From the monthly archives:

October 2009

Questions for the doctor visit on Friday

by Milton on Wed, Oct 14th, 2009

in Doctors, midwives, and doulas,Week 11

Here’s my in-progress list of questions to ask the doctor on Friday.  If anyone has any feedback, suggestions, additions, etc, let me know!

  1. Do you work with any midwives?
  2. What is your induction rate?
  3. What percentage of your patients get an epidural?
  4. What is your Cesarean rate?
  5. Are you okay with deliveries that happen at night or on weekends without inducing?
  6. Do you attend breech births? Frank breech?
  7. What’s your philosophy on going past 40 weeks?
  8. What’s your philosophy on big babies?
  9. What is your philosophy on what to do 24 hours after water has broke if there’s no sign of infection and mom and baby are fine?
  10. What kind of monitoring do you require?
  11. Do you allow movement during labor, and choice of delivery position, birthing baths, etc?

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Still beatin’ at 10 weeks, 4 days!

by Milton on Wed, Oct 14th, 2009

in Doctors, midwives, and doulas,Week 11

Went to another ultrasound today (we’re at 10 weeks, 4 days), and confirmed that the little fig-sized being is still alive, still a-wiggling, and seems to be in optimal position to continue to grow into a human.

I must admit that every doctor’s visit makes me put my excitement in a little box in case I am surprised with sad news and have to put the box of excitement back in storage for a while.  And, the good news always comes very welcomely.

Heartrate: 169 bpm

Size: 3.4 cm

Adjusted due date: May 8th, 2010 (same as from LMP)

I want to scan in the two little ultrasounds we have, they still don’t look like much (I can barely tell which side is the head) but they’re milestones.

We both feel like we can now be more confident in telling people about the pregnancy as there are no warning signs at all of anything going wrong.  We’re trying to tell people in person, as it’s more fun, but there will probably be a group announcement on Oct 23rd (Esther’s birthday party) and shortly thereafter on the internet.

Now, we gotta get serious about figuring out if we’re really going to do this with an OB and a hospital, or if we are going to go the midwife/birthing center/home route.  Just have to make a couple appointments.  But, we’re meeting with the doctor for the first time on Friday, and I think her answers to the questions I’ve made up will help guide us on whether or not she’s on our side with the non-induced, no-epidural, no-episiotomy, no-cesarean route or if we’ll need to look at the other options.

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A quarter of the way there!

by Milton on Sat, Oct 10th, 2009

in Week 11

The baby is also about the size of a kumquat.  Or the size of the head of a hammer, if you go by Tarzan’s pregnancy guide for dudes, which I prefer to do.

Day 70.  10 weeks, or in the 11th week.  However you want to confuse yourself.  Of course, this is going on the 40-week (10 month) calendar from the first day of the last menstrual cycle.  If you count from conception we’re 14 days less far along, give or take 7 days.  Yup.

But, since this is how most people seem to count, and it’s the one that gives us the “highest score”, I’m sticking with that.  2 more weeks til we’re in the second trimester and worrying is supposed to decrease one notch.  Supposedly.

Things to worry about this week

Seems like things become more exciting and more worrisome each week.  Esther picked up a cold in NYC while we were there, which has me worried about H1N1 (sigh).  It’s the only wild card in this that there isn’t a whole lot of “it’s normal, it’s okay, this always happens” in the literature.  Because, of course, it’s a new thing that people don’t really fully understand yet, and also because flus (and their accompanying fevers) are potentially pretty dangerous if you don’t do everything you can to keep temperature down.

But, a cold is not a flu.  And colds are totally fine.  I sort of annoyed Esther this morning with my meta worrying that the cold might actually be (or become) a flu (it doesn’t help that the CDC and other health resources are so vague about the symptoms… how are you supposed to relax when coughing a runny nose are signs of a life-threatening illness?), but of course she’s not worried and I know that she not only has all the information, but is also a bigger worrier than me.  So, I shouldn’t worry, right?

I’m not worried.

My way of coping

I’ve been thinking a lot about how I’m handling this pregnancy by over-saturating myself in information. Being in the huge minority on the babycenter birth club forums. Reading every baby-related book in site. Making long lists of things to avoid, symptoms of problems, myths, fallacies, and misleading studies only to throw them out once I’ve memorized them.

Esther is going through one of the most amazing, scary, and potentially fulfilling events of her life.  It’s happening INSIDE her.  I’m outside.  And yet I want to know what’s going on.  I want to experience some of the amazement, some of the scariness, and as much of the fulfillment from the process as I can.  So that’s why I’m acting like this, I think.  It’s just an observation, not sure if there’s any significance beyond that.  But I do notice that this is not normal behavior.  How do other fathers-to-be cope?

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Record every day, from the very first?

by Milton on Tue, Oct 6th, 2009

in Documentation,Week 10

Uh oh. I’ve started to think about documentation. Like most people of my generation, there are a few relics of evidence that the lives of my parents existed before I was born, but not many.  Mostly sepia-toned roundy-cornered photographs in scrap books, and a few big-event posed pictures propped in silver frames on my grandparent’s glass end tables.

Of course, things are entirely different now.  I have a ton of instant camera photos from camping trips in high school, then a bunch of digital pictures mostly lost during college, then a whole slew of Flickr pictures, and a growing collection of Facebook pictures. Not to mention the just-starting-to-get-warmed-up collection of awkward Flip and iPhone videos that don’t quite know where they want to be stored yet.

I still haven’t heard of a single newborn who has been photographed every day of his/her life.  I’m sure they exist, though, somewhere on the internet. It’s not only possible, but pretty easy to do, and imagine if you had a picture of every day of your life, from the very beginning.  Would you have a different understanding of yourself if you had records that precise? Not just the big things, but also the small things, the insignificant things, the forgettable things.

I’m not saying that I’m going to do this with the future baby in our lives, but I do have to at least talk myself out of it. Because recording everything is my default starting point, and everything less than that is an exercise in practicality.

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Good Times and Nice Hormones

by Esther on Mon, Oct 5th, 2009

in Week 10

Pregnancy gave me a break last night!  We were attending the amazing wedding of some good friends, and I managed not only to stay until the lovely end, but to dance the entire time!

There was no end of the night overwhelming bout of nausea, nor was there the sudden and overwhelming sense of TIRED that comes over me and suddenly turns me into a more short-tempered version of myself.

Of course, as with all pregnancy good times, I automatically had a nagging worry that something was going wrong.  Luckily, I woke this morning with crippling waves of stomach churning, and am currently too exhausted to enjoy the city we are visiting.  Thank goodness?  I guess.

Last night I thought for perhaps the 4th time this week, “Wow.  I am having a terrific time and I am not drunk in the least.”  It’s kind of amazing.  When I had curbed my drinking in an effort to get pregnant during the past year, drunk friends around me were frankly annoying.  Now, my drunk friends are symbols of the best kind of love and community affection.  Are these my nice hormones at work?  The ones that will make me a patient and kind mother?  If so, will they continue to surge through my system in ever-greater quantity?  Let’s hope.

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The chain reaction of pregnancy

by Milton on Thu, Oct 1st, 2009

in Home,Week 09

The having a baby situation has set into motion a quick little transformation of our lives and our thinking about life in general.  As soon as we started seriously considering the hope that Esther’s pregnancy will result in a new member of our family, we realized that our current studio loft isn’t quite big enough to house all 3 of us.  There’s not a single wall between rooms unless you count the bathroom as a room.

So, we considered a few options.  Renting our loft and renting another bigger place somewhere.  Selling our loft and renting a bigger place somewhere.  Selling our loft and buying a bigger place somewhere.  Etc.  Right now, it would be difficult to get enough rent for our space to cover the mortgage, so that option was out.  Not to mention that being landlords seemed to be one responsibility too many in the next couple years.  Due to the bad seller’s market right now, it also didn’t make sense to sell low and then buy later on when, most likely, the market has rebounded.  So, the only option that made sense was to both sell and buy a new place at the same time.  The only problem being that we’re now doing three high-stress activities at once (according to the Holmes Rahe stress scale, pregnancy is 40 points, a new major mortgage is 32 points, and changing residences is 20 points = 92 points).

Now, as previously noted, shortly before Esther got pregnant, I left my nicely-paying job to strike out on my own.  As soon as I started talking with brokers about potential pre-approval on a new loan, I realized that self-employed people aren’t able to get loans anymore unless they’ve got 2+ years of tax returns showing that their self-employment is up to par.

Damn.  And it almost ruined all of our plans.

But then I simply asked the primary client of the product we’re working on to change me from a contract employee to a full-time employee and they, kindly, agreed.  One of them had recently had a similar situation cause problems for them when buying a house, and so he understood what I was going through.  So, now, on paper, I have a full-time job, even though in reality it’s not like that at all.  All to get a house, to make a safe place for the new potential baby.

The chain of logic from baby to house to job is making it all seem like we live quite regular domestic lives, in fact.  Luckily, there’s enough wiggle room in this scenario to still do things in our own quirky way.  The fact that we’re trying to sell a house right when the market is at its bottom, for example.

After a couple weeks of intensive searching, we lucked out and found a place that we really like, in a neighborhood that we think has a lot of promise, and which isn’t too far from downtown.  It’ll be a great change.  The offer we made is contingent on the sale of our current house, so now the chain is linking back on itself.  It’s more of a web, really.  Everything is becoming dependent on everything else.  As long as all prongs of our plan step forward at the same time, there should be no problem, right?

No Prob Limo.

No Prob Limo
www.comedycentral.com

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