D/D Free Since 1973

We got the results back from the quadruple screening for various nasty diseases and disfiguring syndromes and everything looks to be great. We scored the lowest possible risk for Down Syndrome and other genetic disorders (1 in 10,000 chance).

On the opposite end of the spectrum, there is 100% certainty that we will have an attractive baby, because we are so fine. Recognize!

National Geographic Explorer: Philly Metro Edition

You ever watch those nature shows where they pump monkeys full of some experimental drug and test their cognitive skills? Usually they’ll have some gizmo with shapes, and if the monkey gets the puzzle right, he gets a banana or something. Given my love for monkeys and their monkeyshines, I considered this to be the perfect analogy for what Linda and I went through trying to pick out the right stroller for Baby G.

Our initial expedition took us to Norman’s Juvenile Furniture, deep in the heart of the Irish section of South Philly. As our scents reek of the Italian section (a mixture of ‘gravy’ [marinara sauce] and gabagool), the natives kept a close eye on our activity, on the chance that we wanted to muscle in on their local watering hole. Think Meerkat Manor, but with 75% more random daytime drunkenness.

Norman’s can best be described as the kind of place that was a neighborhood grocery until some enterprising local, presumably Norman, decided to start a new career by hijacking a Babies R Us delivery truck. The place was packed to the gills with nearly every kind of baby accoutrement that you could dream of. There was almost no room in the place to walk. The space that wasn’t taken up by product was taken up by female shoppers in various stages of pregnancy, herding their screaming broods through vicious arm yanks and high pitched shrieking. The entire scene was deeply unsettling.

The stroller aisle looked like a used car lot. There were strollers on the shelves, strollers in boxes, strollers hanging from the ceiling, and the newest models spit-polished and lined up front-to-back along the length of the aisle. After we kicked a few tires, a salesman, smelling rubes, came to join us. He looked for all the world like a cross between Paulie Walnuts and Al Bundy. You could just feel the self loathing pouring off of this poor soul as he forced the description of each stroller from between his tightly drawn lips. I almost asked if he was trying to pass a kidney stone. Needless to say, the search was somewhat less than fruitful.

As were leaving Norman’s, some of the famous ‘local color’ was on display. Two shirtless, drunken morons stood toe-to-toe in the middle of the street, yelling at each other over some perceived slight the one’s “junkie brother” had directed at the other. As a fan of monkeys beating their chests and hurling poop at one another, I was fascinated by this display and stopped to see if any action was going to take place. Unfortunately, Linda wanted no part of this and made me move along. I tried to explain to her that this was the Irish neighborhood, where they settled things with their fists and had a drink together afterwards, but she was having none of it. Sigh…guess I’ll just have to watch UFC.

A few weeks later, we decided to go to the Babies R Us in Beautiful South Jersey® to try out more strollers. This time, we were the monkeys.

Crossing the threshold into Babies R Us for the first time is like entering another dimension. The normal laws of common sense, physics and economics do not apply, and there is much flailing about and resignation to one’s fate as both ‘mature’ (overly so) and permanently indebted to large credit card companies based in Wilmington, DE. No escape.

We went over to the well-kept stroller aisle and started messing around with these monstrosities. If you've never fooled around with the new generation of strollers, I suggest you take out a student loan and get a master’s degree in mechanical engineering. They are that complicated. What bugged me most about them is that they are presented as “easy to use” by the prominent display of giant red buttons and levers. Not so. These things are Rube Goldberg contraptions that are impossible to fold without the help of a professional trained in the art of origami on a mountaintop in Tibet for seven years. Both of us have gone to graduate school, and yet we looked like monkeys with a printing press trying to fold the stupid things. We looked so foolish that I secretly suspected we were on Candid Camera or Punk’d. Finally we relented to expediency, and a wise Babies R Us ninja descended from the rafters to teach us the Way of the Peg Perego.

All this is a roundabout way of saying that the baby registries are up and ready to go (top right.) Feel free to donate to a worthy cause: Baby G! Donations may not be tax deductible, but Baby G will certainly thank you when his/her bottom is kept from rashing up through the magic of Boudreaux’s Butt Paste.

I'm Looking for a Heartbeat

Like the old Don Johnson song, Linda had a doctor's appt. yesterday to hear Baby G's heartbeat. Here's the blow by blow:

Hi Family!

Mike and I had our 4 month appointment today and heard Baby G's heartbeat! The doc said everything sounded just perfect! About 150-160 beats per minute.

I've gained 8 lbs so far - doc says that's good for where I am now....although she and mike are trying to get me to go to the gym and start swimming - ugh! I can't imagine putting on a bathing suit! (She seems to think that when it starts getting really hot out (and I get even bigger) I won't be able to do my 22 block walk every morning to the subway.... so she thinks I need a plan B for my exercise).

Then, I had to have blood drawn for the quadruple screen, and I guess I was dehydrated - because after 3 attempts to find a vein, they had me sit in the waiting room and drink a super big gulp sized water - then, the technician had to get a doctor to draw the blood - and they did it from my wrist (yuck, although, I liked that better than from the top of my hand where they were originally poking around). I've really been doing well with the water, but it was first thing this morning, and if I drink to much I can't hold it on the commute in...I guess Baby G. was thirsty this morning and wants me to start carrying a water bottle around with me (?)

LOVE you all! We'll keep you posted for the big appointment 7/3 when we find out if its a boy or a girl!

Love,
Linda

Neck Ears?

The definitive source on what is going on with Baby G is What to Expect When You're Expecting. This week's update was good enough to pass along, if only for the revelation that ears sprout out of your neck. Go figure.

Curious why your body is finally looking like it's pregnant? That's, because your baby is growing bigger each week — he or she is as long as four and a half inches right now. Need a better visual (and a snack)? Hold a large navel orange in your hand — that's how big your little darlin' is. (Now that you're done looking, peel that orange and eat it for a delicious two servings of vitamin C!). So what keeps your baby busy all day? Mostly, your fetus is in rehearsals — practice, practice, practicing, and getting ready for that big debut. Babies practice breathing, sucking, and swallowing so that when they leave your comfy womb and move into your comfy house, they'll have the skills necessary to survive.

Body movements continue to get practice this week, too. But because your baby weighs so little (a bit over two ounces), you won't feel the calisthenics going on inside your abdominal gym. But don't let that fool you. Your fetus is holding daily aerobics classes — kicking, curling toes, and moving those little arms and legs.

And with each passing week, your fetus is looking more and more like the baby you're picturing in your dreams. By now, the ears are positioned properly on the sides of the head (they used to be in the neck) and the eyes are moving from the side of the head to the front of the face — where they'll soon meet your loving gaze.

Lazy Bones and Vendetta

The third doctor’s appointment gave us a chance to see Baby G for the third time. This particular time, it was in the context of measurables. They were measuring the kid for development size and some kinda thing in its neck to make sure it was going to be normal.

Unfortunately, Baby G wasn’t all awake and active like the previous time. This frustrated the ultrasound tech, who had Linda shifting about in an attempt to get the kid into the right position for the measurements. Apparently, the lazy butt was sleeping and couldn’t be bothered to cooperate with us; a hint of stubbornness to come, perhaps? We waited around for awhile and finally got the right look for the close-up. Here’s the pic, taken at 12 weeks:

It turns out that everything is in its right place and all systems are Go. Good news.

That same visit, we visited with a councilor regarding tests for all manner of genetic anomalies that the kid could have. This led us to a nervous moment. When Linda went in for the initial test, she tested positive as a carrier for cystic fibrosis. As such, I needed to get tested as well. If I was a carrier, then there was a sizable chance that the kid would get this disease. Fortunately, I tested negative for that gene, so all was good; crisis averted.

Of course, it didn’t even have to be this way. Linda’s allegedly positive test turned out to be the result of the misreading of the results by an inexperienced young resident physician. Kids these days… Obviously I wasn’t pleased with this, especially the part about my having to get blood drawn unnecessarily. I remarked to the genetic councilor that the dopey resident needed to get his/her blood drawn for no good reason.

Next: Test Drive

Linda's Second Doctor's Visit

Tuesday, May 8

Modern technology is great. We had no idea that on the first doctor's visit (4/10/07) we'd get to see the kid on ultrasound. It was unfortunate that we didn't know that, since we figured I wouldn't need to go, that they'd only be doing blood tests and stuff. Well, they did do one, and I missed out on seeing the kid for the first time. Suck. But Linda got to see it, and here's the first look at Baby G, at 8 weeks:

(between the two pluses)

Hey there! As they say in South Philly, “how you’se doin’?”

I was pretty excited for the second visit, which was this past Tuesday. Initially, they were only going to listen to the heartbeat. This was to be done with this weird tool the nurse practitioner (NP) dragged around like an old style blood pressure machine. It was some kinda fancy microphone hooked up to what looked like a Fischer-Price loudspeaker. Verrrry advanced looking technology…though not quite so. Not surprisingly, when NP put it up to Linda' belly, she couldn't isolate the sound of the heartbeat. All we heard was a bunch of static like a 2-way radio switching over to talk mode, interspersed with short bits of a low swishing sound. Couldn't tell what it was from where we stood, though NP said the swishing might have been the heartbeat.

NP wasn't feeling it, and if she wasn't, we weren't. So off we went to the ultrasound room, even though weren't supposed to be having one done on that visit. Everybody wanted to see at Baby G at that point. NP fired up the machine, and I got my first look at Baby G. (Unfortunately we don't have that pic; too excited to ask.) The kid was right there, in living color(ish). It really hit right then that we were going to be parents. For his/her part, Baby G couldn't sit still with all the excitement. (S)he was jumping all around like an astronaut training for zero gravity in one of those Vomit Comet planes. The kid would jump, hit the amniotic sack wall, and bounce around like a slow motion pinball. Way cool. Structurally, all arms and legs were in the right place, and everything looked great. NP gave the thumbs up and we left with big smiles having seen Baby G in action. Sweet.

Next: Ultrasound #3 and 'Wake Up, Lazy Bones'

This is the Beginning

Though we found out about it three weeks before, it woulda the most classic April Fool’s Day joke ever. Epic. I just noticed that the date on the picture we first posted was April 1. What if she wouldn’t have found out until three weeks later? She could have had me going for at least an hour or so before I really believed it. But it is me we’re talking about, here. I believe any story that amuses me, no matter how far fetched. And this one was the #1 bestseller.

So I’ll just cut to the chase: Linda and I are going to be parents.

How cool is that.

The look on her face and she descended the stairs to tell me about it was priceless. Somewhere between winning the lottery and stepping in dog crap, that look told me pretty much everything I needed to know. It was the triumphant battle standard raised and also the trepidation at the maw that beckoned. It was the kind of look that said, “nothing will ever be the same again.” It was at once exultant and fearful, which I have to figure are the two emotions that well up in most cases where the couple has been planning for a pregnancy.

Not to go into too much detail, but we had been trying for a reasonable period of time to have a kid. We’re recently married. We’re both 30-something and weren’t getting any younger, so there was no time like the present to get started. And we don’t particularly want to be the ‘old dad/mom’, taking our kid to school with children parented by people who are barely old enough to buy beer and whose ‘shorts’ go down to mid-calf level. As far as finances, we were as ready as we were ever going to be.

So, after re-running the test like the OCD sufferers we are, we officially passed into the stunned out of our socks phase. It’s one thing to be prepping for this news, but the reality of the situation hit us like a ton of bricks: we are going to be responsible for the care and upkeep of another human being. That’s not even mentioning that we’ll have to fill the kid full of useful information, like calculus, parallel parking and why ‘Empire’ is the greatest Star Wars movie.

But it didn’t take us long to get the train rolling. After a morning of trepidation and fretting, a happiness bordering on bliss set in. This is what we had been waiting for. We were going to be doing one of the only things humans are on this planet can agree we’re all here for: making more humans. If I was happy, Linda was just about jumping out of her skin.

Of course, detailed planning had to begin immediately. By the evening, Linda had done just about everything but pick out a college for the kid (I think she may have missed her true calling as an Army procurement officer.) A subscription to the Consumer Reports website was purchased, and very quickly I became intimately familiar with the blood feud between the Baby-nator 9000 and ‘Lil Luffentoten strolling systems. Who would have figured something so innocuous could inspire the online equivalent of the War of the Roses? But for the love of Pete, what is with the breast pumping machine?! I wish I was Jerry Seinfeld right now; that’s an entire episode.

See the things I’m learning, breast pumps and whatnot? Next thing you know, I’ll be voting Republican. Heck, I’ve already caught myself more than once moaning about the need for tax cuts in Philly. The city wage tax is outta control, man! Fear not, though: the kid will grow up on a steady diet of Keepin’ it Green and Eatin’ Right.

We’re a very happy couple, and we’re happy to share this with our families and friends. Thank you for being there with us. Even though some of you are far away (too far!), know that all we’ll pass along all the wonderful things you’ve taught on to our child.

Linda sends her love and I’ll sign off by saying that having this kid will eventually allow me to fulfill a lifelong dream: sitting on a porch and yelling at kids to get off my lawn. Heh. Damn kids.

Stay tuned here for more over the next 28-ish weeks, because we’ll be letting you follow every step of the way. Maybe I’ll even do a live blog from the delivery room. ;-)