Oh boy, I'm way behind. I know you see that for yourself, but I just had to affirm. Things have been massively busy around here and I'm pretty stressed in general about getting all my work done both for home and, well.. work.

So I'm feeling a lot better about most of this whole Baby thing, but the weight of many things is certainly great. For now, I'm trying to get as much work done as I can while Amy isn't totally knocked out. She's been sick a few times now, which sucks for her since she has very limited medicinal options. Luckily, it's been smaller things like head colds and coughs, but it still sucks.

Our friends have been contributing many wonderful things to us, including things like car booster seats (will be a while before we use those) and toys that have been previously-loved. I think that rocks. I like the idea of using stuff passed-down, but that's basically how I grew up. I'm the youngest of a large group, so I mostly knew only of hand-me-downs in general.

On the other side of the "wonderful to get helpful stuff" coin is the part where the stress hits a bit: where are we going to put this wonderful, helpful stuff??!? Again I'll point out that we have been together, doing our thing, for over a decade and we're pretty well settled into a bit of a routine. We're less than stone-like in our ways, but still, we didn't spend a bunch of years planning on having a little rug-rat rummaging around and needing his/her own space! So... we're trying to figure out how to rearrange our home to accommodate.

For instance, we've been given a wonderful (yeah, that word again) crib that is both beautiful and, well... massive! I haven't put it together yet, but dang, this thing should hold the kid until s/he is about 10 years old, I figure. (yeah, that's a joke... maybe.) This is an example of what I'm getting at -- we don't have a place for a separate bed!! We barely had a setup for a spare bedroom, but now I guess the kid gets that space. We went from having a guest room (with a bit of storage thrown in) to having a kid's room with absolutely nothing kid-like in it! I've got some cleaning to do. *sigh*

In Amy's words: "quit yer bellyachin'!"... yeah, I know. We're whining a lot about this stuff, but it really is a major adjustment for us. I know we're not unique on that front, but hey.. it's my blog, so I'm writing about my gripes!

Anyway... I'm not sure what I'm getting at with all this. I just figured I'd write something down and let folks know I'm still around. Amy is claiming she's getting ready to post more too, so we'll see if we can get 'er done.

Cheers,
Paul

Okay, so I understand that ladies take care of each other... sometimes voraciously. You know how it is when several of them get together, how they run little test programs to gauge the validity of various things for each other -- is he cute enough for my friend?; how will he react when he sees a hot lady walk by?; how miserable will he let us make him before he screams and runs away?

You know what I'm talking about, right? If you're a guy, you already yelled out "no doubt!" or "dude!" or whatever. If you're one of said ladies, you likely already changed the page of this site, so you're not reading this anyway.

So... here's the deal: I keep getting tested about how well I'm going to hold up to this whole parenthood thing. A year or two ago, it was my mother-in-law observing me like a rat in a cage with her other daughter's (you know, my wife's sister,) twins at around 3 years old or whatever they were at the time. (Whoops, I just failed a test right there! Did you catch that? No? Well, you see, I was supposed to know how old they were when we saw them, along with the color of their hair... neither of which I can recall at the moment. See how much trouble I'm already in?)

Well anyway, I did pretty well during that testing period even though I didn't know the test was underway.(aka: "he's so good with them! They really seem to like him!" and the like), It took me a while to realize that I had been under observation at the time, but now I really know what's going on, so I see it happening all the time. Let me bring you up to date around last weekend:

A really good friend of Amy's was in town with her 1 year old boy so we got together for dinner. There were also a couple other ladies there, including a very good friend of Amy's friend (hard to keep names out of this and still make sense), along with the little boy's babysitter/nanny. They're all very nice women, but that's not the point, since we're not to that part of the story where I had even met any of them yet (except Amy's friend, who I've known for many years). I had also not seen Amy's pal since long before she had a glimmer of parenthood in her eyes, so we hadn't "gone there" as of yet.

Aaaanyway...

So I got there early and had been waiting at the restaurant for everyone to show up. That might have gotten me a point or two, since I'm always late, but I digress. In strolls the group of these beautiful young women (that gets me a point or two in the pocket, that I'm about to lose in a few sentences) with the poor little testosterone-starved boy in-tow. (Yeah, that was the sound of points being deducted en masse. Now you know what that sound is, so you'll recognize it later.)

There I am, going around the circle meeting the new people and hugging the old friend and greeting my wife... okay, so they're un-buckling the 1-year old boy from his cart. Must be needing to get him adjusted and ready to get into the restaurant for dinn... oh, I'm getting to meet the boy. Cool, I dig little kids, so let's have a quick "say hi" moment...

Arms stretch out and he basically lurches out of his moms arms at me. "Well hello, little man," I say, "who must I remind you of?"... cool kid, with a bit of girth and kind of squirmy. He's settled firmly in my arms now, seemingly totally content.

It was roughly at that moment that I realized there was no more chatter amongst the ladies. I heard something along the "ahhh" lines from somebody, but after a minute of talking to the boy and playing with him a bit, I realized there was something of a semi-circle of women staring at the boys! Ack! Okay, I get it, "it's on". No mistakes, no missteps... don't drop the boy, by any means!! Keep smiling, keep smiling...

Well, you get the idea, I'm sure. I'm getting evaluated for all manner of things that I'll never know details of. I figure there are a lot of things I did well: no crying, no dropping, several smiles and some giggles... all of these Good Things, so I think I did alright.

It's a really funny thing to go through. Women put me/us/you(?) in these funky situations and then watch what happens. There are rules to this game, I assure you -- you'll never know what they are, though. You'll never know the score you got or whether you "passed" or not, really... unless you really mess up somehow. "Dang, this kid is fat!" would likely get the child removed from your arms, for example, but "this boy's gonna be a great fullback when he grows up!" should do rather nicely, and still get the point across.

At any rate, I had a very nice dinner with some really nice ladies and I really enjoyed hanging out with the little fullback. I think I passed the tests fairly well... this time.

Ultrasound went well and they seemed to have found all the right pieces in all the right places. That's good. This checkup was mainly to confirm that stuff -- anatomy development and such. It's really, really weird to see that little skeleton wriggling around in there! I really didn't expect so much movement! I don't know if I thought there wasn't enough space to move or that the kid wouldn't have the capacity to move, but it's wiggling & wriggling & yawning... uh, yawning? Yeah, we caught that little sucker in a yawn. That was pretty cool -- we have a picture of it. :)

Anyway, just needed to drop an "all clear that we know of" note. I'm actually post-dating this check, since I'm slow getting stuff put up here. You don't mind, do you? I figure it's better to keep stuff slightly chronological, at least.

Oh boy. I figured I'd post something real quick since I'm getting my mind ready to handle seeing a more fully-formed fetus/baby/miniature-me inside my wife. I'm definitely a bit nervous about this one. (Yeah, I know, I'm nervous about a lot of things.. yadda, yadda..)

The thing is this: each time we go to one of these appointments, I find myself slapped in the face with the reality of this whole procession. Now, that may sound a bit like a "well, duh!" moment there, but I don't care. To everyone out there who is all excited about every little step of the process and thinks "having babies is the most natural thing you can do" or some crap, you just can't prepare yourself for hearing that little heartbeat or actually seeing a writhing little almost-baby twitching around inside your wife's belly!! To call it surreal would be an understatement!

Today, two hours before the next big ultrasound appointment, I have regressed slightly into the "what in the world are we doing??!?" mindset that I thought I had mostly gotten under control. Having people around recently that just take this stuff like it's nothing unusual or out of the ordinary isn't helping at all. It just makes me more irritated and nervous in general, I've found. Now I'm not saying that anyone really thinks pregnancy is less than "amazing", but I'm talking about the "yeah, it's amazing, but people do it all the time" kind of crap. So what?

I'm so very glad that Amy is happy and excited (again, understatement) because without that, I'd get close to shutting down at times. I just can't find a way to imagine what we're in for on this journey. Every time I get a grip on it and think I have it under wraps, we have another doctor appointment that slaps me with something new. Today, that will be a high-resolution (I think) image of our child from inside the womb. Uhh.... holy poo!!

Well...

I honestly sit here typing this with a slight shakiness to me and a fair bit of tension I can't describe. I'm sure there are others who felt similar -- maybe I hope there are others. I hope that others will be honest and say how they truly felt/feel when faced with this most extraordinary of wonders of the animal world! How can anybody just shrug it all off like it's no big deal simply because it's "natural" or "normal"?? I just don't see it. This is massive!

I'll say this one more time: I find far less comfort in talking to people who just accept this process without a second glance. I'm going to set about finding some folks to talk to that are not just blindly accepting of this stuff. Maybe I need to find some scientist or philosopher-types who've gone through this (or are going through this) just so I can have some intellectual discussions instead of only emotional or flippant ones. Logic and reason for the win!

Okay, I guess I better leave this post alone before I take it yet another direction. :P

I'll go and get ready to see my child now and I'm really, really hoping all the parts look mostly right!! Sheesh -- I'm nervous.

I keep forgetting to post about this, but I wanted to get it written down. A while back (I guess it's been over 3 weeks now -- ack, I'm behind on posts!!), at Amy's last appointment, there was a pretty neat little thing I didn't get around to talking about...

When you go in, part of the check-in process involves a sweet little device that looks a bit like a little microphone. The nurse prods this thing around on Amy's belly and we start to hear a heartbeat! Wow.

"ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew, ka-pshew..."

Wow, I say.

It really floored me the first time we heard that, at the initial ultrasound appointment waaay back. However, there's little like a heartbeat to drive home the concept that there really is something inside there!! Amazing. At that time, Amy wasn't really showing much sign of physical change, so I think I had lost sight of the big picture a little bit, but hearing that heartbeat really slugged me in the chest. It's a very, very comforting sound, I thought. What a powerful little sound.

Aaanyway, it turns out the device is called a Doppler Fetal Heart Rate Monitor, for those interested. I'm a glutton for information, so I wanted to know better about how these things worked. It's interesting, since it's not really checking a beating heart, exactly. It's actually monitoring blood moving in the fetus and uses that to simulate the sound of a heartbeat. Wild. It uses the Doppler effect to measure how fast the blood is moving and translates that into a sound for us to hear.

I might have gone beyond your interest level on the subject, so I'll stop typing now. :P

[I had posted about this previously, but I had trouble and it got deleted. Thus, the timing is a bit off, since this post is about a Dr. appointment we had a couple weeks-ish back.]

We had what is our first of the "every month" appointments for Amy before they go into 2x month and then every 3 hours or something -- then baby changes lives forever! Wheee! I know it's time to start really screaming inside my head when we have appt's every other week. Yep, then it's time to get really worried.

Aaanyway... this appointment was some basic stuff following the Nuchal Translucency screening dealie. Lots of questions by both of us that were summed up roughly like this (not in any particular order):

Well... it went something like that, as I recall. That's not a conversation, mind you -- just a random sampling of how things went.

Overall, after the screening, the results are encouraging, but I'm finding it difficult to feel all that comforted, for some reason. I'm not really sure why, but I just don't like the notion that nothing is really "conclusive" at this stage. I'm likely just too stressed in general to let my guard down and "enjoy" what's going on. I'm working on fixing that, but it's still rough.

From the "this is not helping my stress" department: I typed up a big post and it didn't go through (browser problem??) and Amy mentioned having lost a couple posts she had started. I'm looking into it to make sure it's not operator failure for us or if it's a site/server problem. In the meantime, it's looking quiet around here. We plan on updating at least a couple times a week, so this is slowing us down a bit.

I'm working on some client stuff ATM, but I'll get this sorted soon. Thanks for visiting.

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*