Ella: 4.5 months now

Ella is 4 and a half months old now. She smiles, 'talks' and sometimes squeals when she's awake and happy, and she's almost always happy between naps during the day.

She has perfected a shriek when she's bored or wants attention, and she cries when she wants to be retrieved from her crib.

Things she likes: playing with the Whoozit toys; pulling on the hanging toys on her playmat; looking in the mirror; sitting in the Bumbo chair; kicking and waving her arms on the bed; songs sung to her; listening to stories and looking at the pictures in books (when she isn't tired); walks in her stroller; baths in the bathtub; trips by car/subway/train/plane and visits to friends' houses; and being held by family and friends.

Things she dislikes: Naps, bedtime, sitting in her carseat when the car or stroller isn't moving, being held in the 'cradle' position when she's awake; loud background noise.

We love love love her!

Due Date: Come and Gone!

We had a sonogram yesterday, Friday, June 15th, our due date. This is a standard procedure at the 40-week mark, and it's called a BPP (biophysical profile) to monitor fetal heart rate continuously for 20+ minutes, check the reflexes of the baby, measure amniotic fluid levels, etc.

According to measurements taken yesterday, the Bean is already 8 pounds, 8 ounces! The baby gains almost half a pound each week now.

The due date is the midpoint of the last 4 weeks of the pregnancy. Roughly 5% of pregnant women deliver on their due date according to Dr. Holden, and the rest come earlier or later. Senan (Emma's son) was born 5 days after his due date, Ben and I came after our due dates, and Bean is carrying on in the Renda tradition of being late.

It's funny to think I actually look forward to cramps and backaches. My parents and Michael ask "How are you feeling?" and I say "perfectly fine, unfortunately", and we all laugh. Ready to have the baby out now.

We saw the Bean's face and head even though it's down low. The radiologist said the Bean was making chewing/sucking motions. I hope that bodes well for breastfeeding attempts after the birth.

I find it emotional and difficult to look at our ultrasounds. We saw outlines of the external features, and the skeletal structure underneath, and he/she still looks like ET (!). I love the baby already whatever he'll/she'll look like, so I just want the radiologist to look on my behalf and tell me/us everything is ok. She said everything looked fine.

It is easy to get anxious at ultrasounds. Even though we had genetic testing and blood tests early in the pregnancy, there are a million other developmental issues that can happen along the way that can't be tested for in advance, that are unrelated to age and are out of the parents control (including things like cleft palate) so you find yourself shoving these worries to the back of your mind, hoping for the best, and watching the face of the radiologist very closely to insure he/she doesn't get a concerned look...

Last night, my parents and Michael and I walked to a restaurant in North Park Slope called the Chip Shop -- it's modeled directly on the UK Chip Shops and features meat pies, fish and chips, curry and chips, chips & butty, bangers & mash and more. We had great fish and chips and Michael tried a fried Mars Bar, which is a candy bar deep fried in batter (a donut!) covered in powder sugar. Heart attack on a plate. It reminded me of living in England.

We walked home and I had cramps for the rest of the evening, so we all went to bed optimistic that this might be real labor starting, but I fell asleep around midnight and woke up 8 hours later, so obviously it wasn't...

Today is my father's birthday! We were hoping the Bean would be born today, but unless something dramatic happens this afternoon, probably not. Mom made lamb chops for dinner, we had birthday cake and gave Dad a few presents. I'll post a picture here soon from our party of four (+1).

Above are two pictures from the two recent sonograms we've had - it shows the outline of Bean's head (June 15th), and one of Bean's feet (May 30th).

33 week check-up (Wednesday, May 2)

Weight: 175 pounds (same as last visit -- thank heavens); Vitals: 120/80

Michael and I saw Dr. Holden today. The Bean's heartbeat sounded good, and Dr. Holden said that we are on target and progressing normally. He indicated we'll have one more sonogram -- on or near the due date, and will start seeing him weekly around 36 weeks. Next visit, I'll be tested for Group B Strep (http://www.babycenter.com/refcap/pregnancy/prenatalhealth/1647.html). We will also meet two other doctors in the practice who share on-call responsibilities.

We went to our first Birth Preparation class tonight, taught by Fern Drillings, the woman who also instructed us in the Baby CPR class. There are about 15 couples in the class, all due this summer. One other woman and I are the two scheduled to deliver the soonest.
There is couple in the class expecting twins, and one couple that looks a lot younger than the rest of us -- in their early or mid-twenties -- and both women look great. No extra weight anywhere except their bellies.

I used to fantasize that it would be great to have twins so that we'd have two kids at the same time and could get all the vaginal deliveries/pain out of the way at once. Now that I've been through the drill with this single pregnancy, including digesting all the probabilities of potential problems for singletons, twins and multiples, I realized a singleton is plenty. There's a lot more to stress about with two in the oven at the same time... What if you only felt one move, and not the other, or the nurse could only find one baby's heartbeat and not the other's at an exam? etc.

There were some weird questions by some of the fathers in the class tonight:
+ Do I HAVE to hold my wife's hand during the delivery? (He was afraid his wife would break his hand by squeezing too hard during her labor. Fern's answer: You'll do whatever she tells you to do.)
+ Is there a sheet or barrier that shields her lower half during delivery? (He doesn't want to see the blood and stuff around the delivery... Fern's answer: No barrier, no sheet. It's all there and you'll be seeing it all, so if you can't handle the blood and stuff, ask for a chair and sit 'upstream' near your wife's shoulders, or leave the room.)

The winner of the weirdest question award goes to a father in Emma & Alan's birth class. Emma told me that when she and Alan went to Birth classes in San Francisco to prepare for Senan's arrival, one of the fathers in their class asked if he could breast feed the baby himself too, acknowledging he wouldn't be providing any milk, but wanting the bonding opportunity (!)...

First Movement

This morning I felt the first movement that can be attributed to the Bean! While laying on my left side (fretting about real estate costs and taxes), I felt a movement that was stronger than a flutter in the lower left area of my abdomen -- as though the skin had been given a push from the inside. I put my hand on the spot where it happened, and felt it again. Confirmed! Over the past 4 weeks, I've felt twinges and other uncomfortable sensations that later could be attributed to gas, hunger or random rumblings. Because I felt the bump from the outside with my hand, I'm ruling out gas or some intestinal thing. This is the best birthday present!