Here we go!  "Will you wake me up later and give me a back rub?"  Well sure!

So... that's likely the first of many back rubs, I'd guess.  Her back's been hurting a bit recently, so we'll be seeing more of that stuff.  I know I'm supposed to be doing this stuff all the time anyway (if you ask any woman around you), but of course I'm on high alert for the "take care of preg-wife" moments.  I've been warned to watch for them, so I'm watchin'.  I'm likely to miss the obvious signs sine I'm just not always as observant as I should be, but I'm tryin'!!

I also wanted to point out the issue of pain relievers.  I got her up to give her another round of pain relief.  She can't take any ibuprofen, but she's cleared for acetaminophen/Tylenol.  Today has been rough on her, but this seems to be helping out so far.  I know we're both ibuprof. fans (it's about all that works on me) so I know that sucks for her.

Anyway.. back to work.  :P

Just ran through the grocery store today and stumbled into the baby isle. AHHHH!! Tell me there's a point when this feeling subsides where I get a shudder down the spine and my pulse quickens when I view baby things?? The same "oh, so cute!" crap that my wife/mom-in-law/mom/sisters oggle over and get all melty for makes me curl up in a ball and weep.

I'm way behind on getting started researching how much this child is going to cost us. I made an attempt to get myself looking at prices of diapers and baby wipes and... *shudder*... ugh, I had to skitter back to the automotive section right quick.

Initial figures back when we used to talk about having kids (looooong ago) were numbers like "a ton" and "too much" and "way lots and more", but I'm thinking those numbers aren't quite specific enough. I'll look around soon for some sort of "new baby cost calculator" to figure on things like wearable poop containers (diapers) and various pieces of must-have kiddo junk.

Be warned: I'm also going to find the numbers of the % of waste in the landfills that are diapers-- that's a very big number and it's pathetic, I think. Oh, and lest you think we won't be contributing to said landfill disgustery, I fully remember my mom and sisters washing cloth diapers back when I was a kid. NO THANKS!! (Sorry mom, but I just don't think that's something that will make this whole thing look better to me right now.)

Diapers are evil. Hmmm... maybe it's the baby poop that's evil? That, I'm sure, is something I'll be saying soon enough.

WARNING: upcoming complaining rant. If you don't like those, just hit your Back button and find something else to read.

So far, this whole Baby Thing has been a roller coaster ride for me, to say the least. To say that I'm nervous, scared or uncertain would all be vast understatements. I keep thinking generally good thoughts about being happy and excited to have a child with Amy (she's gonna be a great mom) but once I actually get past the initial concept, the details slap me hard.

For instance, I'm finding that I just don't really want to talk about the baby-having issue. Aside from those who were maybe a bit older on their first one or those who didn't focus their whole lives on procreation as a prime directive. I appreciate all the good vibes from those who put most of their adult lives into parenthood, but to be utterly honest, I am growing very, very weary of comments like "you'll do fine," "don't worry, everything will work out great," or anything that comes out with a blanket "everything" being "great" or "fine" in the end. Gah!

All this has tended to do is make me think things like "how the *bleep!* do you know I'll be great and everything will be fine??!?" It's just such an irritating concept to me that the only thing most people seem to want to say is just random encouragement of a generally positive nature. As long as you say "great" and "fine" then, well... I guess we're golden! Pop the champagne!!

Facts are, I've got a lot of work to do. I have to make everything fine for it to be fine. Nothing is going to turn out great unless we do a good job here. I'm pretty confident in myself figuring things out and I'm very confident that Amy will keep it together -- which I must say is the single most comforting thing during all of this. However, the fact is, I have no choice but to figure things out. It's not like many other things I've done all these years where I had some leeway of failure. If we mess up something, there's not much of a "do over" or "whoops, that's a bummer" about it. We need to do things as good as possible all around and make sure we're as "great" and "fine" as we can be.

I fully understand that "perfection" is neither required nor possible here, so that's not what I'm shooting for. I like to solve problems with reason and logic, so for me, it all just needs to come down to doing my best to cover all the angles I can and make the best choices from all the gathered information. I can't sit back and say "well, everybody said things will work out fine and not to worry... so I guess I'll stop worrying, even though things look like crap right about now."

Of course, I'm left with the simple notion that there's not much else most people have to say. They're trying to be nice and comforting and encouraging and excited. All good stuff. I appreciate all that stuff. I guess it's simply not something that I want to hear at this time. I have gravitated a bit more towards talking to those who haven't had kids yet and are my age or older. Talking to these folks are like chatting with teammates or colleagues of a sort. We're on the same level to a large degree. They're not saying "everything will be great" since they realize how huge a hit this is on our lives at this stage! They feel the same trepidations as me and it feels much more honest to chat with them about what this all means to me.

I'm sure I'll end up getting past these early months/years and I'll be saying the same schlock to other expecting parents like "yeah, I used to worry like crazy too, but it will work out okay. Seriously, it seems like a crazy-big deal now, but you'll figure it out and you'll do great."

Ack.

So I'm sure I'll be fine. After all, the motivation of having to be fine OR ELSE is helping me along. :)

Well... enough ranting. I'll go check email and read about how great I'll be for a while. Maybe I'll believe it someday. I think I'll just wait until I can have a conversation with my kid and ask him/her. That's the only real opinion that matters, I suppose.

*sigh*

Well, I finally bit the bullet and sent out a mass email to close to "everyone" telling them about our incoming baby buddy.  I've been reeeally slow about getting the news out.  Mostly, we have been nervous about getting through the first trimester roughly unscathed, but now that we've had our early appointments & ultrasounds, we're feeling a bit more comfortable.  (Well OK, I'm feeling more comfortable -- I think Amy might have this under control already.)

Anyway, it took me a long time to write my email announcement so I figured I'd just go ahead and repost the bulk of it here.  Thanks for hanging out with us!  And a big "Welcome!" to all our friends & family who now know about this site.  We're off-and-running now.  (Amy and I have a lot of work to do!)

Hi friends and family,

Here's the deal:  I've got something to tell you.  It's been hard to figure out a way to sugar-coat this, so I guess I'll just dive right in...

Amy's working on a big new project.  She's decided to create a whole new person out of microscopic bits of each of us.  I've seen pictures of this project and it's starting to seem like she's going to succeed.  At first, I wasn't too sure about it, but as the weeks roll on, it's becoming very obvious that sometime in the last half of October, she will be giving birth to our baby.

Yeah, that's right.  You might need to read that again.  Just in case you need to hear that a different way:

       HOLY CRAP, WE'RE HAVING A BABY!!!?!???

*ahem*  Sorry about that.  I'm still adjusting.

So this is big news for us, as you can likely guess.  We've been pretty quiet about it mainly due to being nervous about Amy's "advanced maternal age".  I won't get specific about how "advanced" (I'm not authorized to give out info like that) but it's been cause for concern from doctors and us, regarding various complications possible.  It's just a normal part of having babies at our advancing ages.

More info... Amy's about 13 weeks (14 now?) along and like I said, we're looking at October for our lives to be irreversibly altered beyond recognition... *ahem*... sorry.  More adjusting.

I'm actually not sure what else to say about it.  "Hooray!" and "Yikes!" all wrapped up in a neat little package, I guess.  Amy is super-happy and I'm super-freaked-and-happy.  This is a great thing and we're both excited.  I'm shaking as I write this, but don't mistake that nervous energy as disappointment.  You just have to remember that Amy and I have been together a long time and have had a lot of time to establish a life with just the two of us (well, 4 of us, if you count the cats).  Adding another person to this family is no small event for us.  I know it's a big deal for anyone, but just remember we're kind of like a couple  of bachelors who've been hanging out together for 18 years.   Heck, it took me a good 5 years just to stop asking for "Amy Johnson" when I called her at work!  (Not too much of an exaggeration, embarrassingly enough.)

(I'll spare you the rest.)

Thank you for all your patience while we (I) sort out the rufferies with setting up things around here.  It's been yet another learning experience for me -- seems like every project I take on is full of unknowns/never-done-befores.  I do like that to some extent, though, so not complaining completely.

I've taken a swipe at sifting out our personal "his/hers baby blogs" away from the front page of the site.  I'm hoping that will clean up the front page so it's not featuring so much of our personal banter (and my largely-irrelevant posts like this about web development!)  There will be more stuff posted soon to fill up the front page with things like FAQ entries and articles about "baby stuff" for ya.

I'll try to leave out too many of these status reports, but I feel like pointing out that I am in fact quite busy here even though I'm not posting articles.  For instance, take note of the time this was posted -- I don't get up this early... I just haven't gone to sleep yet. 

Amy's been working hard on putting together a bunch of stuff she's read & learned about this whole "baby" thing.  I've done the bulk of my work required to prepare the site so she can just start up a posting frenzy (as you can see she's begun that journey with her blog).  We should be able to bust out some great information for you folks in the coming weeks to fill up these pages.  There's a LOT of work to do, so please bear with us.

What else... oh!... the advertising.  I feel like apologizing for putting up ads, but that's part of why I came up with this whole site idea.  We're going to put a lot of effort into this site and it will really help us want to spend more time (and feel rewarded for our efforts) if we can make some money back from it.  If you find something you're interested in on and advert, please consider clicking on it.  HOWEVER, PLEASE do not just click on them to help give us money.  This is very much against the rules for our advertisers (obviously) and it's something we feel very strongly against anyway.  Many people have asked if they can help us by doing that but it's actually a harmful thing for various reasons, but I've chattered on long enough about ads.

Thank you for visiting and I'll get down to some "baby stuff" posts soon.

We're really happy to have you stop by!

--Paul

I'm having bad body self-image lately. A lot. While I didn't have a rockin' bod before I got pregnant, in fact I put on weight which I didn't really need to, now that my gut is just bigger, looks like all the belly fat that I did have is now just bigger all the way around. Lumpy and rolls and yuck.

So I realized I'm vain! OH no! I liked how my clothes fit before, esp pants. And I used to feel pretty good about that. OH no, pride - eek - how many more can I list in one post?

I'm just gettin' big but I don't really look pregnant. Just fatter. I don't fit into any of my bottoms, nor my tops, and am having a hard time finding something to wear. I'll get out my summer stuff soon and hope that I find something in there. I'm more concerned about my work outfits. Luckily, a friend of my sister's offered to lend me a large collection of tops! They are really cute but I really don't fit into them at all yet. I've found some cheap XL size tops that are ok but now what about the bottoms? I  really don't want to put much $ into more clothes!!!

I've heard about a thing called a belly band there's a couple different types of bands. Anyone know where to get a belly band in SE Denver? and not order online?I've also seen an expander thing that has a piece of elastic between a new button and some sort of fastener on the other end, and a flap of fabric below to leave your pants or skirt unzipped and you tuck the flap in and fasten the button where the regular button would go. Looks cheesy to me but a good cheap idea. But I don't think that's for me. I like the idea of a belly band better.

Bottom line result is "within normative range". We did a nuchal translucency early ultrasound test (1st trimester) coupled w/ a blood test. This screened - not diagnosed - genetic screening (there's a BIG difference!!) for chromosomal abnormalities of Trisomy 21, 13, and 18. Trisomy 21 is Down Syndrome. I was concerned about that because of my age. The lab quotes a detection rate of approx. 97% of Trisomy 13 and 18 and approx. 90% detection rate of Down Syndrome w/ these combined tests. I won't get into all the medical mumbo-jumbo unless you ask and I'll re-type what's on my report for you.

Here's the weird thing: my Down Syndrome risk is 1 in 1200, which is LESS than a 35-yr-old's risk of 1 in 308. That's good. My Trisomy 13/18 risk is 1 in 3,081, which is WAY WAY less than 1 in 150.

So odds look great so far for a healthy baby! YAY!

I have what I'm calling belly weirdness. My belly keeps expanding, and it's a tad uncomfortable. Strange little pain zingers that start and stop within a second, but not all over my lower abdomen - just a poke here and a zing there and it's just WEIRD! And expansion. Like super heavy bloating. Yuck. I don't like it - and I am just looking fatter not pregnant. I'm having a real hard time with that. I think some of actually is bloating or so the books tell me - my intenstines sticking out further than they normally would be. What is a good web resource for the anatomy of pregnancy? like, i get where the baby/growing placenta is, but where does all the rest of the internal stuff go? Just pushed to the side and out of the way - what? I've only seen some hand drawings of just where the baby is sitting. Thx for your help.

Hello folks.  I'm getting things sorted out pretty well for Amy and others to be able to add content.  You should see a flood of posts soon-ish as we get used to the system and get into a habit of posting.  There's a lot to do, so hang in there with us, please!

I'm pretty much in "freak-out" mode with the whole "I'm going to be a father" thing, by the way.  In case you were wondering about such things.  I'm really happy for us, but pretty dang scared too.  We got another ultrasound done the other day, which both eased some concerns and added to the reality check of this whole thing.

The tests have been coming back pretty good so far, but I'll talk about that later.  I'm mostly just adding an update to test some system stuff and see how things are looking.

Thanks a ton for coming by to visit us!  We've really appreciated the family/friends' support and hope that people enjoy and appreciate our efforts building this site.  Take care and please come back soon.

  --Paul

Wow is this a big deal: prenatal nutrition. I have been reading and reading and reading. There are multiple sites that go thru a good meal plan for you. I know I upped all my carbs mostly because of my nausea - I ate what I thought would make me feel better which was some junk but also a lot less protein. Make sure to keep your protein up!! Can I put 'sous chef' on my registry?