first, felt that I was not going to have the baby before I scheduled to come back, and loaded the car. Could you imagine me in labor on the side of the road with my three boys in the car? Craziness. haha! Daniel keeps asking me when my tummy is going to explode so the baby can come out! Trust me, it is a good thing I made the 3 1/2 hour drive here because the fridge was bare and the trailer was very dirty. Johnny has been living like a bachelor for a few weeks now and it showed!

The RV park Johnny found is really nice, really quiet, and really CHEAP! Love it! We even have some other guys from Johnny's work right next to us and they seem nice. They are both from Arizona so we have a lot in common. Plus they are already Journeymen and Johnny likes to pick their brains about stuff at work. He even has some time to hang out and watch sports with them while we are gone, which he needs. Guy time is important and he doesn't get much of it!

Bakersfield itself is lacking...at least so far. I found a nice little children's museum but had to go through many areas where check cashing stores, gentlemen's clubs, and liquor markets were more than in abundance! I was going to take my boys to the mall but after a dozen terrible reviews on Yelp about it being overrun with gangs I decided to pass. Luckily the library and city parks & recreation catalog look promising.

I am sad all I have is three days here before heading back to Hemet. I will not be back until the baby is at least a few weeks old and my life will be upside down. It has been good for the boys to have daddy home every night. They look forward to swimming with him, playing horse shoes, and having him sing them to sleep at night! I have loved it too! He rubs my feet with lotion before bed (without being asked) and I had forgot how wonderful it is to hold his hand while we go on evening walks. Absence really does make the heart grown fonder!