28 Weeks

Today marks the beginning of a new week in the pregnancy. babycenter.com tells us that the baby now weighs over 2 lbs. and is around 14" long. The baby can now open and close it's eyes and moves it's head to any bright light shown on it from the outside.

Yesterday Michelle had her blood drawn for the glucose test. She drank a sugar drink given to her by the doctor, waited for one hour, and then they took her blood. They will send this off to the lab for analysis. This is where they begin looking for warning signs for gestational diabetes. While she was in visiting Dr. Sarah, she got to hear the heartbeat again. It's beating at around 140 beats per minute. Dr. Sarah still insists that the babies room needs to be pink...we're not ready to make that jump yet! That room's already been painted too many times!

I've been looking all over for a place to store audio files on the web so that I can share some audio (and eventually) video with you all. One of the other things that I've been trying to do is get the audio file of the baby's heartbeat off of the mp3 player and onto my computer. I've not been able to do that at all, but I am going to find out how...there HAS to be a way.

Before I close, I should add that I just received a call from the doctor's office and Michelle's blood came back from the lab and everything looks great!

Thoughts and Prayers

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the Virginia Tech community. Their campus in Blacksburg, VA was the site of a mass murder this morning. I will not go into details here as I don't have the capacity to keep up with all of the updates. The best place I have found for updates is Planet Blacksburg.

May God be with all of them during this very, very horrible time.

Baby stuff 101

Saturday was fairly uneventful as the weather was still pretty cruddy here. We awoke to snow, but by early afternoon, the temperature was around 50. Even then, the snow seemed to scare us into staying inside :) I had a fair amount of work to get done for Monday, so I worked most of the day.

Sunday is where the real fun was. We had a meeting at 1:30 with a potential daycare provider for Baby Madison. Her name is Michele and she has a small operation near Michelle's school. Michele exceeded our expectations and is everything that we were looking for in someone who will spend so much time with our child. Michelle and I left the meeting with a reserved spot for our little one sometime in September. We are very excited about getting this taken care of!

After that, we headed over to Target to create a baby registry. At first I was overjoyed as I got to carry around the little gun-looking scanner thingy. Yeah, then we got back to the baby section. As it turns out, I know absolutely NOTHING about taking care of a baby. This story should sum up how I was feeling (aside from completely overwhelmed): we started looking at bottles. This was particularly baffling to me as I really thought that Michelle was going to breast-feed. There were a couple of moms there checking out the baby bottle selection, so I didn't feel comfortable asking Michelle such a rudimentary question within earshot of anyone else. So I pulled her aside and to the best of my memory, here's a summary of our conversation:

Matt: So, I'm confused, I thought you were going to breast-feed the baby.
Michelle: I am.
Matt: Okay, I must not understand how it works. Do you put your milk into a bottle when you feed the baby?
Michelle: No, the baby just latches on to me.
Matt (befuddled expression): So then why are we looking at bottles?
Michelle: Because I can't run over to the daycare every time the baby needs to eat.
Matt: Ah. I feel really stupid.

So...as you can see I'm not the sharpest tool in the shed when it comes to this stuff. I think I probably could have figured out that whole situation but once we got the baby section my mind completely shut off and was devoid of any logical thought whatsoever. It was so easy when we registered for our wedding because we walked around and shot that little gun at whatever we liked. This was not like that at all. We were picking items to take care of another human being. Wow.

snow? in April???

So, they've changed our forecast here in KC from rain tonight and tomorrow to anywhere from 1-3" of SNOW, starting at 10 pm tonight. I'm so sick of this! We want to get out and do some things outside and in our garage, but the weather has not cooperated at all. I guess it's another weekend of being indoors!

We have a meeting on Sunday with a potential daycare provider. Michelle has already met with her, but we are going over for another visit, so I can meet her. Michelle is a really big fan, and says she's wonderful. Let's hope that we have found the person who'll watch our tyke next fall...

Other than that, the only thing that we have going on is registering for baby gifts. If this is anything like registering for wedding gifts, than I cannot wait to get that little gun out and scan all kinds of ridiculous things :)...and then get caught....

Hope you all have a wonderful weekend (in spite of Mother Nature)!

26 weeks -- 1/2 a year

Today marks the 26 week mark. Michelle has begun to notice that sleep is harder to come by than it used to be. Each of the past 2 nights, I think she's spent more time awake than actually sleeping. Usually she has no problems falling asleep, but then her legs will jerk involuntarily and it wakes her up. She's tried quite a few things, but nothing has worked every time. Usually, the thing that works is watching TV till she falls asleep. Let's hope this part of the pregnancy doesn't last too long...

At 26 weeks, the baby weighs nearly 2 lbs. and is about 14 inches long. The nerves in the ear are now fully formed, so the baby is able to hear outside noises. With my spiffy new headphones, I'm going to start playing music for the baby. I'm not into classical music, and I don't want the baby to come out smarter than me, so I'm going to be somewhat selective about the music I play. :) Plus, everyone knows how much of a music snob I am (there I admitted it). I've been reading in several places that one way to help calm the baby after birth is to play music familiar to them. As such, I'll be picking selections that Michelle and I can both tolerate as well. It may be a long shot, but I'm gonna try!

Okay, I suck

It's official -- I suck. I have a blog and I don't write often enough. I know there are things that I keep wanting to add to the blog, but every time I get home, I seem to forget about it for some reason. There are no excuses, and in that vein, I fully intend on writing on this thing a lot more often than I have.

We're coming up on 14 weeks until the baby becomes a part of our world forever. As time passes Michelle and I start to think more and more about how the baby will look. Whose eyes will it have? Whose facial features? Will it have a laugh that only dogs can hear just like his Grandpa Greg?

On my list of things to do this week for the blog...
- Add pictures from sonogram
- Take pictures of house and add them
- Take pictures of finished nursery
- Figure out how to add music to the blog, as there are quite a few songs I'd like to share.

That is my to-do list and those are my intentions. Now that they're in writing, I have to hold myself to them....

Good way to start Good Friday?

Before I forgot, I wanted to share a story with you that got my day started this morning. I ran into Wal-Mart around 7 to pick up a new set of headphones. After I'd checked out and was walking towards the exit, I see a rather disheveled-looking middle age woman making a scene. At first I thought she was a manager at the store, judging by her tone and audience for her fit she was throwing. The dialogue:

Woman: I just walked in the door and there was no one there to greet me.
Old man who greets at the door: I'm sorry.
Woman (beginning to yell): When I walk in to Wal-Mart I EXPECT someone to greet me.
Old man: well, I apologize, I was putting these carts away, but good morning.
Woman: What are you waiting for? Get over there and start GREETING PEOPLE.
Old man: Calm down, ma'am. I am sorry.
Woman: There's absolutely nothing you can do now, you can't go back and change the fact that you didn't greet me. I'll get over it, but you need to do your job better.

This is the part where I left the store, but the exchange was pretty much over. How completely asinine was that?!? Not to mention that the guy she was yelling at was probably drawing social security benefits at least 10 years ago. Come on people.....

Anyway, moving on to baby stuff. We're at 25 weeks now. The time is absolutely flying by and the baby is becoming more active by the day. Last night, the movements from the baby were not as pronounced and sharp as they have been. They were smoother and felt more like the baby was actually moving around as opposed to just throwing an elbow or a knee. According to babycenter the baby is now putting on weight as it is very long and lean right now (about 12-13" and a little over a pound). The hair is very recognizable now as far as color and texture. That being said, Michelle and I are guessing that the baby already has more hair than I have! Let's hope that the baby's hairline does not resemble mine.

I was talking with a friend here at work and she introduced me to the Chinese Birth Calendar. Click on the link and find out how accurate it is with you and your own children...you might be surprised.

Have a blessed Holy Week!

Dr. Visit

On Friday we went to the doctor again. Everything is going very well with both Michelle and the baby. The only real news that came out of the visit was that Michelle needs to get a Rhogam shot due to her blood type of A negative. Apparently this reduces risk in later pregnancies. Dr. Sarah didn't say much about it other than that. At Michelle's next visit to the doctor, she will also take a blood sugar test. They give her a sugar drink and then she sits there for an hour and then the nurse draws blood to test for early indicators of gestational diabetes.

Other than that, all is well in our world. The nursery is complete as we procured a changing table last week. Now we just have to touch up the paint on the tops of the walls near the ceiling and we can say that we're officially done.

The time is flying by....I can't believe we're only 14 weeks away!