A New Year And Soon A New Life

2012 sure was a crazy year, wasn't it?  The past year saw, among other things, guys swimming really fast in the Summer Olympics (Phelps and Lochte), a South Korean guy (Psy) that became a cult icon for singing something that included an entire four English words, and someone (Felix Baumgartner) actually jumping out of a helium balloon 128,100 feet above earth and then living to tell the story.  Oh, and one last item of note that happened in 2012 is the fact that I impregnated a woman thus forcing the coming year, 2013, to become the year that I become a father (and the woman who I impregnated, also my wife, to become a mother).

Its been almost a full two months since I last posted an update on this blog and, needless to say, there are a few things I think you may find interesting.

First, I want to show you a picture.  This picture is a 3-D sonogram picture from December 21st.  If you notice, Little Baby Wyatt, an entire negative 112 days old, is demonstrating a hand gesture seemingly with the intent of communicating something to the effect of "leave me alone."  I want it be known that the very day he is born he is soooo grounded; he needs to know "flicking off" mommy and daddy will NOT be tolerated.

Stop Looking And Prodding At Me!

In addition to having the sonogram done that day there was the typical pre-natal check up and talk to the doctor.  It was during our discussion with the doctor, Dr. Warner, that I got some really "disturbing" news.  Dr. Warner informed us that Carly, although currently in great physical shape needed to exercise more.  The reason for this, she explained, is that exercising would help in lowering her blood pressure and working her muscles would make for an easier birth.  Her suggestion was to do some walking and the easiest way to do the walking, she posed, was to park far from store fronts of the places that we shopped.  As she said this I mentally agonized with the fact that this meant no more of the awesomely fantastic "Expectant Mother Parking" that I had become accustomed to utilizing (despite Carly's embarrassment).  Below you will see where we used to be able to park and where we are now forced to park at Wegman's.  This is a travesty that cannot be oversold.

This is where we used to park

This is where we have to park now at Wegman's (that's our red vehicle on the right)

On a bit more of a serious note we learned about a month ago that Carly has gestational diabetes.  When I first found this out I was kind of freaked out a bit.  I was thinking something to the effect of "first she has high blood pressure, now diabetes-there is no way this is going to be a 'smooth' pregnancy."  However, once Carly and I ascertained a bit of information we learned that this isn't an "end of the world" type problem.  Carly now has to take her blood sugar four times per day and monitor the meals she eats.  In a weird way, this may actually be a good thing.  We had gotten into some really bad dietary habits from eating out a lot to snacking on sugary foods throughout the day.  The gestational diabetes has forced Carly (and to a large extent myself) to consciously examine the foods she is consuming and thus make better decisions.

There are a few more items I would like to quickly update you on:

• Carly, to my surprise, has yet to really seem to act "hormonal" yet.  I have been hearing for the past five months about how big of a "B" Carly will become with the pregnancy.  To this point it really hasn't happened yet.  (Although a couple of weeks ago while grocery shopping she threw a fit over something really stupid and threw out all of the coupons.)
• Despite a couple of risk factors Carly has developed, the high blood pressure and gestational diabetes, the baby is doing perfectly fine so far.  Every test has come back exactly as good as we could hope.  In the last round of tests Wyatt's size showed a result of being in the 40 percentile meaning that at this stage in his development Wyatt is larger than 39 percent of his peers and smaller than 60 percent of them-basically ideal.
• Carly keeps wanting to "spoon" when we wake up and for me to hold her tummy.  Holy hell, I really hate laying in bed.  The next few months better move quickly because I don't know how much I can take of this "let's just lay in bed for a while" thing.
• I received three of the "so you're going to be a dad" type books for Christmas.  Although I am extremely grateful for them I just need to get something off of my chest that they all discuss-"male sympathy pregnancy."  I'm sorry, I just can't buy the whole male sympathy pregnancy thing.  To this point I just see men who supposedly "experience pregnancy symptoms" as guys who are just jealous of the attention their partner is receiving and thus (even subconsciously) want to feel what she is feeling.  As soon as my breasts start feeling tender or I have menstrual cramps I will gladly retract this statement. 

In addition to being pregnant, Carly is really starting to look pregnant now too.  Below you will see a couple of shots of Carly's "baby bump."

December 21: 23 weeks, 5 days along

Thanksgiving Day, November 22: 19 weeks, 4 days along

Something that I have found interesting with pregnancy is the way nature kind of gives a parent-to-be a time period to get ready for the new addition.  A byproduct of the nine months given to a human offspring to be ready for its life is the fact that the nine months also gives its parents time to get ready for the arrival.  The past few months have been full of us collecting diapers, outfits, and preparing a nursery for Little Baby Wyatt.  In addition we have been able to (probably more me than Carly) try to mentally prepare for the responsibility of being parents.  As I sit here right now we already have about forty outfits, eight packages of diapers, and four boxes of wipes.  In addition, we will be having a diaper party and baby shower in the next couple of months.  I cannot thank nature enough for this little buffer zone to parenthood.

That is just about I have for all of you for now.  Just as an FYI Carly has a sleep apnea test this Thursday night (basically she snores a lot and they are trying to find out if its a symptom of her high blood pressure) and then she has a pre-natal test on Friday.  Oh, and for those of you following my baby thought splurges on Twitter (@babyBlogED), I got a new smartphone so I'll be splurging a lot more!  Yay!

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I continue to wish you all pleasant reading and, in spirit of the new year, I hope you all have a great 2013,

---Ed

First Sonogram: Baby Is Definitely Not A Kumquat.

Hello again.  It has now been twenty-nine days since I last posted about our upcoming baby.  Since then Carly and I have been on vacation-likely our last vacation ever without the burden excitement of being parents.  Also, yesterday we had our first sonogram and thus were able to see our baby for the first time ever.

To begin with, let's discuss the sonogram.  As I mentioned, Carly and I were able to see our little baby for the first time yesterday.  What an experience that was.  First of all, to this point in the pregnancy I've been able to kind of compartmentalize the idea of becoming a father a little by thinking of the baby as a walnut/Lima bean/kumquat/whatever-odd-food-item-you-can-think-of rather than a real person.  However, yesterday confirmed that, yes indeed, there is a real person with a real beating heart living and growing inside of my wife's tummy and that the implications of that fact are going to be far greater than a walnut or a kumquat would be (it seems like every morning Carly is informing me that our baby is the size of a different food item).

I'm not quite sure I'll ever forget the day yesterday.  Carly and I both went into work and then met at our apartment to go to the appointment.  I was fairly nervous for it while Carly, as she seems to always be with anything to do with the baby, was really excited.  After sitting in the waiting room for a few minutes we were called back into the sonogram room.  Everyone had told me that, being so relatively early in the pregnancy, we wouldn't really be able to see anything more than a blob.  This expectation couldn't have been farther from the truth.

I was amazed with how well defined the baby's features were and how much the baby looked like a real person.  We were able to clearly see things like the baby's tiny little rapidly beating heart, its head (with a tiny little brain inside), its tiny little arms, its tiny little legs (which were crossed), and a tiny little nose with tiny little ears, among other features.The doctor told us the baby's CRL (as we learned in a previous post, the "crown rump length") was a total of five centimeters-less than two inches!!!  Seeing all those "tiny little" features and having them all add up to just five centimeters was and still is just incredible to me.

Another thing that I found amazing was that the baby was sleeping the whole time.  Maybe this should be embarrassing for me to admit but I had no idea that babies actually sleep in the womb.  The doctor said she was nudging the baby to try to wake him/her up-I thought she was just cracking a not-so-amusing joke.   Carly explained to me afterwards that this wasn't an odd joke but rather a factual thing that was going on.  It also should be noted that the baby, despite the doctor's apparent best efforts, refused to be awoken.  Obviously this baby has Carly's deep sleep habits.

(If you scroll down to the bottom of this post you will see three pictures from the sonogram.  We still don't know the sex of the baby and won't know for about another six to ten weeks.)

After the sonogram part was done we were escorted into another room where another doctor came in to discuss the actual medical results that were accomplished during the sonogram.  The woman explained to us that they measured the back of the neck and the nasal passage along with a few other things to help determine certain risk factors and so far everything has come back good for us and the baby.  At one point the woman said to me "congratulations, dad" as she left the room.  It kind of struck me when she said that; she was the first person other than Carly to refer to me as "dad."  It was just another one of those "gulp" type moments for me.

One item that I thought was pretty funny about the various rooms that we were in was that there were smelling salts taped everywhere.  The sonogram room had salts taped to the monitors and the other rooms had the salts taped to the paper towel dispenser.  Just kind of an odd thing I thought.

In addition to the sonogram, there have been other noteworthy things that have happened in the past four-plus weeks since my last post.  One such item was our vacation that we took to Nags Head, North Carolina last week (a town in an area known as The Outer Banks).  There are a couple of reasons I'm going to discuss our vacation in the baby blog.  The first reason is that it was, like earlier mentioned, likely myself and Carly's last vacation without being parents.  Secondly, as I will further discuss, it gave me the opportunity to "study" a couple of other fathers-my brothers.

This may sound like something extremely unimportant in the grand scheme of things but during our vacation part of me was thinking about how this would be the last time I would be able to do these things without having to worry about a dirty diaper, or a car seat, or baby formula, etc..  I'll be honest, the selfish part of me was kind of bummed about this fact.  However, there is another part of me that is kind of looking forward to having a tiny little person to share the various elements of the vacation with, especially as he or she gets older.

One of the more strange things for me that has come out of my impending fatherhood is how I look at my two brothers and almost study how they act as fathers themselves.  For those of you who don't know, I have two younger brothers: Rick is two years younger than me and has a four year old daughter and Brian who is four years younger than me and has a one year old daughter.  With me being the oldest, I have almost always experienced certain life's milestones before either of my brothers.  For me looking for advice from my younger brothers, even if its not quite discernible to them that that's what I'm doing, is really really awkward for me.  Sharing a house while on vacation with them gave me a little bit of a venue to where I could at least study their interactions and handling of certain situations so that, at the very least, I might know a little of what to expect in the future.

Other than for all that there really isn't much more else to discuss at this point.  Our next appointment is in four weeks on November, 2.  There won't be a sonogram done then, just a basic pre-natal check up that day from the way I understand it.

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I continue to wish you all pleasant reading,

---Ed

The Baby

The Little Baby And All Of His/Her 5cm

The 3-D Image

Babe, Are You Being CRAZY! or "Just" Pregnant?

So, its now been a couple of weeks since I updated the progress of the pregnancy and the lives that surround it.  For those of you in a hurry, here's quick snapshot of the stuff that has gone on:

• Carly isn't fat yet
• Carly acts crazy a lot of times-some of it is normal, some of it I'm not sure about yet.
• According to a site, the baby is 3/4" CRL and has developed all major organs, muscles, and nerves.

With that out of the way, here is the unabridged version of all the goings-on of the past two weeks...

We are now about two months into the pregnancy.  Carly, at least to my untrained and usually unobservant eyes, doesn't seem to have put on any extra weight from the baby-no signs of "showing" yet.  I'm not really sure when we should expect to see physical signs but I'm guessing it should be sometime soon.

Since first finding out we are having a baby Carly has been trying to get me to read books on the pregnancy.  There's this book by Jenny McCarthy, Belly Laughs, that Carly is convinced I will "looooooove."  I doubt this opinion of hers greatly and haven't taken this leap of faith for her yet.  Although the book is only 165 pages, I'm hoping I can find the cliff notes version of it on Amazon or something.

Apparently, via information gathered from lilypie.com, the baby right now is about the size of a walnut.  Its crown rump length, or CRL, is about three-quarters of an inch, and, like I mentioned in the outline above, has developed the basic elements of all major organs, muscles, and nerves.  This fact is amazing to me and I really hadn't thought about it until about a week ago.  It's so hard for me to wrap my head around all of the biological elements going inside my wife that will lead to another walking talking human being.  When someone cuts their hand, for example, its relatively easy to see how some thread will lead to the closing and thus healing of the wound.  However, looking at another human being and imagining that person creating another human being within their body is absolutely mind boggling to me, let alone the person doing the creating is my wife and is creating our future son or daughter.  Wow.

One thing that is really driving me nuts during this pregnancy so far is I can't tell when Carly is acting legitimately crazy about stuff or if the craziness is the result of her being pregnant.  If she is being legitimately crazy I want to be legitimately pissed off.  However, I'm afraid her craziness is just the result of all the goofy stuff-you know, like the added hormones and chemical weirdness, all boiling up on her insides.  If that's the case I don't want be some kind of a-hole and freak out on her over something I helped cause (wink).

The perfect example of this happened this past Wednesday night.  We, as many nights the past few weeks, decided we weren't going to cook dinner.  After much deliberation we decided to go to Wegman's for supper (their hot foods and salad bar is amazing).  There have been numerous occasions where we have spent way too much money on dinner at Wegman's so this time we set a budget of about twenty dollars (which is feasible as long as you don't let all the bright lights and shiny colors impulse you into maxing out your credit card).  All was fine and dandy-Carly had a container of turkey and stuffing and I had some manicottis and a couple of meatballs.  If we walked straight to the checkout from there we would have been fine-well within budget.  However, Carly asked if it was cool if she got some fruit salad and I obliged thinking "what's another couple of bucks?."  Then she asked if we could get some macaroni and cheese, I said sure.  It turns out Carly got over two pounds of fruit salad (at $7.99/lb it came to over eighteen dollars for some freakin cantaloupe and watermelon!!!) and the mac 'n cheese was one of those "club packs" (ten bucks).  When the cashier rang us out our total dinner bill at a grocery store came to $48.56, just a shade over the twenty dollars we were trying to stay around.

Moral of the story?  Every time Carly does something crazy like that I don't know if its the baby talking and thus her concept of all that is rational has completely disintegrated or if its something I should really be mad about and maybe politely verbalize to her.  There's the stereotype out there that pregnant women act crazy and I'm hesitant to find out how much crazier Carly might get.

The last item of note is the fact that in a couple of weeks we head off on our annual trek to the Outer Banks, North Carolina.  For Carly and I this likely will be our last vacation without being a full blown family with babies/kids and stuff.  That's just another one of those things that kind of makes me grasp my breath a little when I think about it.

That's all I have for everyone right now.  As Carly's pregnancy begins to progress further I anticipate having more frequent posts.  I had a lot of people in the past two weeks request that I put up posts more often.  And, although I am extremely humbled and grateful for all of the positive feedback from this blog that I am getting, I want to make sure that I don't "water it down" with posts just for the sake of cranking them out.  Each time I write a new composition I want it to be fresh and, most of all, genuine.  I feel as though if I keep this mentality throughout the lifespan of babyBlogED it could become something that hopefully you, the reader, will benefit and enjoy, I, the writer, will benefit and enjoy, and perhaps even something my future child will be able to one day benefit from and enjoy.

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I wish you all pleasant reading,

---Ed

Euphoria, From Head To Toe

Yesterday, on Thursday August 23rd, I experienced the most euphoric moment that I have experienced so far since learning I was going to become a father.  The moment occurred while I was driving around the parking lot of a Wegman's grocery store.  I was circling around the lot getting frustrated not finding a spot that suited my tastes.  Then, however, I saw it-I saw a couple of the "expectant mother" parking spots tucked up close to the front of the store.  I then realized that, for the length of this pregnancy and while I am with Carly, I can park at these very parking spots.  Wegman's is already one of my favorite places in the world to visit.  Now, for the better part of seven months, I can park right up close to the building.  I can hardly envision a life that is more gratifying than this.

After all that excitement I had to get up the next morning (today), go to work, and then head to our first pre-natal appointment at 11:15.  I'll admit, I was pretty freaking nervous for this.  I knew this would be the first real step in the pregnancy in what becomes a fairly regimented schedule to and through the birth of our child (and if I have any say in it, the entire life of our child).  For me, the appointment was fairly boring.  I sat in a waiting room for the better part of two hours while Carly visited three different doctors performing various tests, examinations, and surveys.  It was kind of awkward for me as I didn't really know what I should do or what I was expected to do, if anything.  I want to be as involved as possible in this pregnancy but I also don't want to come across as overbearing.  Each time Carly's name got called I kind of just waited to see if the nurse would invite me in or not.  All three times the nurse neglected to give me any notion that I should follow Carly so I just sat back in my chair and continued to thumb through the "Shape" magazine that was nearby (they really need some men's magazines in those places for guys like me).

When Carly was completely done with everything we were given some exciting dates.  On October 5th, six weeks from now, we get our first sonogram done (I won't look for permission from the nurse on this one-let it be known that I'll be there for that) and April 15th, tax day, is the tentative due date for our baby.  For you, the readers, understand that each time we get a sonogram done I'm going to make sure to post pictures of them up on this blog.

It has now been exactly two weeks since Carly made a phone call to me that almost put me to the floor while I was working in the cooler.  Since that time we both have had a tremendous group of family and friends that have given us an amazing amount of support, encouragement, and advice.  One interesting idea that some friends of mine shared with me a few days ago was to, with each paycheck, purchase a gift card to places like Babies 'R Us and Toys 'R Us from Giant Eagle.  If you really think about this, in my opinion, its genius.  First off, its a way of putting aside money for the baby without having the temptation of being able to spend it.  Secondly, with Giant Eagle's "Gas Perks" we are able to save money off of gas too.  If we purchase just a $25 gift card each week we could end up with about $700 in gift cards by the time the baby is born.

This leads me to this: if anyone has any advice, stories, or "words of wisdom" that you also would like to share please feel free to do so.  There are a variety of options you can utilize to do so; you can choose to post in the "Comments" section, you can message me or Carly in Facebook, or even send me an email at babyBlogED@gmail.com.   I really hope this blog can, not only be a narcissistic vehicle of mine (haha), but also maybe something that current and future parents can use as a resource.  In addition, I hope that everyone, not just people who are in the parent world, is able to enjoy the anecdotes that I share.

Until my next splurge of thoughts on my impending parenthood, I wish you all pleasant reading,

---Ed

Breast Milk Bags and Nipple Butter

I know I just wrote the whole "holy shit, she's pregnant" post a couple days ago and I honestly don't anticipate having something new to discuss everyday.  However, there have been a lot of things that have gone on and my mind has turned inside out about a hundred times since Carly broke the news to me eleven days ago.

First, I'm still kind of in freak out mode.  I can't stop worrying about things ranging the whole spectrum from the current health of the tiny legume-sized being inside of my wife to how the hell we are going to afford college for him/her.  Inside that spectrum of worries includes things such as: what kind of crib do we get?, will he/she be smart?, I hope he/she isn't an ugly baby/person, will this person become a productive member of society? among countless other worries.  Close friends and family have told me that worry kind of goes away when the baby is born and that you kind of begin to live more for the moment at that point.  We will see.

Carly, however, is super freaking excited about everything associated with being pregnant and thus becoming a mommy.  The first time she threw up in the morning after finding out she was pregnant she was bragging quite smugly about her morning sickness.  I told her she was being psychosomatic and that her throwing up was just the result of her wanting to throw up.  This didn't go over well for me.

Also, Carly keeps rambling about stuff I really don't care about.  For instance, just today, she was talking ad nauseam about breast milk bags and nipple butter.  She then proceeded to pull these bags out, show them to me, and then explain to me that she could put her milk inside these bags and then freeze the bags with the milk.  To this very moment I don't have a clue how this works and why people want to do this.  How does the milk get in the bag?  Is there a pump?  Does she just do it herself?  She doesn't expect me to partake in this, does she?  Why freeze it?  Does it have an expiration date?  Does the butter have anything to do with this stuff or was it just random rambling of hers?  Regardless, EWWWWWWW!!!

Another example of her excitement is that the very night, the very exact night, we found out we are pregnant  Carly felt it necessary to buy two big things of diapers and 2 boxes of baby wipes.  I thought this was kind of weird but not weird enough to make any kind of point of to her about (I'm learning to pick my battles).
***side note: am I even supposed to say that-"we are pregnant"?  I feel its kind of weird-she's the one going through the physical "stuff" not me but every time I say she is pregnant people correct me and say we are pregnant and that having a baby is a "team effort"-anyways, back to focus...***

Obviously our family and friends are excited too.  A great example of this is the night after we got the diapers and wipes we went to visit Carly's grandparents.  We both were kind of nervous about going there; we weren't really sure how they would handle the news.  Well, it turns out that her grandparents seem almost as excited over the news as Carly herself was (I was and still am in a kind of a "holy hell!" mindset so my excitement level is still a little tempered).  The next couple of hours were filled with Carly sitting at the dining room table next to her grandmother and grandfather sharing some really touching moments mainly while they were thumbing through a book of baby names together.  About halfway through the night it was pointed out that her grandparents were going to become great-grandparents to our baby and with that realization their eyes just lit up with joy.  It really was a neat thing to see.  Oh, and by the way, as of right now, we like the names Wyatt for a boy and Brooke for a girl.

There have been a lot of really cool moments that we have shared with our family and friends since the breaking of the big news.  In future posts I anticipate sharing more of those stories.  However, right now I feel it necessary to share some things that I have found funny to this point in the pregnancy.

One thing that I've been doing to piss her off (playfully, of course) is to, anytime she asks a favor of me, tell her that she's "barely even pregnant" and that she should just do it herself.  I don't really know why its funny to me, I suppose its a masochistic tendency of mine because she really doesn't find this response nearly as comical as I do (she's promised to shank me each time I tell her that now).

Another stupid little thing that makes me giggle is the "v-look" Carly gets every time someone sees her for the first time since she announced the pregnancy.  People always go from looking at her face, down to her stomach, then back to her face.  They always want to check to see if there's a baby bump.  There's no baby bump yet people!  She's not that far along yet (dare I say, "barely pregnant").

Anyways, I thank you for continuing to take this journey into and through fatherhood with me.  Friday we have our first pre-natal appointment and I will be sure to update you all on how that goes and what we find out from it.  As we get further along in the pregnancy I anticipate posting pictures (in particular sonograms) and possibly even videos to this blog so be sure to look for that.  In addition, I have created a Twitter account devoted completely to this blog and becoming someone's daddy.  The Twitter handle is babyBlogED and updates I make from there go directly to this blog in the right-hand margin.

---Ed

"Oh, hey babe. I don't really care what's for dinner, you decide-wait, WHAT?, YOU'RE PREGNANT?!!!

The morning of Friday, August 10th began ordinary, just as any other morning had for the past few years: I woke up, showered, brushed my teeth, fed my 2 cats, and went in to work.  About mid-morning, however, that fateful day would become anything but ordinary.

It was about 10 o'clock when I was stocking the cooler of the convenience store that I work at when I got a phone call from my wife, Carly.  Most of the time, quite honestly, she calls me about really, really stupid stuff; usually its something to the effect of "Hey babe, what do you want for dinner?  Do you want me to pull some ground meat out of the freezer or something?."  I was pretty hardcore into making sure all of the 2% gallons of milk were filled to their capacity at the time of the call so I was getting ready to retort with one of the usual lines like, "I don't care, whatever you want, babe."

Within only a few short still frames of life I found out that my life would forever be changed.  The reason she called me didn't have anything to do with dinner.  The reason she called was to inform me that she WAS PREGNANT!!!  There are not enough exclamation points in the universe that would properly exhibit the excitement level in her voice as the two simple words, "I'm pregnant," flowed from her mouth and into my ears.  After taking a moment or two to realize that she wasn't calling about dinner arrangements I replied very profoundly with two equally simple words: "oh, okay."

The earth was now spinning rapidly, my legs tingling, my breath short.  I, for a brief moment, thought I was going to pass out.  I told her that we would discuss this "great" news when I got home from work.  I, quite honestly, had no idea how to react to this.  Her reaction was of pure joy and jubilation and I knew that she was hoping to hear something near that level from me.  However, the primary thought that captured my mind was "am I ready for this, are we ready for this?"

After gaining some resemblance of composure, I was able to successfully finish stocking the milk and continue on to finish the work day all the while contemplating the implications of what me becoming a father and my wife becoming a mother would have on our lives and whether or not we are ready for the challenge.

To this very moment I still have no clue what these implications are.  This post is the first in what I hope will be a lengthy series attempting to give you, the reader, an inside perspective of where the road to and through fatherhood leads me and what the implications thereof become.