1.21.15 - Hospital Tour & Baby Supplies

Last night I went to a late pregnancy class followed by a tour of the hospital where I'll be having Clara. The tour was both reassuring and exciting. The hospital is pretty new and very nice. Every labor room and postpartum room has only one bed (no shared rooms) with bathroom attached. There's a pantry on the postpartum floor for families to store food and access it easily when the new mom and baby are staying a few days. There's of course a nursery for new babies, but the tour guide explained that the nursery is usually pretty empty because our provider strongly encourages moms and babies to room in for the first few days and get used to each other, get a lot of skin-to-skin contact and bonding time. I like the sound of that. The postpartum rooms have chairs that fold out into small beds for the mom's support person (usually the husband) to sleep in if he wants to stay over night.

The late pregnancy instructor also gave us a printed list of supplies to pack in our hospital bags so we're ready to go come the big day. I've added it to my to do list.

With only 5 and a half weeks left (or so), I just can't believe how drastically mine and Jack's lives are about to change in the next month or two. I try to imagine what it will feel like and I can't, really. I just feel sort of awe-struck.

This morning Jack and I went shopping for the remaining baby supplies we hadn't already gotten through our baby showers. Happily, the gift cards we got through the baby showers covered the expenses. It was pretty fun shopping together for tiny little clothes and wash clothes and the like. I think we have everything we'll need for the first 3-4 months. Now it's just a matter of getting it all organized in our rather snug apartment. I've been hitting lab so hard the last couple weeks I haven't put much time into the apartment at all, but I hope to have a chance next week. I'm looking forward to it.

Uptown funk!

1.11.15 - Baby Showers

Yesterday was our third and last baby shower. The first was in Metropolis with much of Jack’s extended family. It included cupcakes and sunflowers and a lot of gifts from people I’d hardly met before. It was sweet but strange. 

Grandma makes cupcakes while hockey plays in the background.

They even got sunflowers for the spread - my favorite! :)

The second shower was in Missouri with more of our immediate families and good MO friends. It included Head’s Up, baby bottle beer chug, the balloon ribbon tie race, and the safety pin don’t-say-"baby" game, as well as Merlene’s delicious sliders, Ellen and Everett's cheesy potatoes, Neil's (?) fruit salad, and more cupcakes. It was a lot of fun, though big enough I didn’t really get a chance to talk to a lot of people. Julie and Merlene ran the whole thing: Merlene provided a big, clean house and much of the food, and Julie instructed people on games and where to put gifts and how to set up, etc. Both of them told me later they felt like it was surprisingly easy to do, so I guess tag-team hosting works. :)

Setting up. Note more cupcakes.

Baby bottle beer chug winner (left) and milker (right)

Zoey wants to get in on Head's Up action.

The final baby shower was in San Francisco with our CA friends, including people from my forensics program, old study partners from CCSF and Berkeley, ex-co workers, and all sorts. It was a good turn out—not quite as large as the MO party but large enough to feel like a party and still be manageable.

Merlene and her two sisters had hosted the Metropolis party. Julie (and Merlene) ran the MO party. But I didn’t really have a lieutenant to run the CA party, and I was kind of regretting having set it up in the first place. I was tired from the trip to MO and not sure how to keep people from being bored at the CA party; I didn’t feel like I had the energy to plan much. However, my friends really came through. Erin, Janice, Julianna, Sarah, Ellen, and Bryon all got there early to help set up. They made a ton of delicious food (spinach artichoke dip, chicken wings, oreo-stuffed chocolate cupcakes, etc) and they helped me get and set up the supplies for the same games from the MO trip, plus decorating onesies. They all participated enthusiastically in the games and they helped clean up at the end too. I barely had to clean anything, and neither did Jack!

(Julianna makes queso dip, and Sarah is short.)

The finished onesies. So creative!

 Oh, that’s another thing. I had originally thought Jack wouldn’t be able to go to the shower, but he managed to rearrange his schedule to go, which meant a lot to me. The price he paid, though, was that he had to work at midnight after the shower. So I let him sleep in as long as possible – until about 20 mins before the shower started at 2pm – and then he went to lay down for a couple more hours as the guests we’re leaving. And it worked out fine because I had so much help cleaning up it wasn’t a problem at all.

Baby bottle beer chug: Ben won.

Balloon ribbon tie race: Julianna won.

On top of all that, Janice, Erin, and Rachel still got me baby shower gifts too! Almost everyone did, which I wasn’t really expecting.

Maurader's Map blanket from Janice, Erin, and Rachel!

A cuddly common cold from Kale, haha.

I had a great time. I enjoyed hearing people laugh so hard at Head’s Up. I thought the balance of guests there worked out great to where everyone knew a few other people they could talk to and no one was sitting silent or bored. They got into the games, and really into decorating the onesies, which I love. It was actually a very easy, fun party.

So now I’ve had three baby showers basically thrown by a bunch of people who care about Jack and me, and both having the showers themselves and receiving all the gifts we’ve gotten has been really touching. We have a nice fund set aside to buy supplies for Clara, and people have gotten us a lot of the principle supplies already anyway. Overall I just feel well taken care of and loved, and I also feel reassured, especially by the CA baby shower, that even though Jack and I are far from family, we have a lot of people here who care about us and can help us transition into parenthood.

1.7.15 - Alien

Last night I rolled my shirt up and took slow deep breaths, and as I exhaled Jack and I could see little movements along my huge stomach. It made him laugh every time. In one instance she had a slow but longer, larger movement which looked disturbingly and hilariously like the movie Alien. Jack rested his chin against one part of my stomach and just stared at the rest, watching her move. He was delighted. I continually feel lucky to have a partner who is so actively happy about this pregnancy.

One of the shots from our maternity shoot last Sunday - children's section of a library worked great!

MO Trip - Zoey and Malcolm

It was great to get to spend more time with my niece and nephew. They are both adorable in their own ways, plus I like being with Malcolm so I can think about what I'm doing taking care of a baby. Julie or Denny would bring the kids over to Mom's every couple of days, and sometimes they'd stay all day. My siblings and I took turns playing with them - with Malcolm you pretty much just move him around a lot and hold him high in the air and smile at him, and he's pretty content.

With Zoey we played with blocks, Duplos, and Ja-ma's (Mom's) Christmas puzzles (a lot). Zoey has nearly memorized some of them and can do them by herself for the most part.

Taking Baby Jesus for a ride on the choo choo.

At some point Julie put Zoey down for a nap in Mom's room. After a few minutes Everett and I heard, from the living room, a tiny voice yelling cheerfully "Hewwo! Hewwwooooo! Hewwo!" under the bedroom door. Guess she wasn't tired yet.

Proud to tell me "Z is for Zoey!" She also explained that Bear is holding the Z block.

Zoey still has trouble with the "y" sounds in "yeah," "yes," and "yay." She uses "w" sounds instead, resulting in her saying "w-eah" all the time--so often, in fact, that I find myself thinking "w-eah" whenever anyone says "yeah." We asked her if she can say "yeah" but she claims she cannot. I'm sure that will change soon enough.

Listening, enthralled, as Ja-Ma reads to her.

I noticed that Malcolm will get more interested and "talkative" if I have him around the boys. I wonder if he's just used to seeing women more often (his mom, Ja-Ma, me, Ellen...) and so men are a curiosity to him? But that doesn't make much sense, because he sees Denny all the time. In any case sometimes I would hold him just under his arms and he'd flail his arms and legs toward either Neil or Everett, whomever we were facing. It was pretty funny.

This guy can't quite smile and eat simultaneously, but he still tries.

Ellen discovered that Malcolm really loves to be physically higher than everyone else. He laughs and tries to shove both his fists in his mouth (his sign of ultimate happiness) when you toss him in the air. He also gets a big grin on his face whenever Ellen holds him, standing, on top of the back of the couch. She puts him up there and says "Tall baby! Yaaaay!" and he smiles and smiles. It's too cute.

Sink bath!

Denny also showed us that if he tickles Malcolm's knees a certain way, Malcolm laughs this deep (for a baby) kind of guttural laugh that sounds almost like an old man "heh heh heh"-ing. It's hilarious.

Admiring his sister's stacking abilities.

It was great getting to see the kiddies so often. They make the house a little messier and chaotic, but it's well worth the cuteness and bonding time. :)