The Nursery

Since a few of you have asked, here's a few photos of the nursery. I decided not to do anything too theme-intensive since we're planning to sell the house later this year. Half the room is still being used as a storage and work-out room. The juxtaposition of soft, fluffy baby gear and hard, cold dumbbells is pretty funny.






The walls are decorated with adhesives that can be reused and don't harm the paint. There are super cool designs at http://www.whatisblik.com/shop/explore






I LOVE our new glider/rocker. I've already been rocking myself to sleep in it... Thanks Dad and Karen!


Cool bucket-drawers from Ikea for toys and books:


I thought about omitting this part of the room, but to give you the real-life effect I had to include it. I think it reflects the slow progression of how this baby is slowly- though not completely- claiming his place in our lives.



The balloons are usually in the crib to keep the cats out. The dumbbells are a part of Kyle's morning work-out routine. And the rest is, well, other random stuff I haven't had time to organize. Nice.

Any Day Now...

Here's a recent ultrasound image of our little man (profile of his head looking to the right and hand in upper right corner):

Video Camera

In anticipation of Champ's arrival and all of the documentation that we are going to want to have, we purchased a video camera! The camera arrived in the mail today. We ended up getting a pretty nice one because I'm hoping to use it for video taping Ultimate for instructional and promotional purposes as well. It's a Canon Vixia HFS200. Thank you to my parents who helped make this possible!

And, without further ado, here is the first video! I haven't decided if I'm more of a Scorsese or Coppola yet.

Urban Momma Photo Shoot (37 Weeks)

This whole idea was really Kyle's brain-child. He wanted to summarize our lives in Atlanta. The location is the Krog St. tunnel, a well-known landmark in our neighborhood due to it's tolerance of graffiti art and many concert postings. He also insisted that I wear my scrubs so as to capture my doctoring experience. Our friend Nick took the shots. It's certainly a different take on the usual soft black and white nude belly portraits!

36 Weeks

Champ's Development:
- Length 17-19inches
- Weighs 4.2-5.7 lbs and becoming chubby
- Kidneys and liver fully developed, lungs still finalizing
- Baby may drop into pelvis, becoming "engaged"



My development:
- Have gained 30lbs and am now starting to really feel the extra fluid in my womb
- Feeling Champ roll and squirm around all the time
- Mild ankle swelling, especially after my flight from MA (I had cankles for a day!)
- No heartburn, but increased frequency of burping
- Felt my first couple Braxston-Hicks contractions: These are early contractions that are supposedly helping prep baby (and especially Mom) for birth. It felt like a bad menstrual cramp and I was compelled to get on all fours and do some deep breathing. They only lasted about 30-60 seconds.




- This is about the time that most babies are head first and starting to engage the pelvis, but alas, Champ is still defying gravity (a future astronaut perhaps?) and maintains his breech position. I have been seeing a chiropractor who specializes in prenatal and pediatric work. She's been using a method called the Webster Technique to open my pelvis and encourage the baby to turn. At home, I've been practicing inversions, including laying on my inverted massage table, to try to get his butt out of my pelvis.

At this point, I've started to let go of my wishful birth plan (that of a natural water birth in the hospital) and have started to get realistic about the possible options and outcomes. Mostly, I've started to focus less on my own birth experience and more on doing what's best and safest for Champ. At my midwife appointment this week, if Champ is still breech, she'll refer me to an OB. The OB will ultrasound me and define Champ's exact position. If it's favorable, he will do external cephalic version (ECV), a brief, but unpleasant maneuver to manipulate Champ's position.



If it works, great. I'll be able to proceed with the plan. If it doesn't, there's a few possibilities. If he's frank breech, meaning butt down and legs up, I can deliver naturally with my midwifes (only 2 practices in Atlanta are still doing this). If he's any other type of breech, I'll have to have a c-section. This would be a little disappointing given that I've been hoping for the au-natural route, but like I said, I just want to do what's safe at this point.

So, keep your fingers crossed for a spontaneous flip or a successful ECV for me!

The Naming of Things (part II)

Ok, this going to be a quick one. Yesterday Sara and I were out at Bucket pick-up (Bucket is an elite level co-ed frisbee team that we both played on last season but are not playing on this year). While we were warming up a few of the players were talking about baby names. One of the women, a teacher, told (an urban legend?) story about a girl named "l-a." When she was in class and the teacher called her name as "la" she responded, "it's pronounced "ladasha." I couldn't help but think of this as a clever and simple way to play with the English language to create new words and sounds.

So, I present to you my new proposal for Champ's middle name - C'. This would be pronounced "Capostrophe."

Ok, so before you think I'm crazy, please read on. At one point there was a rumor or report that distinctively black names resulted in worse life outcomes for a child. However, more recent studies indicate that controlled for familial and economic circumstances that has not been found to be the case. Here's an actual study and here's a popular article on the subject. Anyway, it appears that names are typically an indicator rather than a cause.

Even considering that a name might impact a child's life outcome, in this case, we're talking about a middle name. I don't know about you, but I hardly use my middle name and most people probably don't even know it. On most forms or applications you are usually only asked for your middle initial. If, on reading the name, people pronounced the name as "C" that would not be inaccurate.

Interesting and semi-related side note, President Harry Truman middle name was actually just "S." The "S" didn't stand for anything.

Ok, so hopefully I've allayed your concerns about the Champ's life outcomes if we were to give him the middle name C'.

So, why do it? First, C' is interesting and unique. I can pretty much guarantee that no one else has that name. Capostrophe is unique by itself but C' takes it to another truly fascinating level.

I'm a big fan of voiceless fricative sounds for words and names. These are sounds that are made by pressing air out through small openings. "F", "Sh," "S," "Th" are the primary voiceless fricative sounds in the English language (each are made by pressing the mouth together at different points to restrict air flow). C' has two voiceless fricatives in in it: "Cap-Os-tro-fee." This is just a fancy way of saying that I like the sound of C'.

The first half of the name "Capo" is a word meaning "a movable bar attached to the fingerboard of a fretted instrument to uniformly raise the pitch of all the strings." Sara and I are both guitar players (in fact one of the first things we bonded over) and own and use "capos."

Finally, the middle name C' would start with the same letter as the nickname we've been using for Champ in utero.

Ok, so Sara thinks C' is crazy. I want to hear from folks that we are close with: is C' ridiculously awesome for a middle name or just ridiculous?

Dreams of a (soon-to-be) Father

Ok, I was going to include this in my last post but it got too long so it gets it's own separate post. Sara also mentioned the wacky dreams I've been having.

Several weeks ago, Sara and I purchased a nice dresser from Ikea for Champ's bedroom (like the one to the right but blue). As we were putting it together we listened to a podcast from This American Life. The theme of the show was "fear of sleep." Each bit featured stories about horrible things that happened at night to the story tellers. The first segment included Mike Birbiglia, a comedian who is frequently on the show, talking about his struggles with sleepwalking. It is hilarious and I highly recommend listening to it (it's about 15 minutes) before reading the rest of the rest of the story below.

A couple weeks after that show, I woke up to find these huge, dark black spiders with very bright colorful markings dangling from the ceiling right above me in bed. They looked like big black widows but their markings were of different colors. They were in a ball and there were two or three of them together. Then the string of web they were on broke and they feel on to my stomach in the covers. I bolted up and jumped out of bed and, standing next to the bed, began rifling through the covers and sheets to locate the spiders. I couldn't see them so I turned on the bedside light. But the light was too bright and I struggled between dimming and brightening the light. I didn't want to wake Sara up but I needed it to be bright enough to find the spiders. Finally, I left it pretty dim and went back to digging through the covers.

At this point, Sara, confused by my grabbing at the covers and the disco strobe light effect I had been making wakes up and asks what I'm doing. I tell her about the spiders and she informs me that there are no spiders in the bed and I should go back to sleep. This sounded like crazy talk but I needed a second to think about it so I went to the bathroom to relieve myself. Upon returning, I still think there may be spiders in the bed, but I'm tired and, if there are spiders, I'll find them when I get in the bed.

Sara's been working some odd shifts recently and, at times, has struggled with sleeping. A week after the incident above (yes, the spiders were in my dream) Sara couldn't sleep so went downstairs. Soon after, I got out of bed and charged to the landing above the stairs. When I woke-up, I found myself at the top of the landing and was very confused about why I was there or where I was planning to go. I didn't realize Sara was awake so I quietly walked back in the room and went back to sleep.

So, Sara thinks the sleep walking might be baby related. Honestly, I have no idea, but I hope it stops and doesn't escalate into me jumping out of windows or climbing on top of tall furniture in the middle of the night. I would hate to have to wrap myself in a straighjacket before I go to sleep. Or maybe we could just find a really tall crib for me.