First, there was conception. Ok, not going there. Let's move on.
First, there was The Bean. His first good picture is here. Isn't he handsome? He is literally waving to the camera. Way to go Bean. Pretty soon he will be learning to drive.
Betsy went through all of the typical pregnancy stuff. First the morning sickness. It was lovely. Despite the fact that she never once actually threw up, we had a lot of fun with this whole period. Betsy insisted on eating very very crunchy crackers pretty much all the time. Most of the time this was no big deal. In the middle of the night? Not so much fun. The crunching was only half of the problem. Rolling over onto cracker crumbs was an unexpected little gift. Solution: buy a new bed. This whole pregnancy thing made us decide it was time to buy a king bed. So we did. I would like to tell you that the king bed is the greatest thing that's ever happened to us, but it's not here yet. What's the only thing that takes longer than the gestation period of a human (and don't say an elephant's gestation period, which is a quick 22 months -- if your wife is pregnant and complaining just constantly say, "at least you're not an elephant." She will love this). Anyway, thanks to some stellar work by Room and Board, we are still waiting and the baby will probably truly arrive before the bed.
After the morning sickness stuff came some basic stomach cramping and other maladies that come with the belly starting to expand. This was an odd period where Betsy was basically concerned that every strange feeling in her stomach was something bad happening with the baby. Of course, none of it was, but it didn't stop both of us from worrying.
Next comes a complete tease. Betsy felt just fine. Sure, she was growing, but she really felt as good as ever. This lasted for a while.
The final stage is total discomfort. Now Betsy is getting bigger (everyone says she looks really small, but it doesn't help how she actually feels). It is hot. This is Houston. This is August. After a surprisingly comfortable start to the summer, the heat finally hit. It's not much fun to be pregnant in Houston in August. It's not much fun to be married to someone who is pregnant in August.
But, we are now very well prepared. We have taken breast feeding class. If there are any guys out there who think for some reason this might be fun (the words breast and class in the title might fool some), you are wrong. Luckily, we spent most of our time checking out the other parents to be and trying to figure out if we were more or less prepared than others. Our best guess is we fell right in the middle somewhere. We were probably doing better than the girl whose husband was too busy to make it to class and not as prepared as the couple with the future dad wearing loafers with gold buckles and no socks.
We also went to a marathon baby birth class. This is where the action really gets good. Lots of videos of baby birth. The process is made to look really unappealing. A friend of mine from my poker group was in the class. I had no idea that his wife was pregnant. He didn't know mine was pregnant. Clearly we have some deep conversations at our poker game. I could tell you a lot about this guy's new grill, but I couldn't tell you his wife's name. Gotta love guys. In my defense, he talks about his grill all the time, I know, it's a little strange. The baby class was filled with lots of useful information. Most importantly, women should breathe while they are in labor. This may seem obvious, but trust me on this -- oh, who the hell am I kidding -- this IS obvious! We paid about $100 for some lady to tell us that it's important to breathe. Excellent. We didn't take the class too seriously. I hope there isn't a test. At one point I made a snide remark to Betsy and she almost lost it laughing in the class at a very quiet moment. Ok, she did lose it in the class. She was trying not to laugh, but literally had to get up and walk out of the room. Well, it was more like run out of the room. As she hit the door, she lost it and let out one of the biggest laughs you can imagine. People in the class weren't sure if she was laughing or crying. I got a lot of strange looks. I thought the teacher might kick us out and send us to the prenatal school principal. Betsy took so long, I left to go find her. I thought she might have laughed so hard that she lost a little bladder control (another nice side-effect of pregnancy). Luckily all was fine and the teacher let us back in for a little more breathing training. Breathe in, breathe out ...
Today Betsy and The Bean had a non-stress-test. This was a first for me. I think we have probably all heard of a stress test, but who has ever heard of a non-stress-test. Basically, Betsy had to lie on a Dr.'s table with two contraptions on the ever-expanding belly. One measures contractions and the other measures The Bean's heart rate. The Bean needed his heart rate to go up and down. This shows that he's moving around and healthy. That's more easily said and done. Apparently The Bean was asleep when the test started. The office has tricks to get babies to move around. They gave Betsy a lollipop, they offered one to me too but in my attempt to be a mature adult worthy of a child, I declined. They also had her drink cold water. But, nothing worked. They threatened that we would have to go to the hospital for monitoring if he didn't move. These were some serious billable hours I was about to lose. I tried talking to him a lot. That didn't work, but sometimes he moves when I told to him. He seems to like football a lot. He always moves during football games (he has seen the Texans twice and lots of other preseason games on TV). He also moves at movies. Betsy was a pseudo-celebrity as we walked out of Knocked Up. What the crowded theater didn't know is that she was so freaked out she was about to break down crying in the car. Note to self, avoid movies about child birth or parenthood until The Bean is born. Neither football nor a movie were possible in the Dr.'s office. What else? Got it, music. Betsy has an iPhone (yes, it's very cool, but that's an entirely different blog). I grabbed the iPhone and put the earphones up to her stomach. It was time for me to play DJ. Unfortunately, the iPhone is filled with chick-music, so it wasn't easy finding music upbeat enough to get The Bean moving. I started off with a little David Bowie. It seemed to wake him up a little. Then I moved on to Jet. There he goes, he's moving a bit. Next, I went to one of my favorites, The Shins. Ah, perfect. We were getting all of the movement and variation in heartbeat that we needed. No trips to the hospital. Plus, we know he has good taste in music. I was dancing along with The Bean in the Dr.'s office. I finished off with a little of The Killers (I wonder if The Bean will ever listen to any of these bands. My guess is the only one that will still be well-known is Bowie). The Dr. came in, gave us a funny look, checked the printout and told us good job.
So that's it. You are up to date. New posts will be shorter and hopefully relatively frequent.
