Isla Has Arrived!

Next First Post - Making Fingers

So, just in case other methods of communication have failed to reach anyone reading here . . . We can confirm that, as we say in this household, Christi's "making fingers". Which explains why she's been more than usually tired.

Here's the confirming evidence:

This time around we're taking the "making fingers" meme to heart, and calling the little tyke Fingers until they arrive (hopefully sometime in December). We're also not planning to find out if Fingers is a boy or girl, until that time.

Actually, to be quite specific, I think we saw some fingers - or at least hands - although we don't have a printout of such an image. Also (in addition to the head above) arms, legs, feet, spine, chest, and a bunch of internal organs. Everything looked great.

Margot is interested and excited, although I don't think she has any idea when December is.

MiniMooo Makes Her Move

Dear Friends and Family -

Just before 7AM this morning, our new baby girl joined us, after a several increasingly intense hours at home and less than half an hour after making it to the hospital. She's 7lb 14.4oz and 20 inches, and healthy, and Christi is tired but recovering. Me? I had the easy part.

Missing something? Nah - who needs a name . . . we're matching our ideas to this actual little one, and letting the likely choices settle in. Got to keep you string along somehow, don't I?


Ten minutes old and nicely swaddled!

In this moment of rest (believe it or not she's napping), we want to say an immense thanks for everyone's support so far (and, in advance). Having everyone's help has made this feel almost sane. Almost ;-).

I figure...

I figure, I'll post a bunch for a couple days, then go offline for a while and let you wonder ;-).

Christi had a checkup with the midwife today, everything looks great. Without subjecting you to the full anatomical analysis or details, it sounds like what we already knew - ready to go, could happen any time, make an appointment for a week from now just in case it hasn't happened.

My observation is that they really don't want to make predictions. Not that I blame them given the state of interactions in modern American medicine, but . . . I've been surprised how little guidance they seem to want to give us. Not even "30% chance of this, 50% chance of that...", just "everything good, come back in a week if you don't come back in labor before then". Oh, well.

Family Snapshots June07

Hey all -

C's stepmom was here for a few days last week, and among other things managed to take some good pics of us (& Jolly - did I mention Jolly? One of the things that happened to us between June '04 and Feb '07 but wasn't recorded on the Blog was getting Jolly).

So, here's out current and impending family:


(Don't worry, I did get a haircut shortly after these pics.)

MultiMiniMoooMedia

OK y'all - you didn't ask for it, but you got it.

Here's the sound of MiniMooo's heartbeat, as crappily recorded with poor equipment held up near the doppler sound-a-tator.

Let me know if .wav doesn't work for you, and you actually want to hear this.

A Personality Already

My mother has always said that babies are born with a personality. Based on what we've seen, I'd say that it might start a little earlier than that.

Friday was our 18 week ultrasound. This is the only one that most people have. (Our first was to figure out how far along we really were since I didn't really know the dates this pregnancy would be based on.) The idea for this one was to make sure the baby was growing well, had all the right parts, and no signs of anything wrong. We got a clean bill of health there. There was also the chance of finding out the baby's gender.

On the gender front, I didn't really want to know, but it wasn't a strong desire. I've heard enough stories about them telling people the wrong sex that I don't want to deal with them getting it wrong (picking a name on the fly, returning all the clothes, etc, telling everyone that "Frank" is really "Susie"). Finally, I like the idea of a surprise at the end of labor. That sounds like a whole lot of work and I'm pretty sure I'm getting a baby at the end but what kind is a complete mystery. None of these are very strongly held beliefs, so I was ready to consider finding out. Adam, on the other hand, was about as strongly interested in knowing as I was not (ie: mildly). His biggest concern was wanting to see everything in the ultrasound and not missing out because they were trying to hide the gender from us.

So, we went into Friday with the basic idea that we didn't want to know the baby's sex but would not be heart broken if we accidentally learned. It ended up that the little one didn't want us to know anything at all. It made the doctor's job hard by wiggling all over. There were flips and turns and limbs swinging everywhere. The one thing that DIDN'T change was that the legs were clamped tightly together the whole time. Even if we had been dying to know, this baby wasn't going to let anyone see its private parts!

This little one apparently has a strong personality. Flashbacks to stories of me trying to convince everyone that I was the boss since the age of two are starting to haunt me!

It's a . . .

. . . baby. Yes folks, it's a baby. We had our second-trimester ultrasound survey a couple days ago, which among other things is when they start offering to try to tell you the sex of the baby. After some complex thinking that may or may not be a topic for future posts, we decided not to find out (at least now). So, it's a baby! And more importantly, it's a healthy baby in all the ways that they can tell at this stage.

So here's the little future rugrat in his/her/its updated mug shot. This time facing to the top left, in profile. The dense (whiter) bit center-left is the lower part of the jaw and face, a divot for the eye-socket, and the bright arc from there around from 10-o'clock to 6-o'clock is presumably the skull. There's a C-shaped blur in the middle there that kind of suggests an ear, but for all I know could be some mid-brain structure given the depth of the imaged scan.

Things that we "saw" in the ultrasound:
. two arms with hands with fingers, substantially close to five fingers per hand
. two legs, with feet with toes, substantially close to five toes per foot
. a head with a face, and a brain inside (they assured us)
. a stomach, kidneys, and a liver. Christi thinks also a bladder, which was apparently hard to find.
. at least one femur, which was measured for length (a couple centimeters, if I caught it right)
. a spine and a buncha ribs, which were some of the coolest things as you (or at least I) could imagine the structure as the technician scanned deeper and shallower across them
. a working, pumping heart (straight-on 150 beats-per-minute) with multiple chambers
. an "aortic curve", I think, which is the major blood vessel leaving the top of the heart and curving down into the body cavity.

Yay parts! Apparently they all look healthy/nominal/good, which made us happy. In a growing tradition, we went for ice cream afterward.

Mommy mommy mommy

So we're in the building supply store yesterday (ever notice that they're indistinguishable except for the color of paint?), and we've just walked in and are trying to figure out where we might find storage shelving and a water test kit. From down the aisle in the cavernous expanse I slowly realize that I'm hearing, "Mommy, mommy, mommy, mommy, ..." in a continuous stream of unattended attention-seeking. A pause. And just as I'm deciding not to razz Christi about the travails of the future, it starts up again - "Mommy, mommy, Daddy, daddy, daddy, daddy...". And Christi looks up - she's heard it too - and says, "Can I take it back?" ;-). Yeah. No.

Second Second Post

OK - in the interest of keeping up the posting-rate on the blog (although I still need to tell people
it exists), I'll post this seperately rather than updating the previous post.So here's Mini-Mooo, as of Monday (26-Feb-2007 - in the 13th week). He/she/it is approximately 7.4cm from crown to rump (apparently the standard measurement). For those of you with trouble seeing what's in the above, the major lumps there are the head (just left of center) and chest/body (to the lower-right). The eye sockets and nose face up and a bit to the right, and the chin/jaws are further to the right. I promise from the other pics that Mini-Mooo also has arms, legs, etc.

A New Beginning

(or two)

So - the last time I started thinking about doing this Blog thing, I got it set up but never publicized. And I lost momentum. So here we are - two and a half years later, and I have some excuses to try again.

Maybe I'll try to fill in some of the details along the way. I guess we'll see. The more folks read and comment here, the more I'll know whether it's a worthwhile thing to keep up. However, the first new headline practically writes itself.

Christi and I are expecting a baby in September! (That's 2007, in case this is the last post for another two-and-a-half years.)

So - I won't dwell for now, but I'm thinking of the blog as a vehicle for helping to spread the news and document how it all unfolds for me/us. Check back and find out, or bug me if I haven't lived up to this hope!