2 Months

Claire is 2 months old today! I can't believe that 2 months ago, my baby looked like this:

and today she looks like this:

She is growing more and more everyday. She doesn't have her 2 month check-up until next week, but according to Wii Fit Plus Claire weighs about 10.5 lbs! Pretty much all of her newborn clothes are too small now. She has been a lot better during the day and isn't as fussy, which has been nice for me. She is really a good and happy baby as long as she has a full belly and clean diaper. Go figure. Claire still sleeps well during the night, usually only getting up twice to nurse. She doesn't love her bassinet so she sometimes sleeps with Mommy and Daddy. We're working on trying to get her to sleep in her own bed all night. I went back to work on the 9th so Claire has been going to daycare on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I was super nervous about this but luckily we found a great daycare with wonderful workers. Claire has been smiling and giggling a lot lately. She is super slobbery and likes to blow bubbles. She still likes being on her tummy and loves to play with Dad when he gets home. She is excited to take her first trip to Lovell this weekend (wish us luck!) and can't wait to see her grandparents and FINALLY meet her Aunt Kyle, Uncles Jordan and Lynn, and her cousins. Here's some pictures of our little cutie from the past month, enjoy!

One Month!

**Warning - this post has tons of pictures! I can't choose just a few, she is too dang cute!**

Claire was one month old last Sunday, the 28th! I can't believe how fast that month went and how much she's grown. She had her 1 month appt on Monday and weighed in at 8 lbs 14 oz (23rd percentile) and was 21.5 inches (65th percentile). I was surprised at her weight, she gained over a pound in 2 weeks! I shouldn't have been so surprised because this girl loves to eat! Luckily, she only wants to eat every 4-5 hours at night. Too bad it's not that way during the day. For some reason for the past couple weeks she hates the daytime. She is fussy, likes to be held most of the time, and eats every 2-3 hours during the day. Granted, she was a little congested for about a week so I'm hoping she'll be happier now that she's feeling better. I have to give a shoutout to Kristin for lending me her Sleepy Wrap. Thank You! I am finally able to get things done around the house during the day! At one month old, Claire has stared to smile (haven't caught this on camera yet), is overall pretty strong and can hold her head up really well for her age, and likes to be on her tummy. She has her dad wrapped around her little finger. And maybe her mom, too :) She is so much fun and we can't get enough of her!

Sleeping in with Daddy

Ready to go to church for the 1st time

Better Late Than Never

On Thursday, January 28th, at 1:40 PM our lives changed forever! Now that my computer is functioning properly I can finally post all about it so here goes! Be prepared this will probably be long, my labor was NOT a short process! I don't expect everyone to read it all, but I want to get it all down.

For about a week before she was born I had been feeling a lot of pressure and having random contractions, but nothing very strong or regular. Needless to say I was pretty uncomfortable, not getting much sleep, and was pretty much over being pregnant :) Steven was also getting impatient and wanting our little girl to come! So when I finally started having regular contractions early in the morning on Wednesday the 27th (exactly 39 wks along), I was pretty sure this was it. I didn't want to jump the gun and go to the hospital too soon so I got up and got some last minute cleaning done around the house while I timed contractions and before I woke Steven up. Around 8 AM they had been every 3-4 min for about 2 hours so I woke him up and told him we should probably get ready. By this time, I was excited but SUPER nervous and anxious at the same time. We got things ready to go, Steven gave me a blessing to calm me down a bit, and by 10:30 we were at the hospital. They hooked me up to the monitors and checked me. 3cm and 80%, same as I had been for 2 weeks. Since my contractions were still coming regularly, they wanted us to stay for awhile and see if anything would happen. By 1:30, not much had changed and they were talking about sending us home. Yeah, pretty sure they forgot about us a few times and we didn't actually get discharged until about 5:30 PM. Annoying. But it turns out it was a good thing, because we both hadn't eaten since that morning and were starving. We stopped at Taco Bell on the way home and by then my contractions were getting stronger but were still about 3-4 min apart. We came home, I took a shower and tried to sleep for awhile.

Around 8:30 PM my contractions were quite a bit stronger and I was definitely in pain! I toughed it out until about 9:30 and finally called the on-call Dr. She said she thought we'd be back and to come on in. By that time I was trying not to cry and contractions were coming every 2 minutes and lasting about 1 min long. We headed back to the hospital and by 10:30 PM, I was admitted and was for sure not going home without a baby! Since I tested positive for Group B Strep, I had to have antibiotics while in labor so they hooked me up to the IV. The contractions were coming faster and stronger still, but I wanted to see how long I could go without the epidural. Around midnight I was DONE and they called for the anesthesiologist. Half an hour, a little prick, and what felt like an electric shock later, I was in epidural heaven! We were too wired to sleep for a few hours, but eventually we both dozed off for a couple hours. Around 6 AM, I started noticing my left side was completely dead but I was starting to feel things on my right side. About this same time, the nurse checked me and I was still about an 8. She commented that if my water broke, things would probably move right along. The Dr. came in about at about 7 and checked me but didn't want to break my water, she wanted things to happen naturally. Yeah, I was annoyed about that. By this time I was feeling EVERYTHING on my right side and luckily when the shift change came, the new nurse upped my epidural dose. About 9 AM, the midwife on call came in and checked me and said "Let's break that bag of water and I bet things will start happening". She did, but things didn't happen as fast as I would have liked them to :)

Trying to stay positive, this was about 12 hours into it

By 11, I was getting super frustrated and just praying for someone to come check me. Shortly after, the midwife did just that and said the magic words: "Let's get ready to start pushing!" As freaked out as I had been making myself about this part, I was SO ready by this point. I started pushing right at noon, and pushed for almost 2 hours. Claire Abigail Hultgren finally arrived at 1:40 PM exactly! She weighed 7lb 3.9oz (not sure why it wasn't rounded up to 4?) and was 20 inches long. She was absolutely beautiful and surprised me with a full head of thick, dark hair. (I was sure she wouldn't have much hair at all, but Steven said all along that she would have lots of dark hair. He always has to be right!) Mommy and baby girl. If I look dead tired, it"s cause I was!!

After they cleaned her up and we had a few min with our beautiful little girl, one of the residents that helped with the delivery came in and told us they wanted to put Claire on IV antibiotics for 48 hours. This was because I got a slight fever while pushing(umm, who wouldn't?!) and she had a little fever when she first was born. Since I was GBS positive and even though I had gotten 4 doses of ampicillin, they just wanted to be safe. Poor baby, but whatever was best for her. Steven went with the nurses to give her a bath and get her hooked up to her IV. He helped with the bath and tried to stay for the IV, but after they poked her a few times to find a vein, he said he couldn't watch anymore.

Not enjoying her first bath. She still hates them!

Before getting her IV

After the IV

Look how huge that thing is! :(

So, there you have it. Two long days/nights and at least 18 hours of labor. Yikes! It was totally worth it! We think Claire is beautiful and we fell in love with her the second we saw her. The whole process was surreal. It's amazing how life can change in a matter of a few seconds and how someone so small and precious can bring so much joy!

Our first family picture!

**More about her first few weeks to come!**

Happy Valentine's Day!

From the cutest little Valentine ever!

P.S. My computer crashed right after she was born, but is FINALLY fixed! A post and tons of pictures of this little cutie coming soon!

Suggestions, please!

Ok, so I'm 36 weeks prego today (AAAHHH!) and decided it's time to pack my hospital bag. Problem is.... I'm not sure what to pack! I've looked at about a billion lists, but they only add to my confusion. Some have tons of stuff, most of which seems ridiculous (but what do I know?) and some have hardly anything. So, all you moms out there, what are your recommendations? What is necessary, and what is nice to have? Thanks in advance!

A Much Needed Update!

It's been awhile since our last post(obviously) so I thought I'd update everyone on what's been going on with us lately. And I'm waiting for my Christmas candies to cool so I can eat them...I mean put them together for my Primary kids....yeah...

We've been busy living life as usual the past couple of months. Steven finished his rotation in Powell and was back just in time for Halloween. His dad sent him back with a couple pumpkins for us to carve, but we only managed to use one of them. Also a few days before Halloween, we took Steven's sister Tiffany to Fort Collins to the haunted corn maze for her birthday. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures but had to mention how much fun it was. (Even though we stood in line for 2 hours surrounded by annoying little girls. These same teenage girls got scared once inside the corn maze and followed us for awhile before we could lose them. I hope I was not this annoying as a teenager, but something tells me I probably was.) Halloween night we were pretty lazy and watched a couple scary movies and waited for trick-or-treaters. Don't worry, we got one. The fact that tradition kept up this year and southern Wyoming got completely dumped on with snow that week probably had something to do with that. Cheyenne got what we usually get all winter in 4 days. And Steven and I both got snow days from work/rotations. Can't complain about that! I wish I would have taken pictures of all the snow, it was crazy.

Here's our October pictures:

Steven and his usual silly picture face My favorite part, cleaning out the gunk.

Steven wanted to get a side picture so everyone could see my belly.

This is me at 26 weeks.

I'm not sure how I caught this picture, but is it not hilarious! And maybe a little creepy :)

Our finished product. As you can see, we don't get overly creative with the Jack-o-lanterns.

November seemed to be super busy for us, although looking back I'm not sure why. Steven had one of his toughest rotations, ambulatory care, at the UW Family Practice clinic here in town. His evenings were full of projects and presentations. Mine were filled with feeding and cleaning up after him :) JK. He finished his rotation the week before Thanksgiving, and now has a break until March! We traveled up north to Lovell for Thanksgiving again and it was great to be home for a few days. We ate dinner with both my family and his, and let me just say this year went a lot better than last! I think we both realized last year that there was no reason to stress about being on time to one house or the other and we there was no need to rush around. I think we also realized that we didn't have to eat EVERYTHING at both houses. We were a lot less full this year, and the food was still just as delicious the next day! Thanksgiving night we went to A Christmas Carol movie with Steven's family at the Hyart. Not my favorite, but it was ok. The rest of the weekend was spent playing with kids, shopping in Billings, playing cards, and taking my nephew, Ross, to Powell to the movie Old Dogs. Once again, not my favorite but it was decent.

November pictures:

Treyson and Kennedy love Uncle Steven! They wanted him to be their horsey and they rode around like this for about 20 minutes. I'm thinking Steven will be a fun and PATIENT daddy! Steven taught Kennedy how to box, too cute!

This is me at 30 weeks. I think I look a lot bigger in the picture than I actually was, but maybe not. It could have been all that Thanksgiving food :)

December has been flying by! The first weekend of the month we made an overnight trip to Denver for some Christmas shopping. Steven surprised me that Friday night with tickets to the Colorado Ballet's preformance of The Nutcracker at the Denver Performing Arts center. He knew that I was wanting to go the past couple years, and even though he wasn't overly thrilled about going to the ballet, he wanted to take me. It was SO good! The dancers were amazing, the staging, backdrops, and costumes were awesome, and the orchestra was great! Steven admitted that he enjoyed it a lot more than he thought he would. Our favorite parts were the Land of the Snow, the Russian dancers, the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Mother Ginger(HAHAHA). It was a great surprise and a fun way to start off the Christmas season. Thanks babe!

Before going to The Nutcracker, me at 31 weeks.

We had big plans to get ALL of our shopping done the next day, but we weren't as successful as we hoped we'd be. Luckily, I finished the last of it yesterday and we are DONE! The other night we made our annual gingerbread house. We decided to go with a mini village instead of one big house this time. It turned out to be a lot harder! Everything was so small, and for some reason neither one of us was feeling overly creative this year. But, we had fun and it turned out alright.

Like I mentioned before, Steven has had a break from rotations for a few weeks. He's been keeping himself busy by playing Xbox and sleeping in, and actually has been keeping up on the housework and laundry while I'm at work. It's been great! He has also been going over to Laramie to work at the Walmart pharmacy a few days a week, also. Everyone in his class gets two months worth of "off months" and his happened to fall back to back in January and February. When we first found this out he was kindof bummed, but now we look at it as a blessing since that's when baby will be making her appearance! Right now he's in Powell getting a few days working there. He'll be back tomorrow and we'll leave for Lovell Tuesday evening after I get off work to stay for Christmas. We are looking forward to being with family and having a break for a few days.

As for a pregnancy update, things are going great! I'm 33 weeks along now and feeling pretty good. Other than the regular feet hurting and back pain, I've been fine. Starting to get a little uncomfortable, but my pregnancy has been pretty dang easy so I can't complain too much. Funny story- Thursday at work I had a patient that his wife is pregant and due in June. He asked when I was due and I told him Feb 3rd. He said "Oh so about 6 weeks left" and I said "No, I was 33 weeks yesterday so I have 9 weeks left". And he was like "Huh? How?". For some reason in my head, I was thinking I had 9 weeks left to get ready, but really it's only a little over 6! Not only did I feel like an idiot, in my mind I lost 2 1/2 weeks! AAAHHH! There is still so much to do and after Christmas time is going to FLY! But we are getting so excited and anxious to meet our little girl. We still haven't 100% decided on a name, but have one we really like and have liked since we found out we were expecting. We shall see if it fits, if not we have a couple others that we like too.

33 weeks

Well, that's what has been happening with us! We hope everyone has a Merry Christmas!

Baby Hultgren is A .......

GIRL!!!

We had our ultrasound yesterday afternoon and everything went great! We were so excited to see our little one. Before we went in, Steven asked what my final thought was. I was definitely feeling that it was a boy, he was pretty sure it was a girl. I was so surprised when she said "This is a little baby girl" and showed us that it definitely is! The ultrasound tech was very thorough and explained everything in detail to us. Everything looked wonderful and baby girl is measuring right on. She took tons of pictures and I can't believe how many she gave us. Hopefully I'll get a couple uploaded on here soon. We feel very blessed that things have gone so well and continue to look good. We have talked about a few names(really only agreed on about two!), but we want to wait until we see her to decide what fits best. We haven't bought hardly anything yet, but I told Steven we have to go buy a cute girly outfit today! He is so dang cute about it already, and I know he will be a sucker for his daughter! We are so excited and can't wait to meet our little girl!