New baby, new blog (new URL, too)

Okay, okay, I know…it's been a while since I've posted here. I guess BabyCar and I got caught up in the last minute baby prep stuff which, as you might expect, was followed by the "holy crap, we have a baby now" stuff.

Which leads me to this closing post, which I'm really eager to write so that I can shut this thing down and introduce you to my new (and much more exciting) blog. Pregnancy was a mess. It was miserable at its worst and hilarious at its best.

It was rarely anything in between.

Needless to say, we were plenty glad to put it behind us.

But you can't argue with results. After nine months of baby building and just under 30 hours of labor, we had the most beautiful little girl in the world (Babe-O, to you).

I'll spare you the details and just give you the two truths that I learned during the ordeal: (1) drugs are every bit as good as they're cracked up to be; and (2) in a labor/delivery room, I'm pretty much just a waste of oxygen.

Anyway, Babe-O was 7 lbs, 2 oz and was born with thick black hair and a better tan that I've ever had in my life. She was born on September 2, which at the time of this writing makes her just over three and a half months old.

This little girl is absolutely amazing and I hope you get to know her little by little through the new blog, which you can visit at www.daddydoesmyhair.blogspot.com.

This "What are you doing in my wife?" blog will stay here for posterity.

What is this thing in my living room?

This past weekend was baby shower weekend. More about that later, but just a quickie for now.

One of the fruits of our outstanding baby shower out in Kentucky was a top of the line Pack'n'Play – kind of a crib/bassinet/changing table/playpen that you can fold up into a bag the size of your leg, provided that you've completed a year or two of formal training in engineering.

After my parents (the pack'n'play givers) spent a good portion of their Friday night assembling this thing, we broke it all down, took it home, and set it up in our living room. BabyCar put together the baby swing while I assembled the pack'n'play.

If it was a race, she won.

After many frustrating rounds of battle with the less-than-stellar instructions, we had our pack'n'play, albeit we were up a bit past our bedtime.

A few hours later, I woke up (as usual) to one of three dogs scratching to go outside in the middle of the night, which (as usual) I sleepily obliged. While the dogs went out to do their thing, I puttered around the living room until the pack'n'play caught my eye. In my late night stupor, I had forgotten all about the thing and it was very disorienting to come face to face with it. My 2 a.m. amnesia kept me from remembering where it had come from and I wasn't entirely sure whether or not we had at some point come home from the hospital with Ava and that she was now lying inside of this strange thing.

A few seconds later – less disoriented – I had my bearings and remembered what was going on.

But even then, there was the pack'n'play – a big plastic shrine to the baby gods – resting there in the moonlight.

Like the first time I really noticed BabyCar's protruding belly or felt Ava kick, it was one of those baby reality checks.

She's coming. And she'll go in the pack'n'play.

Danger!

If you have a spray bottle in the house – for plants, puppy discipline, whatever – do NOT use it to squirt your pregnant wife's belly, no matter how perfectly round and adorable it may be.

Trust me. Just don't do it.

Nesting

Lately, BabyCar has been an organizing, reorganizing, cleaning machine. Which means that I have been an organizing, reorganizing, cleaning machine, too.

I'd read about this "nesting" thing in books, but you can't really appreciate the thing until it happens to you.

As just a young married couple, we could let a lot slide. A catch-all room for junk was no big deal (as long as the door stayed shut). The gunk underneath the fridge was fine, just stay out from underneath the fridge. Problem solved.

No more. I always wondered why everyone we knew seemed to be able to keep their houses so neat and tidy. Apparently, a few months into pregnancy number one, a little tidy bomb goes off in the womb and the mom-to-be becomes a mom on a mission.

In the last few weeks, I've pulled up carpet, cleaned out the basement, murdered a small army of dandylions in the front yard, scrubbed floors, replaced a stove (Thanks, MIL & FIL!), attacked the grimy bathroom, and thrown away (no exaggeration) about 25 bags of crap. The neighborhood trash pickers (sorry, "garbage enthusiasts") spent the better part of two evenings rooting through piles of old office paper and funny-smelling carpet padding. I hope they found something worthwhile in there at least.

Anyway, while I was going through my housekeeping adventures, BabyCar was reorganizing the kitchen, scrubbing every smooth surface in sight, and valiantly hacking her way through years of old papers, files, and junk mail.

Needless to say, things are coming together. Ava James has been a good influence on us.

Ava’s Box

It's weird the little things in your day that make it sink in that you've got a baby on the way. The positive pregnancy test was one thing, but that first moment doesn't even come close to letting you realize the gravity of what's going on.

BabyCar's slightly (adorably) protruding belly is a good reminder, but still doesn't quite do the whole thing justice. I still get caught off guard every once in a while when I walk past that little belly. It takes some getting used to, and it will certainly get a lot bigger before it gets any smaller.

But what really did it for me happened earlier today. I was cleaning the house, which I do about every eleven hours because I have three dogs and a currently muddy backyard.

It was the usual routine:

Dog toys go over here.

Laundry goes over there.

BabyCar's crap goes in a pile on her desk.

Dishes go in the dishwasher.

More of BabyCar's crap goes in a new pile by her desk.

Mop floors.

BabyCar's charity stuff goes in another pile by her desk (she's so giving). Wait, no room. New pile. On the shelf.

Dust.

You get the idea.

Only this time, I kept finding stuff that had no home – free sample baby bottles, tiny cute outfit from my Mom, head start pack of diapers.

The soon-to-be nursery is our used-to-be office, so it is still full of officey junk and an absolute TON of books (from back when we used to read stuff).

Anyway, the nursery isn't quite baby ready, so we have a little box in the hallway, about half-full of Ava's few belongings.

It makes me smile like a jackass every time I look at it.

I love it when a plan comes together

We've been thinking about this whole "have a baby" thing for a long time now. Even before we were actually considering making it happen, the topic would come up from time to time.

Back before BabyCar was a BabyCar, we were shopping for a regular car.

I remember wandering around the parking lot at Subaru, kicking tires and looking for a replacement for BabyCar's small Toyota SUV.

Even then, before Ava was any more than a thought in the back of our (her) mind, the baby wheels were turning in BabyCar's head.

You know, this next car is probably the one we'll be driving when we have a baby. We'd better step up a size.

What? At that point, there were only two of us. Our Toyota sat five. And had a cargo area. And a roof rack.

I didn't know a lot about babies, but I had seen one before. It was my understanding that they weighed between five and eight pounds and were about a foot tall if they stretched out really straight.

So why was I test driving a seven passenger vehicle to accommodate a family member to be named later that would be approximately the size of a poorly inflated football?

Babies have stuff, I was told.

Stuff? I have stuff. Doesn't mean I feel the need to lug it around with me everywhere. What the hell was the baby going to have that needed a third row seat and industrial grade cargo netting? I always pictured an eighteen inch tall Diana Ross snapping her fingers and having matching designer luggage dragged around for her wherever she went.

Put the sippy cups up front! The stroller goes in the back! Put Daddy on the roof!

Anyway, about six or eight seven-passenger car payments later, we were ready to start filling the third row seat of our five star safety rated four wheel drive with two tons of stuff for our *one* baby.

(And I know that Subarus are all- and not 4-wheel drive, but I like having all the numbers in that sentence, so don't even start with me.)

With all of that said, I am now ready to admit that it is going to be really nice to have the big stupid car. We're having an Ava James, not a Diana Ross, but the more we start planning for the big day, the more I realize that babies do come with their share of gear.

And besides – the further this pregnancy comes along, the more often I'm getting kicked out of the bed in the dark hours of the morning. It will be nice to have that third row seating when I start spending 3 – 7 a.m. sleeping in the parking lot at work.

Ava James

That’s her name. We’re pretty sure.

We’ve had lots of names in mind, for girls and for boys, but they all pretty much went out the window in the last week or so. Our sweet girl is already developing her own little personality.

Her mom gets to enjoy it more than I do, but I guess that’s just part of the deal.

All of the pretty names we had come up with – MacKenzie, Cameron, Samantha – plus tons of others, were all great, but they just aren’t her.

She’s an Ava. James is a family name, but Ava is just who she is.

I can’t wait to meet Ava James. She’s already way cooler than I am.

Survey says… (the gender post)

Today was the "anatomy ultrasound." For those of you who haven't had kids, had kids in the 1800s, or are having kids but haven't yet converted to preggotarinaism, that's when the ultrasound tech looks everything over, makes sure all the parts are where they should be, and (drumroll please) tells you the gender – assuming you want to find out.

We wanted to find out. We would have found out on day one if we could have.

In fact, until the other day, I couldn't imagine why anyone wouldn't want to find out. A friend from work, however, recently mentioned that if you didn't know the gender, it would give you something to look forward to during those final grizzly minutes (hours?) of labor.

Moms may or may not agree. As for the guys, I think a rough parallel would be dragging your naked hindquarters across broken glass on Christmas morning. Or something like that.

Anyway, for weeks now, BabyCar and I have gone back and forth about what we want. First it was a girl. Then it was a boy. Then, for quite a long time, we were both in complete agreement that we had no preference whatsoever. Seemed like a safe bet.

Only it wasn't that easy. As soon as the ultrasound tech plunked her little gadget on BabyCar's belly my stomach did a backflip.

It hit me like a ton of bricks. I have no damn idea what to do with a boy.

I don't know why. I don't know what makes me think I have any damn idea what to do with a girl, either. But at that moment, I just had this terrible panic that it was going to be a boy and that for some reason, that would be a bad thing.

Maybe it's because I always had girl dogs. Maybe it's because I throw a football like a sissy. For whatever reason, it just seemed natural to dote on a girl and scary to think about raising a boy.

So there I was, getting a little bit queasy and focusing all of my energy on convincing myself to be happy if it turns out to be a boy. I caught a fleeting glimpse of the rump area, and my worst fears were pretty much confirmed – but the ultrasound tech just kept on driving, looking around for the next organ on her checklist.

She showed us the four-chambered heart. She pointed out the kidneys and the stomach. We looked at little forearms and little fingers. We saw the brain, and the umbilical cord, and the spine.

Then the tech switched to the 3D mode, which never seems to reveal anything interesting but always manages to scare the hell out of me. Unborn babies in 3D look like chewed up gummy bears on a good day. On a bad day, they look like the stuff of nightmares – terrible little super-villains with skeleton fingers and menacing facial expressions.

After looking at 3D mode just long enough to ensure bad dreams, the tech switched back to the traditional view and prepared us for the moment of truth.

See this little protrusion sticking out between the legs? That's the umbilical cord. You're having a girl. You can see her little hamburger buns right there.

Hey lady, how about we not talk about my daughter's "hamburger buns." Thank you.

So I am ridiculously happy. I know that I would have been if it was a boy, too, but something about a girl just feels so completely right.

There is a beautiful little girl riding around in my BabyCar. And I can't wait to meet her.

Cough cough cough

Baby Car is sick. Not pregnant sick. Just sick sick.

I feel for her. She's got a nasty chest cold and pretty much anything that a normal person would take to feel better will turn our baby into a little prenatal acid head.

So she is pretty much stuck being miserable until further notice. We've got a semi-formal event to attend tomorrow night, but it looks like the stylish black maternity dress we picked out for the occasion is going to stay on its hanger – unless my early stage old guy gut prohibits be from getting into my suit, in which case I'll wear that damn thing myself.

I'll also have to find another date, which means I'll probably start a buzz around town that I walked out on my pregnant wife. Awesome.

So right now she is taking a shower and I have instructions to go check on her every ten minutes to make sure she hasn't fallen asleep in the tub or coughed up a lung or anything.

On the plus side, on Monday we get to go back to the obstemagician to find out what we're having (I hope it's a baby!). Once we have the gender figured out, we get to do cool stuff like nail down a name and pick out paint colors and stuff.

We're stoked.

But does he show up for career day?

Pregnant women have weird cravings. I've known that since I was old enough to watch sit-coms.

What I didn't know was that once I finally had my very own pregnant woman that the closest grocery store to my house would be the shadiest Wal-Mart east of Compton. So there I was, parking the car at the far corner of the lot and making my way to wherever they keep the Macaroni and Cheese (and broccoli).

I was on a mission, so it only took a few minutes for me to find what I needed and hop in the checkout line. I spent my short wait glancing around at nearby parents and kids, a creepy little habit that I've picked up recently.

Being a less-than-upstanding Wal-Mart, even by Wal-Mart standards, this can be depressing. There are a lot of kids getting smacked around and yelled at, so it's a generally unpleasant place to be.

Today, though, there was an exception. The dad in line in front of me was outstanding. He had a cart full of healthy looking stuff, stacked carefully around his two little girls. The girls were impeccably dressed. Their hair was fixed nicely. They were polite. He was trying to teach one of them how to eat fried chicken. She kept trying to gnaw on the bone and he was helping her hold it so that she could get the last bit of meat off the bone. It was endearing as hell and this guy was clearly the best parent I have ever observed in this place.

When it was his turn in line, he stepped up to the cashier, pulled out a huge wad of hundred dollar bills with a prison-tattooed hand and checked his big fat, diamond studded gold watch. His pants were sagging as he checked his beeper and gave one of his girls a kiss while he waited for his change.

I'm sure on a different day the guy would have shot me as soon as looked at me, but I couldn't help but think that he seemed like one hell of a nice guy.

It just goes to show that you can't judge a book by its cover.

Oh, wait. He's clearly a drug dealer. I guess you can judge a book by its cover.

Cute kids, though.

 

Got ‘r done (congrats!)

Our good friends finally squeezed out their baby earlier today. The kid is healthy, Dad is happy, and Mom is now one human being lighter.

I stopped by their place to check in on their dog. I sat in a comfy chair, put my feet up, and looked around at all the pristine baby stuff tucked into each corner, waiting to be used for the first time. Alone in their house, the reality sunk in: this dog is going to be pissed.

I know you’re in there…

BabyCar was lucky.

She was able to feel our little guy/girl squirming around in there beginning in about her 15th week. This is not typical.

All of the books and websites and message boards out there say that week 14 is about as early as you can hope for and that some women might not feel anything until week 20 or beyond.

The movement is faint, but it’s there. The downside to this early excitement is that we got started with our first dose of parental anxiety a little bit early.

Once you get used to feeling somebody in there (or hearing about feeling somebody in there) it is really unsettling when that feeling disappears for a while.

Baby decided to have a little three day hibernation session recently, which left BabyCar and I pacing around the living room paging though baby books and surfing the Web.

Everything we found said that a day or two without movement is nothing to worry about. Babies get turned around funny, start to kick inwardly where the mom can’t feel it, or just tweak their activity cycles.

The books all offered the same advice: if you haven’t felt the baby for a day or two and are starting to get anxious, your obstetrician will be happy to hook you up to the fetal heartbeat monitor to put your mind at ease.

Yeah, right.

A fetal heartbeat monitor is about as complicated to use as a glue stick and could be done in less than a minute, but I don’t think we could get into that place on less than a month’s notice if BabyCar’s uterus was on fire.

We couldn’t even get our doctor on the phone, much less get a foot in the door.

Two nurses collaborated for a few minutes and managed to call us back with a confidence inspiring, “umm, we talked and think you should go see your family practitioner.”

Near as I can tell, facial piercings are the only qualifications necessary to become an OB/GYN nurse – my health insurance dollars at work.

Long story short, we didn’t get in to see the doctor. We didn’t go to the family doctor and we didn’t have a very relaxing evening. But late that night, as if finally deciding to cut the old ‘rents some slack, Baby mustered a kick or two.

Looking back, it was the only way that either of us were going to get any sleep that night.

Should have bought the GT

When I left for work the other day, BabyCar wasn't feeling well – trouble breathing. She has had some asthma issues in the past, but we really didn't think it was going to be a big deal. By the end of the day, she had been short of breath for something like four hours and had developed sharp pain in her arms and back.

She called me at work. She said that she talked to someone at the obstemagician's office (not our actual doctor, because NO ONE may see the great and mighty Oz without an appointment). The nurse/receptionist/urine sample sniffer told her that she should go to the Emergency Room.

Apparently BabyCar's ailment was dangerous enough to warrant a trip to the ER, but not quite in the realm of things worth interrupting the doctor over.

So I get the "ummm…something's wrong and I need to go to the ER" call. I freaked.

I left a little cloud of smoke hanging in the air as I darted into the hallway and down the stairs. I park pretty close to the building where I work, but unfortunately for me, the stupid building is about a mile long.

I set a new personal record for the 100 yard dash as I made it to the long hallway downstairs. I made it about another 100 yards before I realized that at some point I turned into a fat guy that can no longer run at full speed for more than a few paces before I start gasping for breath on the outside and weeping on the inside.

I made it the rest of the way at a more moderate pace – slow enough that I didn't pass out, but fast enough that I almost overturned a little metal mail cart that veered into my path without signaling (move it, buddy!).

I finally made it to my brand new Subaru Legacy with the sport shift.

I jumped in, instinctively fiddled with the radio (focus, dammit!) and took off in a hurry. After bashing my way through a parking lot snow drift that turned out to be a lot more substantial that I was expecting, I made my way to the little four lane connector that runs pretty much from my office to my house.

As a reformed speeder, I had never really put my Subaru through its paces before, but I'll admit I was a little happy to have a good reason now.

I kicked the shifter over into sport mode and got ready to pass the first set of slow-pokes I encountered.

It was at exactly that moment that I realized something. My car is about as much a race car as I am a race horse.

I pressed the gas pedal to the floor and just managed to keep up with an oblivious woman in an Altima that was chatting away on her cell phone.

I'll spare you the details of the rest of my frenzied little trip, but if you must have a Subaru Legacy and think you might ever need to evade a police helicopter or pass an old lady, you should probably spring for the GT.

Anyway, I made it to the house, and BabyCar was waiting for me. We hopped into her Subaru with the semi-peppy V6, and made it the Urgent Care place in no time.

Urgent Care is like an emergency room outlet mall. It is just far enough off the beaten path to stay free of the usual Emergency Room gun-shot wound, drug overdose crowd, so we were able to pull in there on a Friday night and pretty much have the place to ourselves (with the exception of a college girl whose whole demeanor just screamed "Barbie's first STD").

The doctor saw us right away. She was clearly concerned and seemed competent, so we were happy. BabyCar had to breath into one of those fogger machines for five minutes and after that, the pain and shortness of breath started to subside. We walked out of there with two prescriptions – one for an inhaler and another for a just-in-case antibiotic because BabyCar had a slight fever.

We were told to have our next baby doctor appointment sooner, rather than later, and were on our way.

It was quite an afternoon.

My Pregtarded Wife

How do developing babies get enough brain cells to effectively spit up and crap on their first day out of the womb? They steal them from their moms.

Near as I can tell, this begins around the beginning of the second trimester. That’s when the mental pregtardation begins to set in.

Since then, living with BabyCar has been like living with a very pretty Alzheimer’s patient. She forgets to eat. She forgets to go to bed. She leaves pizza in the oven until it turns into charcoal (okay, that was me).

On top of all that, I think she is officially the youngest person in pharmaceutical history to own one of those Morning/Lunchtime/Evening pill cases with the little boxes for each day of the week. I feel like we should have one of those big-numbered telephones sitting right next to it.

To make matters worse, BabyCar is not only going through the usual pregnant lady day-to-day activities, she’s also running our business. This means that by the end of the pregnancy, our entire office – if not the house – will be wallpapered in Post-It yellow.

“Do Invoicing”

“Go to Bank”

“Call so-and-so”

“Pee (repeat as necessary)”

I wonder if sticky notes are admissible if we ever get audited by the IRS.

Sir, you say you have a freelance writing business here, but your shoe-box full of Post-Its clearly reveals that this is some sort of a back room nursing home for the elderly and incontinent. You’re not zoned for that.

So now I have two jobs: communications consultant and reminder monkey.

Because BabyCar doesn’t particularly like using Post-Its (and forgets to read them anyway) it is my responsibility to call and e-mail her throughout the day to keep those little tasks like making phone calls and eating lunch from falling through the cracks.

I really don’t mind. As long as she’s hard at work building a little person from scratch, I figure she’s doing more than her share of the family workload.

I just hope that some of those brain cells grow back once Baby is raising hell outside of the womb.

What’s in a name?

…that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet. If I remember my Cliffnotes correctly, that’s from Romeo and Juliet.

Easy for Juliet to say. She and Romeo had awesome names, hand picked by the greatest wordsmith of all time. Would their names be synonymous with passion and romance if instead of Romeo and Juliet Shakespeare had gone with Hasslehoff and Krotchswett?

Beats me, but I do know that if Shakespeare ever had kids, his wife/mistress/stagehand wouldn’t have given a crap about his literary credentials when it came time to name the kid.

Baby girl, I’m the greatest writer the world has ever seen. My words are etched forever on the souls of the hopeful. I think I know what I’m talking about!

To which he can expect to hear something along the lines of I don’t care if you wrote the New Testament, Ophelia is a whore’s name AND I AIN’T RAISIN’ NO WHORE!

We have kicked around girl names and boy names and first names and middle names for months now, and we’re getting nowhere.

Though I am learning a little bit about how important it apparently is that we get this name thing right. We need a name that will not only get the kid from daycare through high school without being beat up, but at the same time stick with something authoritative that will sound good with “Doctor” before it or “CEO” after.

BabyCar is quick to inform me that all the names I like are less doctor/CEO and more custodian/drunk-girl-at-the-bowling-alley.

But in the battle of the names, she made one big mistake at dinner last night. I was saying that because our last name begins with W, we can’t really go with a name like Joshua Edward, on account of the problematic initials that result.

Until BabyCar jokingly mentioned it, little had I realized that our non-negotiable W opened the door for the greatest initials of all time – BMW. If only my parents had loved me enough to make me a Brian Michael or a Barry Matthew. Hell, I would have put up with Borat McGuillacuttie if it got me the initials BMW.

But alas, I got a J instead (and a JJ at that, though I managed to dodge that bullet growing up).

They say the best you can do as a parent is to give your kids the things you never had. I had it pretty good growing up, but if I can at least make sure that my kid has the best initials ever and more than eight channels on the TV, I can die knowing that I did all I could.

Though I suppose if BabyCar divorces me over this BMW thing and gives the baby her old last name, the whole thing is pretty a wash. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Get thee to a midwife!

You don't really hear a lot about midwives until you run into someone who has knocked back the midwife kool-aid. I am pretty sure that anyone who uses a midwife during their pregnancy takes a solemn oath to go forth and proclaim the midwife gospel to all who will listen. Maybe midwives won't give you your baby until you sign a pledge or something, but for whatever reason, parents who use a midwife seem very eager to tell you all about why no person in their right mind would ever want some "sassy, know-it-all doctor" presiding over the birth of their child.

It's kind of like people who belong to a credit union. Yeah, I get it – you got a super interest rate on your car loan. Now please get out of my house.

Anyway, as it turns out, our sassy, know-it-all doctor is, well, a sassy know-it-all doctor. She is extraordinarily competent, but also extraordinarily cold and a little bit bitchy.

So we decided to give the midwives a shot.

The way the practice is set up, if you decide to go with a midwife, you need to have at least one appointment with each one on staff, presumably so that when it comes time for birth, the mother-to-be gets to work with someone that she knows well enough to curse at and hit with things.

The other day, at appointment number three, we met midwife number one.

I'll just call her "Uh-huh."

Uh-huh was heavy-set (very maternal), well-dressed (very professional) and responded to everything we said with a very engaging and enthusiastic "uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…"

We told her that Baby Car had been feeling some fatigue lately (uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…) and that there was a little bit of ligament pain (uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh…) and that we wanted another ultrasound (uh-huh, uh-huh…NO!)

We have been methodically shot down any time we've suggested getting an ultrasound outside of the usual ultrasound schedule. I don't know what the big deal is – the procedure is less complicated than making a TV dinner – but apparently at this particular office, exceptions to the schedule just aren't made. Actually, I'm pretty sure we will get in trouble if the baby isn't born during normal business hours on our exact due date.

So an ultrasound just wasn't in the cards. We aren't worried about the baby or anything, but we had read that it was sometimes possible to determine gender by now and we figured it would be cool to give it a shot. We were thinking that maybe the midwife would have a heart and bend the rules, but no such luck. It will be about another month during the "anatomy ultrasound" that we get to find out if we're having a boy or a girl.

Perhaps it was because of the warm uh-huhs, but Uh-huh made us feel a lot more comfortable than we had ever been with the obstemagician.

Probably because of that, Baby Car felt able to confide in the midwife that she didn't think she was feeling the appropriate level of emotional attachment to mommy's little parasite.

Uh-huh told us that at this stage of the game (just barely into the second trimester), feeling that way is completely normal. Right now, the baby is pretty much just a source of inconvenient and frustrating pregnancy symptoms that she gets to endure without being far enough along to enjoy all the cool pregnancy stuff, like feeling the little kicks and stroking that stylin' baby bump.

We were assured that in the next month the attachment would grow and that it would become especially strong once we found out if it was a little boy or a little girl (or a pony!) growing in there.

Personally, I'm crazy in love with the little creature already. I look at our only set of ultrasound picture 25 times a day and at work I have two thumbtacks stuck in the wall to keep track of how long baby is, head to rump (8.5 centimeters!).

But then again, I'm not nauseous, my energy level is great, and my boobs are no more sensitive than normal. For me, the little guy/gal is easy to love.

But it's okay, Baby Car will come around. She doesn't wear her emotions on her sleeve, but I know they're brewing. I just can't wait for them to start bubbling to the surface so that I don't have to feel like such an emotional sap all by myself.

My Big Fat Mouth

People call me "Dad" at work. I have a blog about my soon-to-be son or daughter. People know the deal: we're pregnant.

That wasn't always the case.

It turns out that there are tons of social politics involved in determining when you are allowed to start telling people that there's a baby on the way, not to mention who you're allowed to tell.

Being impatient folks, and having gotten that positive pregnancy test on Christmas Eve, we decided to tell the immediate family right away. Most of the books and things don't really recommend that, citing basically that you should tell anybody that you wouldn't be comfortable disappointing. A lot can happen to a little tiny, rapidly multiplying pile of cells, so lots of people keep their mouths shut until slightly later in the pregnancy.

We didn't. We went for it, at least with the family.

Obviously, they were stoked, but we also had to do a lot of hush-hushing because we didn't want to let the cat completely out of the bag. The instructions given to me were clear: don't tell anybody until we have the first doctor appointment. Got it. No problem.

What I didn't realize until much too late was that the first doctor appointment, in our case anyway, didn't count.

Ouch.

We went to the doctor's office. We sat in the waiting room. We went in the little tiny exam room. Baby Car was poked and prodded. We were given an approximate due date.

To me, that equals "appointment."

Turns out not.

We didn't see the actual doctor. We didn't take a fancy, medical-grade pregnancy test. We didn't hear a heartbeat or see a sonogram. So that means it didn't count.

I did not realize this.

I got home after the appointment, took my dogs out in the back yard, and dialed my cell phone. The one and only person that I told lived about 1000 miles away and didn't ever seem like the gossipy type.

Oops.

I think after I hung up, it took about eight minutes for the news to make it from Austin, Texas right on back to our little corner of Pennsylvania and blow up right in my big stupid face.

People at my work found out about it. People that Baby Car used to work with found out about it. Basically, my loving wife was counting down the days until she could excitedly tell everybody our big news and my single phone call systematically destroyed the whole thing.

It was a bad move. I got in trouble. And even if I didn't get in trouble, I would have still felt bad about the whole thing.

It turns out that one of the best things about being pregnant (aside from the comedic waddling) is sharing the news.

So take a note: don't screw it up!

The First Trimester (Part Three: The Money Shot)

You've probably picked up on the fact that the first trimester wasn't exactly Lifetime Original Movie material, but towards the end I got to have the coolest experience of my life. Finally, after waiting and fretting and looking forward to it for weeks, we got to have our first sonogram. I think it was actually much earlier than standard operating procedure, but because we requested a specific prenatal screening test (for the sake of getting the ultrasound), we got the ultrasound. You'd think there would be a lot involved, but it was quick. Baby Car hopped up on the little doctor table, popped her hood, and got all gelled up with some goop that I was glad was all over her and not me. Then BAM there it was, on the screen.

It happened unbelievably fast, like opening the door to the fridge. Want a coke? Oh look, your unborn child. Needless to say, it was really, really cool. The ultrasound tech told us that the baby was about 6 centimeters long (<2.5 inches in layman's terms). The kid was active as hell, squirming around all over the place when Baby Car laughed or moved around. There were arms and legs flapping around and the tech said that everything looked healthy as can be.

We finally have proof. There really is a little person in there – and for the first time in my life I have pictures to show off that aren't dogs.

Baby showers and diaper days

The other day, Baby Car went to a baby shower for our pregnant friend, who will be pooping out her son any day now. I don't know what goes on at baby showers, but it is my understanding that they tend to be slightly emotional and highly demeaning. Regardless, our gift to the mom-to-be was this stack of baby crap lovingly crafted to look like a cake. A note for readers: pregnant chicks love this kind of thing. If you aren't creative/artistic/inclined enough to do something like this, I highly recommend teaming up with someone who is. I have my Baby Car. You find your own.

I wasn't there, but I'm sure the baby clothes cake was a hit. I also heard something about a "diaper cake," but I still don't know exactly what that is.

Speaking of diapers, while Baby Car went to the shower, I got to attend a "diaper party" with the fellow dad-to-be, who was undoubtedly relieved to learn that he wasn't expected to make an appearance at the shower. At a diaper party, the daddy-type buys some beer and his friends come over bearing a pack or two of diapers (apparently babies use diapers like it's going out of style).

Personally, I think it is brilliant to have a socially mandated drinking session for the expectant father, especially as the baby's due date looms near. I don't see the guy enough to know for sure, but based on the vibe he gave off that night, he really needed to relax and knock back a few. At the moment, I don't really feel compelled to engage in any heavy drinking. However, when I was at his house and saw things like a stroller in the corner and a crib at the foot of their bed, I definitely saw how the reality of the situation could set in and really make a guy reach for a six-pack or two.

The First Trimester (Part Two)

Back to my frantic summary of the first trimester. It consists of research, general anxiety, and anticipation of various doctor appointments. When Baby Car first started calling her Obstemagician, they made it really clear that they weren't interested in seeing her until deep into that first trimester. When we finally got to go, we had gone for weeks with only our little plastic pregnancy tests (albeit a damn ton of them) to indicate that she was pregnant. When we finally got to go ( a full MONTH after we got our positive pregnancy test), we were excited to at least have a medical professional tell us that Baby Car was, indeed, a Baby Car (and not just a queasy, hormonal mess).

So we met with the nurse – not a doctor – and she performed a cursory physical exam and used her little cardboard spinny wheel to give us an estimated due date. There was no official declaration of pregnancy or anything cool like that. We asked for an ultrasound, or really anything to prove to us that there was a little person in there, but no luck. Rules are rules I guess. The nurse pretty much hit Baby Car with a bunch of questions about her medical history and sucked about eight kinds of fluid out of her body.

Bottom line: the whole thing was pretty anti-climactic. Baby Car was bummed, too – which made me sad.

A week or so later…STOP! Okay, I know if you've been reading any other blogs or articles or message boards or pregnancy-themed graffiti, you've noticed that everybody else that's writing about this sort of thing can break the whole thing down week by week and tell you exactly when everything happened. I can't. Moving forward, I'll try, but looking back, I have no freaking clue. Sorry about that. Anyway…a week or so later, we got to see the actual doctor.

This particular obstemagician was very hardcore and made it very clear that her priority was the baby, not the Baby Car. She was stern, clinical, and sort of bossy. She managed to make up for it somewhat by breaking out a little gismo that she said had a chance of picking up the baby's heartbeat. In the interest of anybody out there that might be excitedly waiting to hear that first heartbeat, I did some cheating (peeked at Baby Car's blog) and figured out that this happened at week 12. Don't get mad at me if your doctor doesn't do things the same way, but for us, we got the little heartbeat gismo at week 12.

The way the doctor set the stage for the heartbeat, I wasn't expecting much. "Let's see if we can hear anything that sounds like a heartbeat in there," she said. I was expecting to be able to barely make out some distant noise, like listening to radio static under water, but as soon as she pushed the anal-probe looking thing up to Baby Car's belly, there is was badumbadumbadumbadum – fast. It was really cool. I think it was humming along at 157 beats per minute, or to put it in perspective, roughly the same as my heart rate when climbing stairs after eating Mexican food.

I was stoked. Baby Car was not. I could tell that she wasn't going to be happy until she saw an actual ultrasound.

Baby Car

The more I write, the more I realize how awkward it is to keep using terms like "the mom-to-be" and "my wife" over and over and over. I really don't want to throw her name out there into the wide wild world of cyberspace, so until it gets old, let's stick with "Baby Car."

As she gets more and more focused on her role as a womb with legs and hormones, I see my wife more and more as a beautiful vehicle for our unborn baby.

Hence, Baby Car.

I hope Baby Car doesn't mind.

The first trimester (part one)

By now you may have noticed that my baby story begins a few months before my first post. To be honest, it absolutely took just that long for the whole thing to sink in. Since day one, I have been ridiculously happy about the whole event, but it didn't become real until our second trip to the OB/GYN (obstemagician/gynecologist).

I'll get to that shortly.

From what I understand, the first trimester was a piece of cake – relatively speaking. My wife lucked out, at least in one respect. She had no morning sickness whatsoever. In fact, the only vomiting that took place during the entire first trimester was my little adventure in the ladies' room in the gas station.

Once you have a baby on the way, people that you know will tell you all sorts of things about their experiences with pregnancy – and we heard some horror stories. You might get off as easily as we did, or you might end up with mom-to-be violently vomiting morning, noon, and night. Sure, that sounds bad…but just imagine how old it would get after weeks and week with no relief.

So no complaints from me about the lack of morning sickness, though my wife may beg to differ. She was actually just barely nauseous, pretty much all the time for a couple of months. I know she wouldn't have traded that feeling for the painful constant vomiting, but on the other hand she mentioned more than once how good it would feel to just get it over with already. She had trouble eating and was in a pretty much constant state of trying to balance her nausea out with crackers and ginger ale.

Other than that, there was the fatigue. She was tired – a lot. Fortunately, a recent career move had brought her home to run our writing business full-time, so she was at least able to keep her own hours and take a nap if she damn well felt like it.

I supposed she would have dealt with it one way or another if she was forced to keep regular hours at a regular job, but I'm glad we didn't have to put her through that.

One thing that did happen – perhaps magnified by the fact that she was spending a lot of time at home – was that she developed an obsessive need to research pregnancy. She joined message boards and web communities and read everything there was to read on the subject, which often led her to fret about various symptoms that could be an early indication of this or that.

My advice to any men out there (or lesbians that won the rock-paper-scissors match to determine who had to carry the artificially-conceived bundle of joy) is not to discourage this practice. It is a fight you will not win.

I ended up feeling pretty guilty about not having the same constant and obsessive interest in all things pre-natal, but I just couldn't bring myself to keep up. Instead, I just did my best to stay supportive of whatever she was learning.

When she decided that artificial sugars were bad for the baby, we gave them up together. Same with caffeine (though since she hates coffee, I was permitted to maintain my usual coffee intake guilt-free ~ thank gawd).

So the moral of the story: listen well, nod a lot, and stay supportive.

I know I'm breezing though the ol' pregnancy timeline pretty quickly, but I'm honestly just trying to catch up to the present so I can start recapping the day-to-day now that things have really started to get interesting.

Hang in there, we'll be up at week 12 before you know it!

Evening Sickness

A few short hours after I was hit with the baby bomb, it was off to dinner with the in-laws. They didn't know that their baby was having a baby and we weren't ready to tell them. It's about an hour drive through darks woods and one horse towns to get where they live, and we were letting it all sink in as we drove along.

I didn't know what to make of the whole thing, but I did know this: I did not feel well. For thirty minutes or so I struggled with an upset stomach. I started to get worried. Was my body trying to tell me that I was in way over my head? Had my brain completely malfunctioned, leaving my more primal instincts to recapture the ship and slap some sense into me?

The last thing I wanted to do was look unsure of myself in front of the glowing mom-to-be, but we had to stop for gas and at that point I had no choice. With my happy wife in the passenger seat, I shoved the gas pump into the tank and headed for the men's room.

It was closed. Out of order. Yellow police tape. Broken plunger lying in a puddle in the hall.

I didn't miss a beat. I burst into the ladies' room, slammed the door behind me, and vomited like it was going out of style. It wasn't an insignificant amount of puke. It was everything I had eaten in recent memory and a good portion of the mess ended up splashing back in my face.

As I cleaned myself up in the sink, the now-clogged toilet gurgling next to me, I looked in the mirror to see a huge smile spread across my face. I had never been happier.

And it's pretty much been that way ever since.

If you're ever in the same boat, I really recommend violent vomiting with reckless abandon. If you can swing it, use the ladies' room. It's better that way.

“Really?”

Despite two months of painfully aggressive baby making, it really caught me off guard when I found out my wife was pregnant. I had no idea that it would happen so quickly, or that (apparently) I'm a huge stud.

Anyway, the pregnancy test was stuffed in a Christmas card and I should have noticed that my wife was gushing and on the verge of tears (the good kind) as I opened it.

I didn't immediately occur to me what was going on and at first I turned the thing over and over in my hand. After all, maybe it was just an unused test – perhaps with a note explaining that we would take another stab at this baby-making thing later that night, without the ovulation calendar and without the gravity-minded, clinical approach to sex that would make an Amish grandmother call me a pansy.

But after a few seconds that seemed like much longer, I realized that the thing said "Pregnant" and blurted out my uninspired "Really?!"

She didn't seem to care that I had nothing more impressive to say, and we hugged and smiled like idiots.

We were pregnant.

I say "we" were pregnant, because a few short hours into the pregnancy, my wife very clearly corrected me when I was so callous as to imply that SHE was pregnant. Being a generally obedient husband who knows how to pick my battles, I filed that note away in the marriage-saving section of the male subconscious that keeps track of things like what endearing nicknames she hates (honey, woman) and what kind of flowers she likes (any – you jackass).

Apparently, it isn't that simple. "We" are pregnant whenever we are talking about spreading the news at family gatherings, buying baby stuff, or reading any of the 1800 pages of baby books we owned before the pregnancy test was dry.

"She" is pregnant when we talk about how miserable she feels or how I am failing to live up to my role as hunter/gatherer/man servant.

I find that the best way to go is to stick with "we" until it gets me yelled at, unless circumstances really make it seem like a bad idea. If she is in the bathroom, lying on the floor after throwing up and peeing on herself ever-so-slightly, that is a BAD time to point out that "we" are pregnant. SHE is pregnant, and SHE is suffering.

I can go grab a bottle of water and get her pregnant butt up off of the floor. WE can go buy her some saltines in the morning.