All About the Kids

Last weekend Sarah and I were up in Duluth, taking a bit of a mini-vacation. As we were leaving town, we passed a State Trooper going a bit too fast. Flashing lights, pull over, license and registration, ticket, be more careful next time, etc.
As I was pulling back onto the freeway to resume our eventful trip home, Sarah looked over and suggested (jokingly) that if she had stuck out her stomach and acted a little more distressed, that we might have gotten a hospital escort instead of a ticket! Of course, the hospital was located north of where we were located, and we were headed south…

…details…

Yesterday, we signed up for an array of courses that will teach us about everything that can go wrong when you bring your new baby home. I’m still not sure if it’s a great idea to take all these classes, but they must have something useful to say if they can charge you $95 and talk for 12 hours about “building confidence in yourself and your partner”. Here’s the full summary:

4-Week Childbirth Preparation Series

Build confidence in yourself and your partner as you prepare for the birth of your baby. Learn the relaxation and breathing skills for childbirth. Ask questions and work closely with our certified childbirth educators.

(if you would like to learn more, visit the 2006 Class Schedule (pdf document).

One of the classes used to be called “Daddy Boot Camp”, and is now retitled the “New Dads Class”. Sarah figures I don’t need to take that one because have enough experience, and will likely learn what I need to in our 12-hour preparation series (relaxing and breathing and all that). I sure hope I have a good memory, cause the last baby I spent significant time caring for was my little sister, Amy, and she’s 16 years old!

After a month of no new posts, and much harassment by friends and family, I’m getting back to the blog! Truth be told, there hasn’t been a whole lot of news lately, which is good news. Sarah’s done some tests, and had a couple of appointments. Everything is “normal” and “good”, including the baby’s size, Sarah’s size, and the gestational diabetes test.

Sarah even managed to give a bit more blood this time, which is always a sketchy prospect!

The baby continues to kick frequently (and yes, I’ve been able to feel him), sometimes so hard that you can see the kicks! Our book says that it is likely the kicks will start turning into “pushes” since the baby is going to start running out of room soon.

Sarah continues to grow. She’s eagerly awaiting the day her belly button pops out, so she can become an “outie”, even if only for a month or two (I told you I was low on news)!

It turns out that there are two ways to determine the baby’s due date. Neither are very exact, but since it’s quite wordy for someone to say that we’re due the “last quarter of May, first quarter of June”, they just give us a single date.

Of the two ways to determine a due date, Timed is the method you use from the beginning, where the doctor takes into account certain physiological (gals, you know what I mean…guys, you don’t need to know) dates, use their little magic wheel of baby time, and figure out when 9 months (or 40 weeks) will occur. To me, this seems like the method that makes the most sense.

The second way of determining a due date, which I call Ultrasonic, is done by measuring the ultrasound image. The doctor measures the baby, then thinks to herself, “hmmmm…if the baby is 1 pound 15 ounces, with a head diameter of 200 mm, abdomen diameter of 220 mm, and femur length of 35 mm, then I would guess that the real due date is 6 days earlier!” (actually, she just punches these numbers into her ultrasound machine and it chugs out the date)

Now, to answer Amy’s question of 2 days ago, either the baby is coming 6 days earlier than originally expected, or the baby is 6 days bigger than the ultrasound machine expects him to be when he’s born! Uhhhhh…I bet you can guess which theory Sarah prefers…

But both methods are accurate to +/-2 weeks, so this whole entry was immaterial anyways!

Sarah had her first visual congratulations a few days ago. Someone was talking to her, looked down, saw that she was pregnant, and congratulated her without having known ahead of time!

Of course, yesterday someone guessed that she was farther along than she was, so we went from “barely there” to “almost there” in a day, but that’s ok (I’m just glad it wasn’t me who made that mistake)…

So for everyone’s reference and safety, today Sarah is 3 months and 30 days from her ultrasound due date!