And it begins…

Elise is definitely looking pregnant now. And she should, she’s 6 months pregnant. We had an OB appointment on the 29th of December and everything is coming along great. Elise is having a healthy and relatively uneventful pregnancy. She’s eating well, sleeps well and remains chipper as always. She feels the baby kick regularly and we have, on many occasions, tried to let me feel the baby. I can’t feel it. It seems to stop everytime Elise calls me over to feel a kick. It frustrates her but I know I’ll be able to feel it eventually.

At her next OB appointment Elise gets to drink the Super Sugar Drink so they can test her glucose metabolism. I think I may limit my accompanying visits to the doctor to every other appointment. The appointments as of late needn’t require my presence but I like to ask questions and maintain my own relationship with our doctor so on the delivery date we’re not strangers to one another.

I just finished watching the video of this morning’s ultrasound. As I was watching, I was trying to remember what the doctor was looking at just prior to telling us to turn our heads if we didn’t want to know the sex of our child.

I kept watching. Immediately the devil hopped up on my shoulder and said, “Awww, just do it. You know you want to.” And like I always do, I subscribed to the devil’s advice. I thought to myself, “I’ll watch and if I see something, only I will know and I can keep it a secret from Elise.”

So I watched a little longer. I was watching a familiar scene. I kept waiting for what I thought was the point where the doctor told us to turn our heads. I kept thinking, “No, we saw this part. Yeah, we saw that part too.” The angel hopped up on my other should and said, “Now Josh, you know to do the right thing. Just turn your head.” And I decided to listen to the angel. I was going to turn my head when I knew the time was right.

I was watching what the untrained eye would think of as a lava lamp. And then I saw the frame freeze. But the frozen frame was familiar. I quickly realized that this freeze frame was where the doctor marked where Elise’s ovarian cyst used to be. And then I realized that the frozen frame I was looking at was after the doctor told us to turn our heads. Unbeknownst I had watched the part where this morning we were told to turn our heads.

So I sat there and watched the whole thing. I witnessed the part where the doctor and the ultrasound tech could easily determine the sex of our child.

So it gives me great pleasure to know that our first-born is going to be a lava lamp.

Number 1 and he (or she) knows it!

Elise is 20-weeks along now and everything is going great. We went to the Texas Parinatal Group today for the baby’s anatomy ultrasound. We made sure that we immediately told the ultrasound technician that we didn’t want to know the sex of our baby.

Apparently baby was sleeping or very tired because we didn’t get an Axl Rose dance this time.

We got to see our child’s little arms, legs, skull, organs (although we were told to close our eyes during part of the organ exam) and face. Talk about an exciting experience!

The doctor came in and performed the “medical” ultrasound. The ultrasound we watched the tech do was for mom and dad giggles. Doc said baby is doing great and growing perfectly!

We had the entire process taped so I can’t wait to get home tonight and watch it all again.

Here is what Elise had to say about the day in an e-mail to my mom.

We had our ultrasound appointment today. Luckily they point things out and freeze the image so you can decipher what it is they’re showing you. We could see most everything pretty easily; the beating heart, the brain, the spine, kidneys, liver, one of the femurs, both hands, arms and face.

We saw its little hands by its face (no thumb sucking though). One was in a fist below its chin and the other was opened flat against its face. At one point the technician came back to the baby’s hands and it was holding up 1 little finger like the #1 sign. We laughed and the technician marked “1″ on the photo for us.

I think Josh got a little frustrated a couple of times because they pointed out the baby’s mouth opening and closing and he just wasn’t seeing it. When we left the office we scanned the ultrasound photos they gave us and I showed him the mouth picture. He saw it then. We didn’t see anything that would indicate a boy or a girl.

The technician did the sonogram first and then the doctor came in to verify the technician’s work. He said everything looked good. He did take a gander “down there” and told us if we didn’t want to know then we should turn our heads for that part. They have a TV mounted on the wall so you don’t have to strain your head to see the ultrasound monitor and Josh and I both looked away from the TV, but then I caught him looking at the doctor’s monitor. I scolded him and he just smirked and said, “I can’t tell what I’m looking at anyway.”

Before we left the technician showed us another scan of a chart with an asterisk in the middle. She told us it is a growth chart and the bottom line represents the 10th percentile and the top line represents the 90th percentile and our baby is the asterisk right in the middle. Josh asked, “So our baby is average?” I laughed because I too couldn’t help but think that’s what she was telling us.

When we walked out I mentioned to Josh that we’re already becoming the “worried” parents wondering why our baby isn’t at the top of its percentile. The technician handed us our photos and vhs tape and Josh proudly carried them out to the receptionist’s desk and she asked us if we would like a little folder for our pictures.

That’s about it. I have my regular OB appointment tomorrow. I’m curious to see what the doctor records the heart beat at. The first time we heard the heart beat it was around the mid 150’s. The last time we went it was closer to 160 and today the technician said it was around 142.

Click here to see the ultrasound photos.

Elise and I are having a “discussion” on hypnobirthing. All I can say about this “discussion” thus far is that Dr. Grantley Dick-Read’s Birth Philosophy would be the coolest name for a band.

One of my employees went for her ‘big’ ultrasound yesterday. I asked how everything went when I first got into the office this morning. She immediately presented her ultrasound photo. I looked at it and tried to use my best dad-to-be sonogram reading skills to no avail.

I quickly gave up and asked, “Okay, what are we looking at here?”

She said, “The legs.” as she pointed to the legs.

“Alright… so what is this little thing next to the arrow.”

“That would be, ummm… his little thing.”

So congrats to Brittany and her husband on their little boy!

Elise finally has cravings!!! I don’t know if that sentence is that exciting as her cravings are for McDonald’s cheeseburgers. She’s eaten four McDonald’s cheeseburgers this week. She made mention of her craving to me last night and got my sympothy-weight-gaining-ass on the wagon and I wanted a McDonalds cheeseburger. So she brought McDonald’s home tonight for dinner. I regret that.

“Uuuggghhh… our child is NEVER eating at McDonald’s”

“Awww… but McDonald’s was a once-a-month treat for us.”

“Awww… hell no.”

We try to eat right the majority of the time. The next ten years are going to be fun.

Aside from the “stupid bitch” comment, Elise and I thought this was hilarious.

Watch the Video

Elise is a little over sixteen weeks pregnant and so far all has been relatively uneventful. I supposed this is a blessing as Elise hasn’t suffered from any pregnancy symptoms such as morning sickness or a rabid labido. When you’re a little older and find yourself reading this, that last part is what mom calls “Daddy’s humor.” She requires a bit more sleep and is hungry more frequently but both have just seemed natural.

Speaking of eating. Yesterday I spent the better part of the day smoking a chicken and preparing an El Regio-style taco dinner complete with a super-spicy verde sauce a la El Arroyo. We ate dinner at 6:30 and not an hour later Elise was on the couch with a big bowl of cereal and a banana!

I honestly don’t have many questions or concerns from a biological perspective. It helps that a few of our friends recently had babies and they’ve been very helpful in this whole process thus far.

I have two concerns right now: Names and the nursery. What the hell are we going to name our child? I have a small list of girl names, none of which I’m completely in love with, and pretty much zilch for boy names. I don’t want to get to game day and end up naming our kid Lemongelo or Meconium.

Elise has been researching names online but we both don’t want to pick a name from a book or a website. We can’t combine our names because Elosh or Jolise just don’t cut the mustard. We have six more months. We have time. I just like to have things taken care of well in advance.

The other concern is the nursery. Right now the “nursery” is an extra bedroom in our house that is currently acting as a holding room for all of our crap. Where is this crap going to go? The room needs to be painted. Do I need to order and install hardwood to match the rest of the house (not to mention the carpet is stained from the previous owners’ dogs)? And I think we need to purchase baby furniture. We haven’t bought anything for the baby. All we have is a little iPod outfit, some duck booties and 20 diapers. How far will that get us?

Perhaps we should forego conventional baby-raising standards and swaddle the kid in a large plaintain leaf and wipe its butt with an oak twig. We could raise it on raw venison and mother’s milk alone. We could adopt old tribal standards and the kid could earn its name. That would relieve me of one of my worries. Bapende Mambunda Janicek - Little one with oak bark in butt crack who gnarls deer flesh.

I’m sure names and the nursery are big concerns for Elise as well. We just haven’t discussed them in a while. I will mention my concerns to my wife tonight.

Elise and I had our third visit with Dr. S this morning. This was the shortest and most uneventful visit so far. The nurse came into the exam room and went down her checklist of question: Nausea? Vomiting? Headache? Spotting? Painful urination? Cramps? and some others, all to which were answered no.

The nurse then used the doppler to listen to the baby’s heartbeat. It took her a couple minutes to find the heartbeat. She said the baby wouldn’t hold still. The baby finally sat still long enough for the nurse to count a healthy 160 BPM heartbeat.

After that Dr. S came into the exam room and reviewed Elise’s chart. Elise had, what she thought, a kidney infection a month ago. She later determined that it was a pulled muscle in her back. Dr. S inquired about the mysterious kidney problem. No news there as Elise’s body seems to be doing well. Mom and baby both received a clean bill of health and we were warned that the weight gain should really start this month.

Later this month we go in for the mother of all ultrasounds where a sonographer will closely examine our baby (and we’ll get a video of the procedure as well). I’m really looking forward to that!

Listen to the baby’s heartbeat here

This past week we received some of our first gifts for the baby. Jessica gave us a book called Baby Signs. I haven’t looked at it yet because I can’t read sign language. Elise has been browsing through it but I haven’t gotten any feedback as of yet.

We had company over this past weekend and a couple of our friends happened to bring gifts. Janeen brought some rattling booty things. She told us it was so when the baby goes to grab at its feet, it will have something to play with. This baby thing is going to be complicated. I was thinking the kid would just lay around and do nothing aside from staring blankly and pooping.

And John brought over a cool outfit (I’m not yet willing to allow the word “onesie” to be added to my regular vocabulary) from ipodmybaby.com.

Thanks guys!