One thing I ought to write on here is that we did have our little baby in January of this year. It’s hard to believe that time flies by so fast! Her name is Evelyn Janet and she is adorable. She was born 7lbs 3oz on January 7th, 2008. She has already got me wrapped around her little finger, of course, and gets everything that she wants from me (and probably more).

This year, more than ever in the past, things seem so much brighter. Evie has healed our wounds from Elliot’s premature birth so much more than I ever imagined would happen. With Elliot getting older and his immune system on the rise, I finally feel like the worst is over with him and that we can start on living life more fully.

I am honestly so thankful for my family and a supportive wife who is there for me through the easy times and the hard times (even though the hard times are surely difficult to have to bear). I know I’m not perfect in nearly any way, but I’m certainly trying to be as perfect as I can for her.

Okay, I know I haven’t written in almost a year, but at leat it’s “almost” and not “over”, right?

Over the past year, I have been trying my darnedest to keep on top of our financial situation as best as I can, and I have actually been moderately successful at it having earned two raises at work and generally doing well at paying bills on time.

However, once in a while, a straggler comes along. This time it was University of Utah’s University Healthcare.

Now, I’m not an ingrate (at least, I don’t think I am), I know that I owe money on medical bills, and I have every intention of actually paying them back. I don’t let them slide because I don’t think I should have to pay them. In this case, it was a bill for a single x-ray for my son that my insurance decided not to pay, $171. Now, less than a year later, they slap me with a lawsuit from the Attorney General’s office! WHAT?

I guess that nobody around here like University Healthcare. Far be it for me to say, but if the grand majority of health insurance carriers in your medical center’s area hate you so much that they won’t cover your services, wouldn’t you think you needed to change your policies or something? So it is with them. Every insurance carrier I have had in the past 18 years has not covered services at University Healthcare by default.

Fortunately, I was able to call them and work out a settlement, however I find this extremely shady and will in the future be avoiding their network like the plague. Intermountain Healthcare is surely more annoyed by me than they possibly could have been, but they aren’t filing lawsuits 11 months from the date of service! In fact, even a year ago when things from 2005 were still outstanding two years later, I wasn’t being sued in small claims court. Being sent to collections is one thing, they just skipped that step altogether and filed against me. What a retarded institution.

Since Elliot was born, I have had four job changes. At each one of those job changes, I have hit my deductible and out of pocket maximum at least once for him. Because of that, I’ve constantly got people on my back trying to get me to send as much money as I don’t have in as many various directions as possible. It’s kind of ridiculous.

Thanks to that, I have gotten behind on almost all of my regular bills. As with last year, I always have to struggle through to tax season to catch them back up, but I hate relying on a tax return, which should mean some extra spending money, to pay bills. This is one of those stupid things that having a preemie will get you.

Part of the problem is that we have been “young and naive” (especially me, not my wife) about just about everything. Last Christmas when Elliot was sick, we took him to the Emergency Room three days in a row AT THEIR ORDER. They continued to charge us our ER co-pay three times and the company they contract out to staff the ER charged us for three separate visits. Sorry, but that just doesn’t make any sense to me.

I feel like if I had had free use of my brain during those times instead of being so stressed out, our financial situation would be much better now. Instead we are forced to have all of our money suctioned off in every direction by everyone imaginable, and constant phone calls from people wanting their money. I don’t know how people do it.

Occasionally, this causes my wife to stress out, and, especially right now, go crazy. With it getting nearer the end of the year, she wants to be able to spend money on gifts. I want her to be able to do that but I don’t know how to make it all work.

I just wanted to make sure everyone knew I was still alive. It’s annoying when you are struggling a little bit financially that the days and weeks seem to just fly by as you wait with baited breath for each paycheck to come in. It makes me feel like a poor provider sometimes that we are struggling so much. I feel like I can’t do anything to make the situation better or provide the kind of life my family wants and needs.

For those following my blog at all, we are having a girl The sale earlier last month went off well and the business got many orders. Only one person gave the right answer and got rewarded for it.

Anyway, I’m going to try and post more later.

Well, on Wednesday we went to the doctor for Brooke’s 21 week ultrasound. Everything is looking good with our new baby, it is measuring the right sizes and everything. Elliot had a condition called Single Umbilical Artery, but the doctor showed us clearly that the new baby does not. We also saw the head, heart and spine. The baby is looking great!

We also found out the gender, but I’m not allowed to say what it is right now. Elliot’s Preemie Tees is running a 20% off sale this weekend along with a contest to guess the new baby’s gender and due date. If you guess the correct gender and are within two weeks of the due date, you will be entered into a drawing to receive a free order. You don’t have to make an order to enter, you can send your guesses to feedback@preemietees.com as well.

So after this weekend, I’ll let everyone know what the winning answers were. We are really happy to be having another baby, but I keep feeling the pressure of our financial situation and I just want it to go away

We gt a long weekend this weekend. Woohoo! I love long weekends. They give me a chance to spend a lot of time with Elliot and remember why exactly I work so hard to get him the things he needs. It’s sometimes easy to forget when I only see him in the evenings.

I have been thinking lately about getting a second job, part-time in the evenings. It scares me every time I think about it because it would mean not really seeing him as much as I want to, even on the weekends. I just don’t know how to get rid of our debt without making some extra money every month to throw at it. It’s hard trying to balance what is best for your family financially with what is best for your family relationships. I think what it is coming down to for me is that getting rid of our debt is going to make our family relationships a lot less stressful in the future. I really want to be financially stable.

Elliot has been sick with a cold for a couple of days. It is hard when he gets like this because we don’t know if this is going to be the one time he gets through it, or he comes down with something else at the last minute.

My in-laws are going to a campout tonight. We are going to go with them and hang out for a little while, but we probably won’t stay over night. Changing Elliot’s sleeping habits usually makes things difficult for us, but lately he has been getting more versatile in sleeping wherever we are.

We have been thinking of putting him in a toddler bed, but he is a wild sleeper. He wakes up a bit and actually crawls around to different parts of his crib or wherever he is sleeping. When he got sick in April, we were all sleeping out in the family room and he groggily dumped a can of 7-up all over my wife’s Razr phone. Needless to say, it died. It made her very distraught at the time, but to me it’s kind of funny thinking back.

Hello everyone,

I really don’t know if anyone is even interested in reading a blog by me, but I thought I would finally give in and give it a try. For now, I suppose I will just introduce myself and tell a bit of my story to anyone who wants to listen.

My name is BJ. I grew up in northern Utah, living there pretty much my entire life. About 3 years ago I got married to the most wonderful woman around these parts, and, while now I know what love really is, I also have never known what stress is until now.

About 2 years and three months ago, we were blessed with a beautiful baby boy named Elliot. He was born at 29 weeks 6days gestational age. Yes, that is correct, he was born 10 weeks and 1 day early weighing 1 lb. 12 oz. (806 grams). This wasn’t so bad. It was quite stressful and made us worry a lot about him, but in the back of my mind I always knew that he was going to be fine coming through that. And fortunately, he made it through that, coming home after the entire 10 weeks somewhere around the 4 lb. 8 oz. mark.

After this hospital stay is when thing started going crazy. The bill for his hospital stay was 30 pages long. Anyone who has had a hospital stay ever should realize just how long that really is. Within the first 24 hours of his birth, we had blown past our health insurance deductible and our family out-of-pocket maximum and everything was being paid for 100%. That was great for us! Or so we thought.