4 scores and 2 weeks ago

2 weeks ago, the day before 2 days from now, we started baby birthing classes. We actually signed up kind of late.  You're supposed to enroll in the first trimester and take the class in your second trimester.  We didn't actually register until mid-second trimester and now we're in the middle of our third trimester.  Classes are available weekly for 6 weeks or for two 8-hour Saturday sessions.  We didn't think we'd be able to sit still for 8 hours straight for two Saturdays, so we went with the weekly class.  Every week both me and Victoria (Victoria and me (Victoria and I)) kind of dread going to class, but it's never really that bad.  Plus it's right outside the baby showcase room in the hospital. It's outside the baby viewing area, and we get to see new babies each week.  It's kind of awesome, not it's definitely awesome.  I thought I'd post some things we learned, so this post will be what we learned from the first week of these classes with what we have learned in the consecutive classes to be blogged about some time in the near future.  I won't share all of my notes, just the most surprising things we learned in class.  The instructor is funny, not intentionally, but funny nonetheless.  For those of you who have seen the movie Office Space, she reminds me of the horrible boss guy.  Her catchphrase is "Yeah...so...anyways..."  She says it in the middle of her own sentences.  I guess it's better than "uh" or "um", but maybe not.  Yeah, so, anyways, back to Caleb's notes...let me clarify that she was discussing anatomy when he started taking notes.  I'm pretty sure she was discussing being pregnant and giving birth. I'll try to decipher as we go...

-Apparently all pregnant women are forced to sleep in a recliner I'm not sure who enforces this, but it is true. This is to combat indigestion, or is it to get some alone time from seemingly annoying dads?

-When you are pregnant both your intestines and your bladder literally vanish. The uterus in the picture was so big it covered some crucial organs; I'm pretty sure our teacher said the baby absorbs these crucial organs only to be regrown by the mother later on, which means they disappear.

-For some reason when you are pregnant all of your bookshelves break. No idea here.  I guess we'll find out in a little over a month.  It's a good thing we don't have too many bookshelves.

-It is a good thing to drop the baby head first. Prior to it being born (this was never specified).

-Pregnant women have to do puzzles to deliver the baby. The pieces of the puzzle are the different signs of labor.

-Exercise balls take the pressure off of having the baby. She says weird things sometimes.

-Pregnant women are only allowed to eat crackers.  I don't remember this, but I do remember she said the hospital won't let you eat so you should wait as long as possible to go to the hospital.

-Electrolytes are what plants crave. BRAWNDO.

-Pregnant people stay tan forever. What? That's what she said, It's not a lie.

-When you're having a baby, the odor smells like vanilla and raspberries. Ice cream sounds really good right now.  With strawberries on top.

-Signs of labor is when birds come over and lay eggs everywhere around your house. I don't want to feed my baby chewed up worms, nor do I want to chew up worms.  See previous comment.

-Pregnant women need pickle jars in order to deliver. She really did say something like this, and it still makes no sense, (We should have registered for some pickle jars).

-Gotta catch them all. I'm pretty sure I said this, but at least he's paying attention.  I actually think Pokemon said this, but whatever

-Pregnant women can kill their hair, which is odd because it's already dead. Hooray science.

-Pregnant women should watch mercury in water. She said we should eat at least 12 ounces of fish weekly after saying we shouldn't eat more than 12 ounces of fish.

-Pregnant women shouldn't smoke sea food. I'm pretty sure pregnant women shouldn't smoke at all, but sea food especially.  

I'm not sure what Victoria put is what the teacher meant when i was taking notes, but she did say these things, or something close to them.

Everyone loves Bouregard

Well Bouregard won the last poll with 57% of the votes.  We had well over 250 votes on this last poll!  So to keep things going I have posted another poll of names.  So far, we have Neville & Bouregard to choose from, but like I said we are narrowing down our rather large list of names.  So keep voting, and maybe we'll come up with the best named baby of 2011; even named better than my brother and sister in law's baby that they'll be having.  That's right, I made it into a competition.  

As far as other things go, I decided I should show some of the clothes Victoria has found for our baby...

This might be exactly what our baby looks like.  I'm not sure how clear it is on your monitor, but the shirt says, "just hatched..."  I'm not real sure what the ellipse is for, maybe this old dinosaur saying goes, "Just hatched... Ready to wreak havoc on the earth" or "Just hatched ...and Looking for some tinier dinosaurs to eat."  Only the dinosaurs and their lizard/crocodile (or alligator) (or, BIRDS!  We've all seen Jurassic Park) cousins will know.

Here's another look at what our baby will probably look like, complete with tiny dinosaur feet.  I sure hope his arms come in as he gets older.  It'll be hard to do anything with such tiny arms, not to mention all of the head injuries the baby will have as they topple over when running around. Considering Caleb and I both have long arms for our heights, it very likely our baby dinosaur will have monkey (or octopus) arms.  Which actually sounds incredibly creepy.  Side note, for those who have never been pregnant, I've had many strange dreams about our baby.  In one, I had him 3 months early, but he was ginormous and kind of blobby looking.  Then, in another one we had the baby early but we didn't have any clothes or baby items for him.  I'm sure these all mean something, but luckily I don't know what that meaning is and I'm not particularly worried about it.  It's just a weird dream thing that is apparently normal for pregnant women (probably pregnant men too).  Okay, back to Caleb's show and tell.

I don't know if you can tell here, but the green thing on top of the pink dinosaur is not it's turtle shell.  That's a hat Victoria bought for our baby.  It matches a stegosaurus t-shirt and hoodie.  Yes, it's super cute.  These other dinosaurs, will most likely be what our baby's friends look like. You can see that they are already playing well together.  Our baby is so good at sharing hats!

More Names

Well, Neville won the vote.  New names are now up for a vote.  This way we will be able to narrow down our rather large list of names.  Also, we are taking name suggestions as well.  This vote consists of nothing but suggestions that we have received.

On an unrelated note, Victoria went and registered for baby stuff a few days ago, and with that we have started buying things for our baby, things being clothes, and some stuffed animals.  It's kind of fun all of the ridiculous things they have for babies.  For example these items...

That's right these are pillows that look like hands.  I'm not sure what the purpose of these are, but they are ridiculous.  There's nothing like a product to trick your baby into thinking you are holding him so you can ignore him.

This is an actual product where you suck the snot out of your babies nose, with your mouth. 

Time for the Masses to name our Baby!

To the right you will find a very narrowed down version of the names that, both, Victoria and I have would love to name our baby.  But, since it's so hard to decide between these names, we decided to try and get some help from the internet.  

So, goooo internet, name our baby!

9/12 Doctor's Appointment

Hello All!  Sorry it's been so long since our last post.  As some of you know, we moved two weeks ago.  I'm going to use that as my excuse.  Needless to say, we've been very busy with packing/unpacking and cleaning.  We really love the new place, but it seems like we'll never get settled.  This weekend we did a lot of cleaning and re-arranging, and I finally feel like the end is in sight.

We're now 24 weeks along.  For normal people, that's about five and a half months along.  The baby has gotten very active.  I often describe him as squirmy.  I love that he's squirmy.  I'm sure I won't like it as much when he gets bigger, but I love it for now.  

Anyhow, I had a doctor's appointment this past Monday (9/12).  It was a late appointment, made even later by the doctor's office.  I find that the earlier I arrive for my appointments, the later the office is running.  It was just a quick visit though.  I got a flu shot and asked the doctor a few questions.  The past couple of weeks I've been waking up with painful and swollen hands every morning.  It goes away by the time we leave for work, but it's pretty uncomfortable, so I asked about that.  Apparently some women can develop carpel tunnel syndrome during pregnancy.  She suggested wrist braces.  I had one from an old injury so I tried it and it works great.  My only other question was about pregnancy classes.  She gave me the number to call to get everything scheduled.  My next appointment is October 10th.  I'll have a glucose test for gestational diabetes and then she said I'll have to start coming in more often.

This was the weekend for getting things done.  I registered us for pregnancy classes, including labor class, CPR and beyond the baby basics.  We start at the beginning of November, so we'll keep you posted.  I'm sure it will at least give us some funny stories.  I also completed our pre-admission registration with the hospital.  

Caleb and I found our nursery decor this past week.  I was over-worrying about it, so I made Caleb take me to Babies R Us and we found the perfect dinosaur bedding and decor.  If you have a chance, check it out:  http://www.amazon.com/Jill-McDonald-Adorable-Dino-Piece/dp/B0055NCE10/ref=br_it_dp_o?ie=UTF8&coliid=I3QQX2J19KK3WP&colid=3DD7DA7Q3PQN1.

I've been asking a few friends and family, but if anyone has any suggestions for "must-haves" that we should get for the baby/nursery/etc., please let me know.
 

Weird Craving #2

Today's craving was for pepperoni pizza while watching the bachelor pad.   This was partly due to the fact that we didn't want to cook when we got home and also partly because the Rangers won by 7 points (well, they won and scored more than 7 points) yesterday (half price pizza with coupon code "Rangers 7" at papajohns.com).  But i guess, since there are reasons to what we ate, then that means it really isn't a craving.

Tonight will be night 4 of maternity pillow sleep (think of sleeping with a bean).  I was having trouble sleeping with my four separate pillows (maybe because she was trying to manage 4 separate pillows, and these aren't just the normal sized pillows, they were all the giant body pillows) pillows because they are varying sizes and thicknesses, which I get is high-maintenance, but that's neither here nor there, but maybe across the way. Anyways, I bought a maternity pillow, but not one of the boa constrictor kind that requires a bed of it's own, but a smaller, less invasive one.  It's shaped like a bean and has a tiny little pillow that tucks under my stomach.  It's a dual maternity/nursing pillow.  It's been really great for my sleep life.  I've been able to sleep almost all the way through the night since I got it in the mail.  Caleb gets really confused now because my 3 extra pillows are now shoved on his side of the bed (some of which now become floor pillows, but that's an entirely different subject).  It's pretty funny.

We get to close buying another house on Wednesday, so that means moving starts this weekend and packing should be further along than it is.  We are kind of hoping that someone will just come and move our stuff for us.  I figure, why do something today when you can do it tomorrow.  That's actually what Victoria always tells me. 

And with that I'll leave you with this...

Doctor's Visit

Hello there. HI! Today we had a doctor's appointment to go over the sonogram from Friday.  Basically that just means that Victoria got an excuse to have, basically, 2 half days at work in a row.  The sonographer had said everything looked fantastic, so I wasn't expecting anything crazy.  She also said that the baby vaguely resembled Mike Wazowski.  Which is a good thing because who wants to have a villain for a baby.    Before we get to the appointment, let's go back to Friday. Aside from the explanation Caleb gave as to what the baby looks like, I figured you might like to hear the story.

The sonographer started by taking a bunch of measurements.  I couldn't even see the screen at this point, but I noticed the baby wasn't moving very much.  I asked why, and the she said that it was probably just the time of day.  However, by the time she moved the screen so we could see, someone had woken up.  Baby Boy Whitley was wiggling up a storm by the time we got a good look at his cute little face.  This first picture is the first image we saw.  He seemed pretty peaceful.  You can see the head on the right of the screen.  If it just looks like a blob to you, you can just pretend you see it.  If you think he looks a little like Skeletor from He-Man then you don't have to pretend to see it because you do see it.

So, he started getting busy after that.  The sonographer kept trying to get a picture to prove to us that he was a boy, but our son is too modest to give up the money shot so easily.  He kept wiggling out of view and covering himself with feet and hands.  It's like he was playing keep away.  So silly!!  While he was squirming, she got a picture of his tiny little feet.  We were lucky enough to see wiggling little toes, but sadly for you, all we can show is the feet, or is it a dragon? It's a little blurry, but hopefully you can see.

Finally, she got the picture to prove he's a boy. This one's still a mystery to me, but she's a professional so I believe her.  Just in case you are confused, Victoria is referring to the picture below, not above.  He said "I am a boy!!" and she got it in the picture (the sonogram machine does subtitles, technology is pretty amazing.)  I'm not real sure why Victoria can't see that.

Last, we got to see a picture of his face.  Caleb posted this one previously, but I wanted to post it again because it's so special. You can see here that the sonogram machine was able to record him saying, "Hi Mommy!!  Hi Daddy!!"

Hopefully you can see more than just a Disney cyclops, if you can't that's because it might actually be a Disney cyclops.  I see our sweet little baby's face.  It's amazing how far we've come in just 19 weeks, or for those who are bad at calendar math like me, almost 5 months.  In four and a half months, or for those of you who are good at calendar math unlike me, 18 weeks, we'll get to meet him in person.  I can't wait, neither can I.  It's a beautiful feeling to have such big love for a baby that's part me and part Caleb (and maybe part monster).  I never had a clue that I'd feel this way.

Okay, so back to today's appointment.  The doctor verified all the sonographer's comments.  She said that all the measurements look perfect and that everything is looking completely normal.  We got some blood results back, I think for spina bifida (this is just gibberish for general diseases), and she said everything came back clear. So basically, mom and baby are where we need to be. She used the doppler to check the heartbeat (it's like a tiny phone she uses to call the baby).  It was really funny because as soon as she'd find the heartbeat he'd move and she's have to find it again.  Looks like we'll be adding another jokester to the family. :)

We won't have another appointment for another month, but we'll be posting in the meantime.  Now that we know the gender (aka the color - blue), we'll be able to start planning the nursery and whatever else we need in preparation for the baby.

Blue!

Well, our baby is already growing up.  Here's a picture...

  You can see his head on the right with the whitish circle in the middle.  No longer is our baby The famous villain from spiderman, "Venom" (see previous blog post).  

He's seen the err of his villainous ways and has changed into a more light hearted and well meaning monster.  One that likes to scare little children, but for a good reason.

Just in case you missed the other post explaining this picture.  Victoria is Dora, and Caleb is Goofy.  If you put them together, according to the above sonogram, you get Mike Wazowski from Monsters Inc.
 


FYI, for those of you have decent vision, you can see that what Caleb is looking at as an eye is really the baby's nose. 
 
You might have already guessed by how i'm referring to our baby as a he...  We're having a boy!  Hooray BOY!! I'm really glad we finally know what we're having.  It's better to refer to the baby as a he instead of an it.  He's really cute!!  Victoria has an actual appointment with the doctor Monday the 15th; I'm guessing to go over the specifics of how the baby is and, more importantly, who it looks like.  I'm pretty sure I'm spot on, but we'll see what the doctor says.  We'll post more pictures tomorrow when we hear more from the baby doctor. 

The first big day, minus one...

Well, tomorrow's the day.  The first day we can really start the fun planning.  From nursery colors to shopping for onesies, tomorrow's the day we find out if we're blue or pink.  What she means is we'll find out if the doctor thinks our baby is a boy or a girl, not my favorite color or Victoria's.  While there are plenty of adorable neutral themes and clothes (I'm not so sure she's convinced of this yet), and while I respect people who can fly by the seat of their pants and not know their baby's gender prior to birth, I couldn't be more excited to find out.  Hooray technology!  People keep warning me that the doctors are often wrong, so I won't go crazy shopping (yet), but I want to be able to call the baby a he or a she.   

Honestly, I think I'm most excited just to get to see the baby again!! I'm excited too.  Victoria edited a post earlier to show a sonogram or two that we had a while ago.  But what she didn't do is show you how amazing our baby is.  This is what the baby was doing during our last sonogram...

More to come tomorrow with news and pictures as soon as possible.

Blog Post Slacking

Well, we've been slacking off on keeping up with our blog, not to mention even letting people know about it.  Soooo, to continue on with this blog that no one has seen so far, I thought i'd post this. 

Here's one of our sonograms.

So let's say that if i were a cartoon, I'd be goofy, and if Victoria were a cartoon, she'd be Dora the Explorer.

Let's see what happens when you mix these cartoons together...

That's right apparently Dora + goofy = the famous spiderman villain, VENOM. Look again, the baby looks exactly like that venom pictures. I wonder if victoria got a bit by a radio active spider.

So, I thought I would provide a little factual background, because quite frankly, the logic pictured above does not compute in my math book. In the first place, I'm pretty sure goofy is too old for Dora.  Anyways, that's besides the point.  The sonogram pictured above was taken at 12 weeks.  Caleb was out of town for this one, so I took my mom with me.  It was incredible to see the baby jumping and dancing around as we watched the monitor.  Below is another one from 12 weeks.

There's nothing like seeing your baby alive inside of you.  Below is a picture from our first sonogram, at 7 weeks.  It's just so crazy to think something that small can have a heartbeat, but we heard it. :)  Also, if you  look really closely, you can see how smart our baby is...it can already talk!

Music!

I decided to add some music to your blog reading pleasure.  I don't know why, but this song kind of reminds me of our baby.  For now there's only one song, until i can figure out how to get it to play a playlist. 


If you can make it through to about 2/3 of the way through the song, that's the best part.  I love 8 bit music.


I have just been notified by my wife that this music does not remind me of our baby.

Shocking Secrets of the Pregnant Woman

Well, we haven't posted in a while, but we did find something that was very interesting.  Apparently pregnant women have the temperature of 2 people.  Below is Victoria's temperature the other day.

I know, it's very shocking and surprising, but it's true.  The thermometer wasn't messed up either.  I tested it on myself and it came out to 98.2.   If you think about it, it kind of makes sense.  She has her normal temperature (98.6ish degrees), and she has the baby's normal temperature (98.6ish degrees).  If you add the two together, you get 197ish degrees. 



I wonder what other fun facts we'll find out about pregnant women.  Do they in fact have the strength of 2 people?  Are 2 heads actually better than one?  Who knows what we'll find out.

Our Latest Adventure...

Well, here we are again. We're starting another blog to document another big adventure in our lives.  Caleb and I will begin where we left off.  He'll blog in blue and I in red.  We hope you have fun taking this journey with us.

On April 30th, 2011 I took a home pregnancy test and you can see the results below, or can you?  Also, don't trust the red care-bear, there's something shifty about the way he's looking at the camera.  It's like s/he has something planned.

Okay, so maybe it's super tiny and you can't tell, but we're positively pregnant.  If you squint really hard you can see that the appearance of care-bears is a positive sign.  I don't know why care-bears can't just have a sign that says "You're Pregnant" or "You're not Pregnant."  They always have to show up with some ambiguous stick that has some sort of markings on it; it's like trying to figure out cuneiform.  I figured something was "different" when I was sitting in a San Antonio hotel crying because Caleb and I were arguing on the phone on my birthday.   It was kind of odd because we never argue.  I don't cry often, some would even say I'm dead inside, but there I was, all alone, crying over a grilled chicken salad, not over me and Victoria arguing (let's just get that out of the way).  Such a mess!!  As soon as I got home the next day, I took the test (ugh!) and I was sure. 

From there, the next step was to get an appointment to see my doctor.  As if elevated hormones wasn't enough, when I called my gynecologist, the doctor's assistant informed me that my doctor no longer did obstetrics.  So, no doctor.  Most women can understand when I say that finding a gynecologist is a pain.  Finding someone you're comfortable with and who can put you at ease while dealing with your lady parts is no small chore.  So in my shopping (She's really good at this), I started with the hospital and doctor's offices near our house. I scheduled an appointment for May 11th with a doctor I found through our insurance.  The practice had a website and doctor profiles that were very reassuring.  I was very blessed to "stumble" upon a great practice with a great doctor.  Her name is Doctor Rice and she was very direct and down-to-earth.  At no point did I feel like my questions (and they were many) were stupid or that I needed to hurry so that she could get to the next patient.  The pregnancy test they performed came back positive and we scheduled a sonogram for May 20th. 

Like Victoria, while I'm not dead inside, I am a robot, and didn't really react when she told me she was pregnant, except with a big smile.  I gave her a big hug, and started to think of how fun it would be to have a little Victoria / Caleb to mold and develop into a real person.