Cravings

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="487"] Should have taken the picture before we put them away in the fridge, but here is the chicken and brussels sprouts that Jenny made, and some rye soda bread, my contribution.[/caption]

Hey there family, it's Doug here, writing a quick post to update you all on the progress with our little rugrat from my perspective. Basically the difference between our perspectives is that I don't have a "little parasite" growing in my belly, so I'm spared all the cravings, unfamiliar physical sensations, etc. etc., except that I'm often the one that needs to provide whatever the food that my lovely wife is craving! But not always. Tonight Jenny cooked up some really incredible fried chicken legs. Wow. She made a buttermilk and flour coating, and then finished then in the oven and wow. (In case any of you are wondering, I've fallen pretty hard off the vegetarian wagon, but I hope to get back to some of the healthy veggie foods I used to cook. Maybe after Jenny stops needing extra calories!) But, when I suggested chicken tacos, that was just not acceptable. Apparently chicken legs with the skin on (and a tasty breading of course) are great, but chicken breasts are not. Wish me luck trying to keep all these things straight!

In our first excursion with the new (used) car, we did three things: 1) went grocery shopping, and then 3) got a christmas tree and fit it all in the car no problem. I skipped number two because it perfectly illustrates Jenny's current taste. 2) Jenny was craving fish and chips. So, we found a pub in New Rochelle, but the pub was closed. Then we found a supper club type place, (all you WI folks know what I'm talking about.) and it was closed too! When I suggested a pizza place I had heard about, Jenny exercised her Pregnant Woman's Veto, and said we had to find fish and chips. So, we ended up a pub in Larchmont, the next town over, and had already ordered drinks (ginger ale and beer for hubby) when we found they didn't serve fish and chips! Jenny was a good sport though, this could have been a praying mantis moment, but I survived. Jenny got a French Dip sandwich, by the way.

Week 15

Here we are, a tiny bit ahead of the curve in the belly dept. I was weighed at this month's appointment...twice to double check that I really gained that much since 4 weeks ago! But really what happened was that I have to keep the tank at a 1/4 tank or less in case of a major sneeze, but I'm under pressure to leave a sample at every appointment. I drank a whole water bottle before my last appointment and it seemed to up me about 2 extra pounds.

Even a week later I'm not quite up to my number according to my home scale. Nonetheless, I am a tiny bit above average in my baby weight. For 6 months prior, Dr. Zino insisted that I gain weight before we tried. I tried everything, eating a bit more, taking ensure at work, even talked to someone about nutrition and finding the healthiest high calorie foods. And of course in the Nehls family, there was the period of time welcoming me and my imaginary tape worm home for holidays. I tried ride the bus more, cutting out some burned calories, but I've always had a metabolism in overdrive.

Fast forward to now, and the switch is flipped! I'm eating healthily, but certainly "not for two." My body is hoarding everything in case of famine in New Rochelle, I guess. My internet baby guide told me yesterday that at 15 weeks I've probably gained 5 pounds by now. I knocked that of of the park a while ago.... Of course the Dr. says not to worry, I'm making up for lost time since I was "underweight" at the start. Still, the scale has given me some shock and awe.

I'm feeling fine, falling alseep earlier than I'd like, but I'm pretty restless at night, so I give myself a head start. I'm sneezing a lot but I can't find any explanation other than I've read some women sneeze a lot during pregnancy with no theories as to why. It's at home, at work, anywhere really. I'm about to start my first baby project, I found a second hand mobile, spins, plays music, but has super cheeseball pastel teddybears. I'm cutting them all off and making little farm animals instead. Doug has agreed to my farm theme :)

Hermetically sealed cat

Wally is enjoying the recent changes around the house starting with relaxing in the bag in which our fluffy new mattress pad came in. He also approves of the fluffy new bedding, with a record breaking napping streak this last weekend. If I could turn the bed into a cloud I'd be happy as a clam, I just have not been sleeping well since developing my wombmate...I know, just wait... I keep adding layers of cushion and Doug wants to know if he should place a pea in the bottom. I'm within a week or so of not being able to sleep on my stomach, and that's going to be a sad day. My 10 pounds is creating a focal point out front. That's one reason I insisted on doing our room swap sooner rather than later. If I'm going to be doing more work at home this summer I needed to set up some space (which we don't have much of) so we decided to share a work room which requires more space than the bedroom. We'll be using the smaller room as the first year family bedroom. ( In case you haven't heard, Dr. Spock is out and so is letting the baby gain independence by crying it out in the other room...crib attached to mom's side of the bed is the current advice and baby in your bed is considered even more preferable. Did too many "cry it out babies" wind up in therapy attributed to dark nights alone in the crib? ) So, we'll just have us, the crib and changing table. The big room is everything else. I'm happy tho be out of that room, the little one is much warmer and painted pink!

Family Station Wagon

The deed is done! 2 years and 3months of our car hiatus is over. We hemmed and hawed, paged through Consumer Reports, and obsessed over what we should get...they are all so much more expensive than the last time I looked in 2001! It needed to fit some band members and a cello, fit a drum set (just in case), move a baby and a cat with room for 2 weeks worth of packing, among various other hauling expectations for the next 10 years at least. We settled on a 2009 Subaru Outback wagon. My friend Laura's parents swore by them and drove them into the ground, Doug was the first to start batting around that avenue. Also in the possible running were the Honda CR-V and Toyota Rav-4. We had a hard time finding available used ones that hadn't been in accidents on the Carfax report. There are a lot of accidents out here! Everyone is in such a hurry, so impatient. The other issue is that used cars are in high demand since the hurricane. They are going out as soon as they come in. The dealer said they've been super busy with people all they way up from Jersey searching for cars on our dry land up here. Time to start looking over the craigslist baby department, I've seen some great deals on really nice things.

From Doug: Baby's First Playlist

We've discovered that our baby will be able to hear sounds while he's in the womb and that this starts around the 16th week of pregnancy. That puts this milestone in our little munchkin's development at right around the end of this month! When the little guy starts moving around and kicking his mama's belly, that will be great of course, but for me this one is even more special. I've heard that there is some evidence that supports that certain songs that become familiar to the baby while still in utero can be especially soothing in the early months after birth, and so I'll want to choose baby's first play list with some care because I may end up needing to play some music for him a lot in the next year!

I hope you are excited to see some pictures of Jenny with some earphones around her belly, because I certainly am. But since its a bit early in the game for that, this video will have to do. I'll have to work on this lick some, its a bit more funky than I can manage right now.

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=to7uIG8KYhg&w=560&h=315]

After some thought, here are a few first songs and other pieces of music that I'll play for the little guy:

1. "Blue In Green" from Miles Davis' Kind of Blue. This is a slow, beautiful piece that was one of my first favorites and made me want to play the trumpet.


2. Tchaikovsky's Symphony No. 6. This is a bit of a long piece, so I don't know if Jenny would be willing to sit there long enough with the headphones on her belly to really make this one happen, but this is another personal favorite of mine. Tchaikovsky wrote lots of music that has become famous, including his most famous work, The Nutcracker. This whole symphony is just so sad that it makes me almost cry every time I hear it, and I'm not a big crier. (On that subject, Jenny has been getting a bit more hormonal recently--she cried at the end of a movie that I would have to say was about a 5 on a scale of 1 to 10 in terms of sad movie endings. Yeah, it was sad, but it wasn't that sad.) This was the first piece of classical music I heard that really made me start writing and playing classical music. On top of that, I first heard this piece played by a youth orchestra, and the impression it made was even deeper because it was kids my age or just a bit older that were playing this incredible music.


3. One last pick. I want this little guy to hear some of the roots music that I love as well. Leadbelly's "Goodnight Irene" is a favorite of mine. Leadbelly is famous for his haunting renditions of many American folks songs, but he was also a great singer of children's songs. I think its an appropriate children's song, after all, it only mentions suicide in one verse. : )


So, there's my list. Jenny says she'll take care of the "real music that real people really listen to" part of baby's education, which is just fine with me.

How to wiggle a baby into place for his first photos

So, Wednesday we were on day 3 with no power, the trains weren't running and taxis were just coming back on the road. In fact, since there were no trains I was calling the taxi company the night before to arrange and secure a pick up to take us all the way to the hospital for this "can't be missed appointment" and I got a recording that they were closed! We went to bed with fingers crossed because, the window for these screening pictures is tight. It's so tight that the day my doctor gave me the number to call and schedule this, I barely got back to work when I saw that I had a voice mail from the hospital with my 2 hour appointment scheduled by the hospital. The appointment has to happen between 11 and 13 weeks or so, and I guess Connecticut is highly fertile keeping them fully booked.

Anyway, the appointment itself was for 2 things, an extensive verbal family history of ethnicity and diseases/ disorders including verifying that Doug and I had not married Kentucky style, being lost lost cousins or something. Part 2 was the specific ultrasound looking for physical manifestations that could point to down syndrome, other chromosome issues and spinal problems if it isn't fused right. We got there with plenty of time in our 18 mile taxi trip to spare and joined the other power outage couples in the waiting area, charging phones and using the internet.

Part 1 was a breeze, we learned that it seems nice Jewish boys who marry nice Jewish girls have the most to fret over with all those recessive genes storming ahead when combined.

Part 2 was exhausting. I thought I just got to lay there and the technician takes her pictures..why do they give you and hour slot? Because it apparently often includes an unplanned dance party for momma for half the appointment. We started out fine, she held the roller still and we could see baby moving arms and legs (everything is there). She took the first few pictures, she has a very specific list of shots she has to get and take measurements from, then she started digging in a bit to try and get baby to "roll over" a bit. No use. She used the roller to jiggle my whole tummy to get him to move (him/her; no sex yet) nothing.  she had me bend my knee, feet on the bed, then had me lift my hips off the bed and told me to shake around..assuring me that this happens a lot, but she has to get this exact profile of the neck to see the fluid and measure the width of it...or else we'll have to come back. No trains, no power, another taxi all the way there. We really didn't want that.

She stops, gives me some juice, tells me to get up and get moving to stir him into a different position and she'll be back in 10 minutes. I jump, and dance while Doug coaches. We get back into place, she looks and starts digging in to get just a tiny bit better angle, still it's not enough. We repeat it all, the hip wiggle in bed; nothing, the 10 minute dance party and I'm exhausted and mad about going through all of this bother today for nothing. We try one more time and she just barely got it, but she got it! And, it looked normal. The last part was a blood test checking for a couple levels of things that would be raised if there were a chromosome issue and we hear on that in 1 week. The county buses started up that day, we learned in the waiting room internet session, so to be frugal on the way home we took the taxi to the New York line and waited for the bus..which was about 25 minutes late..and got us home the 18 miles in about 1 hour 15 min. Lots of traffic lights were out and with no trains there was so much traffic. The car search is on.