She's having my baby!

Born 12/29/07 at 6:28am

7 lbs 7 oz

19 inches

I'll post about the birth soon...

The 17^th has come and gone, and as far as I can tell, we still have zero babies. That is one less baby than we were promised, so, yeah, we are a little peeved. We knew not to get set on the due date, that it was only a guess, a guideline, etc. But knowing something and incorporating that into your idea of how things are supposed to happen are two different things.

One of the more positive side-effects of all this extra sonography is the abundance of previews we are getting. I thought I would share these pictures just captured this morning.



In Picture #1, we see baby resting comfortably. Note the fat baby arm and adorable little hands. I knew she was going to be cute, but...come on!


Here in Picture #2, you can see that the chubby cheeks have come in. (That's how you know they are just about done.)

And apparently, she has hair! (Not pictured)  Woo-hoo!

Last week was a...difficult…week.  We learned very early last Tuesday morning, that Stacey’s grandmother passed away.  Her health has been locked in steep decline for several years now, a fact that she always seemed oblivious to.  (“When I get out of this wheelchair…”) We are not even sure exactly what disease or affliction ailed her, I think I remember hearing discussion about idiopathic neuropathy and COPD, but she had been suffering increasingly frequent episodes that required emergency trips to the hospital.  This last time, she did not make it through.

 
Stacey had always been close to her grandmother.  And I’m not sure there was anybody more excited for the arrival of our baby girl, the first great-grandchild.  I think when we told her about the baby, she said “Oh, this makes me so happy!” at least four separate times.  So, it is hard to know how close she came to seeing that great-granddaughter.  And hard to know that our daughter will never know her great-grandmother, who wanted so much to be there.

 

The baby is still doing well.  Stacey is scheduled for yet another ultrasound tomorrow.  Dr. Rogers would like to monitor the baby’s growth and the amniotic fluid levels.  She swears that she is not concerned about anything in particular, and just would to have all the bases covered. 

 

Also, my co-workers are throwing us a baby shower tomorrow afternoon. This one, I’m going to have to attend, so we’ll see how that goes.  I better not have to guess the pregnant lady’s weight or something, that game never ends well. 

So the nursery is just about done. All I can say is: I hope the sonographer was right about the sex, because our baby boy would definitely have the prettiest room on the block. 

For those of you who speak exclusively in whole words, the title of this post is Oh My God! Which is exactly what I said today when I saw the 3D picture of our baby girl on the sonogram machine. Now the still picture (which I digitized by photographing it with my digital camera) you see here, does not do her justice. I mean she was moving and wiggling about. You could see her tiny hand move in and out of frame (depicted here as a little claw thing on her cheek.)

This picture beats the last one we got to take home, hands down. See alien reference below.

We had our first appointment with the OB/GYN last Wednesday. That was pretty interesting. Dr. Rogers’ office is directly across the street from Stevens Hospital, which is right across I-5 from us. Since we live in Mountlake Terrace, it makes more sense to deliver there, regardless of the fact that everyone who is anyone delivers at Swedish. It is apparently the “it” place to push a baby out of you. We are so unrefined.

Stacey was weighed, measured, prodded, poked, and otherwise thoroughly examined. I was congratulated and given a diaper bag full of new stuff. They talked about nausea and hydration, diet and exercise, vitamins and nausea again. I found a cool, rubber thing in my new bag.

We suspected that Stacey was about 8 weeks along. I won’t go into the details about how we figured that out, but you might be able to guess. The point of the story is: we figured wrong. During the physical examination, Dr. Rogers said, “I think this might be a tax-break baby!” She grabbed a little microphone and placed it on Stacey’s belly. A second later, you could hear a little swishing noise.

“There’s the heartbeat. You are definitely not 8 weeks.”

She wheeled in an ultrasound and fired it up. It took a minute, but we could make out a little, tiny baby-shaped picture on the screen. You even could see the heart, blinking away in the center of the picture. I could not stop grinning.

So in the end, we found out were off by 4 weeks. It was 12, not 8. Stacey cut a month off her pregnancy, and we are expecting the baby to arrive around December 17. Which also means we are having a baby this year!

For some reason, we did not come home with a hardcopy of the ultrasound… But not to worry! I mocked up an almost exact replica on a post-it. This is from memory, so the angles might not be exact (I think I could have worked on the shading a little more). I also labeled it, so those of you not familiar with interpreting ultrasounds can see what is going on. Anyway, its pretty good looking baby, I think. 

Corina - Note that I said "a baby."  Singular.  One. :)