Photo Post

Ok so the last post made we want to post some more pics!  The first couple pictures are done by Chris Gaines, a fantastic photographer.  If anyone is interested in him taking some photos please let me know!

JW and Mommy

One of JW's speeches, complete with hand gestures

Hey look! Feet! 

Maddie and JW at CSL for Haloween

Hey there!

Praying for back to back Stanley Cup wins for the Bruins!

Christmas baby!

Three month update

So it really is amazing to think that JW is already 3 months old.  This has been the longest, and yet shortest, 3 months in existence.  Lets start with all the bad things that I have experienced so far( lets get the short list out of the way)

Tough/crappy parts of the first three months of parenthood-

-Never being able to wake up on your own/lack of sleep

-Limited ability to go out with people (although we bring JW out often (to restaurants, bars, walking etc.) and    he seems to do fine with it.  Just keep  it to a reasonable level.)

-Crying can certainly be grating.  It also gets louder and higher pitch as time goes on

-Annoying people giving me advice:  Out of all the tough things this is the one that drives me the most insane.  If i want help I will ask for it and I don't care to have your opinion before then.

Now the good parts:

-You are a parent, its fun, enjoy it!

-As kooky as it sounds its one of the most interesting glimpses into human beings ever (its like a little experiement lol)

-The first smile makes the first 2.5 months not seem nearly as tough

-JW has made it through the night (5-7 hours) a handful of times and otherwise wakes up once.  

-MW and I are so much more confident in our parenting skills

Ok so here is the plan

Ok so we had our appointment with the OB today and MW is 1 cm dilated and 50% ephased (softening of the cervix) the plan moving forward is as follows.

We will continue to monitor MW at home for any changes/ if labor kicks in. If on Sunday the baby hasn't come we will go into the hospital and get a cervix softening gel put on. This gel further softens the cervix in preparation for delivery. MW's OB said that sometimes this gel causes woman to go into labor (about a 20% chance) After some monitoring we will go home and see if the gel does the trick. If not we are set up for an induction at 0700 on Tuesday!

All the while we will try and dodge the pending hurricane.

Its the final countdown!!

Week 40 update

We are almost at our due date! Saturday 27 August is the current due date for our little buddy, but at the moment he seems quite content to just hang out and relax.

The biggest thing I have noticed in the past week and a half is the fact that both MW and I are VERY ready for pregnancy to be over. Sure having a newborn brings a whole host of different stresses, but at least they will be different stresses!

The plan right now is to go until Monday and, if the baby doesn't come before then, have a meeting with the OB about the plan moving forward (ie induction)

Hopefully it will not come to that, but I will keep every one updated.

Also my buddy MC is back in the US which is awesome! Maybe our little buddy was just waiting for his Crazy Uncle Crawley to get back!

Update...Sorry for the delay

Apologies for the delay all, the last couple weeks have been quite busy, but I will sum everything up.

MW is doing very well with the gestational diabetes. After some issue controlling her fasting sugar levels she is on 20 units of insulin and her blood sugar levels are in control and doing well. We did another ultrasound a couple of weeks ago with the little guy weighing in at 4 pounds 12 oz! We have another ultrasound on Thursday so I will update his weight then.

Health wise everything is going well for both MW and JW which is the most important thing. However the last two weeks have been very busy.

I ended up taking a trip up to Montreal for a week to go on board a ship that was being repaired. Got to learn quite a bit, but travelling in the 34 week was quite the interesting and nerve wracking experience. Another post to come on that.

Also MW's company shut down! She came in last Monday to find a note on every ones desk saying to call a number, she called it and, bingo bango, the bank had pulled funding and everyone was out of the job! This has been quite an interesting thing to happen so close to having a baby because we no longer have the option for maternity leave. At the moment MW has filed for unemployment and will continue filing for that even after the baby comes. In the end its really a good thing because Redcoat was a miserable and soul destroying place to work.

We had one baby shower with all of our friends (except for those who were at sea or on their way to China!) which was very fun. Lots of amazing gifts and now the babies room actually looks like a room! We have our family baby shower this week so even more stuff will appear and hopefully we will be ready for when the little guy comes!

Yay low blood sugar count!

Just an update MW was pumped up to 16 units of insulin a night and her morning level has been below 90 (which is the requirement) for the past 3 days! Woohoo go MW go!

Glucose test part Deux

Well MW's needed to score below a 130, but she scored a 129. So Friday night is fasting and Saturday morning its back to the lab for the 3 hour glucose test. This involves drinking the same sugary drink as before but a longer testing period with more blood tests.

I will update after

Ps our little guy is doing very well. He has been active and kicking which is excellent and loves to watch the Bruins game! (could be because he usually gets ice cream around that time though...)

The first kick!

So for a couple of weeks now MW has been able to feel the little guy moving around inside. It seems like everytime after she eats there would be 20 minutes of her saying "OOO there he is!" That was excellent news to hear, but I was a bit disappointed that I couldn't feel him moving at all. Well that all changed a couple of days ago.

It was actually the day of our most recent midwife appointment (a blog post regarding that is forthcoming) The midwife had asked if we were able to feel him moving around yet and MW said yes, but I was said no. "Soon enough" was the response and goodness was she right. We were in our room watching a little TV and all of a sudden MW told me to put my hand on her belly, I did even though I knew nothing would come of it. All of a sudden there was a little boop! I put my head down on her belly and it was like there was a little baby Pele in there, I felt two strong kicks when I started to talk to him.

It was very exciting to feel the kicks, but more exciting feeling him react to my voice when I was talking to him. So even though you feel silly talking to a belly, they can hear you in there so talk away!

Good news!

So great news everyone, the perinatologist couldn't even find an ecogenic focus on the ultrasound. They had much better equipment and the hospital and a much much much better tech doing the procedure. So we have a nice normal baby with no problems on the ultrasound woohoo!

The appointment yesterday prompted me to do a post about technicians, such as our wonderful ultrasound tech yesterday.

It can be a little nerve wracking to go into a procedure like that. You just want to make sure that everything is going well with the baby and all that, often leaving you a little nervous to talk to the tech. Always talk to the tech. The tech should be explaining everything they are doing to you. Yes they are there to get the scans, but they are also there to help educate you on what's going on with your baby.

The second ultrasound we had should have been a really exciting thing! And it was, except we got little to no information from the technician. She just sat there silently snapping scan after scan. She may have said 4 sentences to us. Thank God MW's mom was there to help walk us through everything. Not a good experience, but we didn't know if that was normal or if the tech would have been annoyed by our questions

The third ultrasound was the exact opposite of that. Our tech was fantastic! Her, along with an observing med student, talked us through everything that she was doing. She explained what everything was and what she was doing when she was taking her scans. She asked us about the tech who did the scans at the midwife office and was rather confused when we said we had none of our questions answered and that the previous tech didn't even get all of the scans needed.

Overall the third ultrasound was a fantastic experience, although we did have an hour delay. The best thing I can say to everyone out there is ask questions! If you want to know something or aren't getting the info you think you need, ask them. After all its your baby!

Ultrasound today

So MW and I have our additional ultrasound today to take a look at the echogenic focus that they found on the last ultrasound. I will update everyone after the appointment!

Ultrasound tomorrow!

We have our second ultrasound tomorrow! This is the time where the baby will actually look way more like a baby, as opposed to a tadpole of some sort. Both MW and I are super excited about this, we will be joined by her mother JF at the ultrasound and then continue to the midwife appointment ourselves.

I will update this weekend on the awesome that is our appointment. Fear not for I have a large list of possible topics and I want to get 2 or 3 blog posts out in each of the next couple weeks to catch up to where we are in the process now.