In the hospital

The waiting game has begun.



We checked in last night at 8PM. Initially Kelli was going to stay here by herself and I would join her the next morning. I changed my mind. Decided to stick around. Eh.

She took an Ambein to help sleep. Didn't work. She slept very little. I tried to sleep but the bed for men....not comfy. It's a small chair the expands out to a bed. Eh.

This morning we were both awake around 5AM. I left to get coffee and told Kelli to not have the baby while I was gone. She complied.

Around 7AM her Doctor arrived, examined her and then broke her water. I turned my head for that event and every changing of the pads after that.

Felt bad eating in front of Kelli as she can't eat till it's over.

It's now 11:45AM. Contractions about every 2 minutes. Only 1 CM at 7AM. Will be getting checked again shortly.

We have plenty of tech to keep up busy. Two Ipads, Macbook Pro, Two Nexus One smartphones and one Zune.

One thing about being preggo. Ya kinda have to give up your privacy. It's only one nurse and her doctor. The nurse is extremely nice and helpful, but I couldn't be preggo. Having someone "take a look" under my gown every now and then. Eh.

Next update when something changes.

38 weeks - only 2 days left!!!!

We are in the final stretch before delivery day.  I have today to do some cleaning and get the dogs ready.  They got baths yesterday and today is the dreaded nail clipping day.  I also need to do some general cleaning before mom comes tomorrow.

Tomorrow is a big day.  I may be in the hospital at the end of it, or I may have one last night in my bed.  I have a car seat safety check at 11am.  I had signed both Darren and I up for it, but Darren is working and he has been flying so much lately there is pretty much no chance he will be available.  It kind of sucks because he is the one who installed the car seats in the first place.  I'm hoping he did it right and I don't have to correct him.  Things always get lost in translation when I try to explain things to him.

At 1:30 my mom is flying in.  I'm really hoping her flight is on time because I have a doctor's appointment at 2:30.  I didn't think I would have another appointment, but it seems I do.  The doctor wants me to come in during the afternoon so she can check to see if I'm dilated at all.  If I am dilated to 3cm or more then I don't have to go to the hospital tomorrow night.  They will just check me in Wednesday morning and start the Pitocin right away.  If I'm not dilated at all, or not enough, its off to the hospital tomorrow night so they can start me on the medicine to help dilate my cervix.  I will get that medicine all night and then the Pitocin will start early Wednesday morning.  Cross your fingers that everything works the way it's supposed to!  My doctor says once the Pitocin starts I should have a baby by the evening.  If it gets too late in the evening on Wednesday and nothing is happening I will be having a c-section Wednesday night.  I hope I don't end up there, but I'm prepared for it.  I have had several people ask me if I'm nervous about it.  I am not nervous at all.  I am very prepared for what's coming and it doesn't scare me in the least.  I'm ready for whatever comes.

I had one final ultrasound last Thursday for a last check of the baby's size.  The previous one had her measured very large, in the 90th percentile, so I was expecting the same this time.  Fortunately for me she was measuring pretty average, about 7 pounds.  I was concerned at first because of the disparity in measurements, but the doctor assured me she looks great.  These are just estimates and can be way off.  She thinks the last measurement may have been wrong.  I'm not meant to have a huge baby anyway.  She said if I was still measuring that large I would have just been scheduled for a c-section anyway.  I'm glad she isn't that big.  In light of this news I have revised my weight guess at birth to 7 pounds, 7 ounces.  Darren is still convinced she will be 9 pounds, but I sincerely hope he is wrong.  We will find out in 2 days!

Names

So every week I think of a new name for the thing hanging out in Kelli's uterus. The B word will never be a name. Check back each week for the new name. My weeks don't coincide with the number of weeks it's been hanging out but to the number of weeks I've known it was in there.

Week One - Offspring

Week Two - Money Pit

Week Three - Parasite

Week Four - B-Pain (for Breast Pain)

Week Five - Chastity (not a nice name)

Week Six - Energy Sucker

Week Seven - Up Chucker

Week Eight - I-Mixed (Apple I-Pad came out last week)

Week Nine - Anti-Coupe

Week Ten - Elasticity

Week Eleven - Arbez (read it backwards)

Week Twelve - The Thing in Kelli's belly

Week Thirteen - Moombassa - a little late...for Black History Month

Week Fourteen - Spore

Week Fifteen - Bon BeBe

Week Sixteen - Forty Two

Week Seventeen - Fluffy

Week Eighteen - Bumpin'

Week Nineteen - Mookie

Week Twenty - Fooderator

Week Twentyone - Blackjacqueline (cause it's 21)

Week Twenty two - HoldOnIGottaPee

Week Twenty Three - NoMoFlyin' - Kelli has been grounded till August

Week Twenty Four- Penelope

Week Twenty Five - Sugarbaby

Week Twenty Six - Dijon

Week Twenty Seven - Rib Kicker

Week Twenty Eight - Avantika - Indian for Princess

Week Twenty Nine - Helvetica

Week Thirty - Lil'Firecracker (July 4th!)

Week Thirty One -Vuvuzela

Week Thirty Two - Thunder down under

Week Thirty Three - Funky Cold Medina

Week Thirty Four - Serendipity

Week Thirty Five - Natali

Last Post as a regular guy

Sometime Wednesday I will be able to use the saying, "As a parent,". Looking forward to it. All the new statements about life I can make, "As a parent I think it's vital to teach Republican values to your child, so they can live a full and prosperous life."

Kelli and I are very laid back. I've read a total of zero books on parenting. Well I've read, "Shit my Dad Says" and am in the middle of "Yes, You're Pregnant, but What about me?". Maybe those count.

Still not 100% positive on FMLA leave. My employer has a multipage FMLA form that literally gets passed around to 5+ departments including an in house medical staff for review. Kelli had one form and done. Of course I work for a corporation with 50,000+ employees. She has maybe 2000 total....maybe.

Looking forward to meeting my daughter. Still odd to type. Her name will be Natali Amelia XXXXXXXXXX Byrd. The second middle name will be revealed Wednesday. Not even Kelli knows. Why two middle names? Well I grew up with two middle names....that's why.

Ok, you're right!

This entire pregnancy I have heard one thing over and over that has really annoyed me.  "Oh, you're due in August?  It's going to be so hard to be pregnant in the middle of the hot summer."  Every time I heard this it made me want to scream.  It's summer, in Texas, of course I'm going to be hot!  I would be hot even if I weren't pregnant.  I just did not understand why that would make any bit of difference.  Up to this point it hasn't.  I don't spend a lot of time outside, so it made no difference to me what the temperature was, except when I got in my car at the end of the workday.  Who wouldn't be hot getting into a hot car though?  Well, today I give in.  You are all right.  It figures that my last week of pregnancy would land during the hottest week of the entire year.  It's 105 degrees today, and I am definitely noticing.  I typically wear scrubs to work and they are extremely comfortable when I'm a normal size.  Now I have to wear tent scrubs.  They are huge on me, except around my stomach.  They are just awkward and uncomfortable to wear when they don't fit right, and they have been making me hotter lately.  This morning I put them on and immediately decided it wasn't going to work.  I took them off and wore jeans and a t-shirt with sandals instead.  The jeans weren't exactly cool, but they were much better than the scrubs.  We went out to lunch for a coworker's last day today, and it was extremely hot in the restaurant.  I was uncomfortable, but it would have been unbearable if I had been in scrubs.  I think I will just wear my normal clothes for the rest of the week.  It's not like I'm going in the lab this week anyway.  I'm just sitting at my desk all day dealing with paperwork.  I can't wait for this week to be over!

37 weeks

Some people/websites I have seen say I am officially full term now. Others say 38 weeks is full term. Either way, our baby is likely to have no problems if born now, and will almost certainly not need any time in the NICU. I would be fine with her wanting to come out any day now. I only have 8 days left until hospital check in, but I would be perfectly happy if she would like to come before that. I guarantee she is big enough now. :-)

Darren is convinced she will be over 9 pounds at birth. I don't think she will be. I'm guessing 8 pounds 3 ounces. She will still be a bit early, so she can't possibly be that big! I don't know why he wishes that on me anyway. It's a bit mean. He doesn't have to deal with the consequences of a giant baby (tearing or c-section). At any rate we are really looking forward to delivery day. Before that though, I'm really looking forward to my last day of work! Only 4 days left! We have our final doctor's appointment this Thursday. I'm really hoping Darren can make it to the last one. He has been really good about making all of my appointments up to this point, but he had to move his schedule around this month and they are really short staffed, so he has been actually working a lot lately. We are having a final sonogram on Thursday and I know if he isn't there he probably won't believe me when I tell him how big they think the baby is. We'll see. It's still a couple of days away anyway. Saturday is the only day before delivery that we are both off of work, so I think we may plan a nice dinner or something. I might see about having a nice spicy dinner. Maybe it will kickstart something. :-) I will walk until my feet fall off too. I'm really hoping to avoid the c-section.

I got my paperwork all squared away at work today. I will officially be off for 12 weeks. It works out really nicely because my first day back will be November 1st, which lets me miss 3 ends of the month. That makes me very happy. Of course, my short term disability only pays me 70% of my salary for 5 weeks. I have to use vacation for the first week, and then I am supplementing the other 5 weeks with another week of vacation. Then, I have 6 weeks off work with no pay. I've been saving for a while for this, so we should be just fine. We are spending a good deal to take this trip to Oregon though. That combined with last minute baby purchases has made my bank account look sad. I guess it will continue to look sad with daycare expenditures later too. I will get used to it I suppose. That's life.

Vacancy

I've built a crib, bassinet and now a swing bed thingy. Natali is going to have more places to rest than me!

I love Amazon.com. Kelli likes Amazon.com. We are "Prime" members meaning we get unlimited free 2 day shipping and $3.99 per item NEXT DAY shipping. We get deliveries weekly. I order everything from Gilette Fusion 5 razors on sale for $3 (Free shipping!) to computer cases to headphones (cheap $2 per pair so when I break them I don't cry) to socks. Yes socks.

We ventured into Babies R' Us the other day to look at a few items and get an idea on everything else we needed. I brought along my Ipad and loaded up Amazon.com. One great perk of Amazon.com is that many items have several user reviews. I'm HUGE on researching products prior to buying. Amazon makes it easy. We walked up and down the aisle with cradle swings. We found one we liked that was $159.99 at in store while just $111 on Amazon. Free shipping. The unit had good reviews so we bought it. On Amazon.

Amazon has really good "subscribe and save" deals. Once we get an idea on diaper use, we can set diapers up on a subscription. As long as they are cheaper than our local store....it's a no brainer. Diapers delivered as we use them.

I think I am done building stuff. I think. Less than 2 weeks. It's getting real. Looking forward to filling this vacancy!