Readers know that the Mrs. is pregnant. Seven weeks to go. For a while now, baby has been pretty active. She’s doing somersaults, cartwheels, and generally moving around a lot. In fact, you can on occasion see movement through the Mrs.’ shirt. It’s quite phenomenal. Or so I’m told.

See, I rarely see it or feel it. I have this magical ability. Every time Mrs. Uncle says come feel, she’s kicking like crazy and I approach and place my hand on Mrs. Uncle’s belly, baby stops. Maybe she’s bashful or something. I don’t know.

As disappointing to me as this is, it absolutely frustrates the Mrs. She’ll ask if I felt something and I have to tell her that I didn’t. I’ve talked to a lot of fathers who report experiencing the same problem.

On the odd occasion she keeps moving, it’s pretty amazing. Also, we’re starting to get to the point where we can feel body parts (though we can’t identify which parts they are – but we’re told if it’s soft then it’s a butt). It’s pretty amazing when I can feel her.

We were told during the ultrasound that she was a girl. We asked how certain they were that it would be a girl and the doctor said she wouldn’t have told us she was a girl unless she was absolutely certain. Now, we have friends who are telling us that their respective doctors gave them percentages (i.e., we’re 98% certain it’s a girl). We didn’t get any percentages and were just told it’s a girl. The Mrs. now has this uneasy feeling that she may be a boy. That’s not a problem, other than the fact that we bought a ton of stuff in girlie colors.

Also, we recently took a bunch of classes on different subjects, like breathing and relaxation; breastfeeding; infant CPR; and a general birthing class. The majority of these classes seem to be tailored to women who are going to do natural childbirth. I wonder what percentage of women actually do natural childbirth, particularly since I think the Mrs. will be of the give me an epidural in the parking lot variety of pregnancies (though she swears she’ll wait as long as she can).

I have no intention of playing catch. I won’t be on the business end during labor. I’ll be there but, having watched childbirth during one of our classes, it doesn’t look like something I want to see. It’s one thing to see it happen to a stranger on video, it’s another the see the love of your life going through that. And I think I’d probably pass out. I’m squeamish.

After watching the video of the birth, I found some things rather odd. When the baby pops out (and after the head makes it, it does just pop right out), the doc just kinda tosses the baby up on mom’s belly. Apparently, the warmth comforts the baby and they try to do that as quickly as possible. In the video, the doc just tossed the baby right up there like he was slinging a hay bale, which caused mom and the nurses to reach for baby pretty quickly (after all, baby is, uhm, lubricated and may slip off).

Another thing is that you get to see 3D representations of how the various body parts and organs move around and change. Yeah, I had high school health classes and understood what was happening, but it makes it more understandable to see a 3D image of how a placenta fits, how the baby positions, and how mom’s organs move around (no wonder she has to pee all the time).

And people swear babies get hiccups. I don’t see how, since babies don’t actually breathe, per se. But we’ve had a couple of times where she was thumping in a definite rhythmic pattern that could have been hiccups. It’s pretty neat.

One more ultra sound to go. It’ll be neat even though we’re told that this time (since she’s so big now) that it may be hard to make things out. Looking forward to it!

Oh, I haven’t quite panicked about being a dad yet, but it’s coming.

Posted in Notes to Junior on May 11th, 2004 by SayUncle | RSS 2.0 |