The Blog Formerly Known As "The Bunty and Buck Belly Blog"

To Find Out or Not To Find Out

I discovered quickly that one of the first questions you get after telling somone that you're expecting a child is whether or not you plan to find out if it's a boy or girl.  And the question isn't reserved solely for family and close friends.  No, sir.  I've gotten the question from business and casual acquaintences too, pretty much without fail.

The interesting thing I've noticed is that many of those who pose the question already have their own ideas on the matter.  Specifically, those who are against finding out are usually quite zealous in the rightousness of their opinion.  If you tell them that you're inclined to go the other way, you can expect a minor lecture on the whole matter.  I even had a business associate take five minutes out of a lunch to plead the case for not finding out.

The angle that the "anti-finders" usually take starts out with the idea of a surprise.  "There are so few nice surprises left in the world" is a common refrain.  As if I wasn't suprised enough by learning that M. was pregnant!

Anyway, after some discussion and consideration, M. and I reaffirmed our desire to make use of modern technology and have a peek at what to expect.  More on that in a not-too-distant post.

Week 18 (Picture!)

And week 18 is here.  We're almost at the halfway mark and M. is going strong.  (For those of you that aren't familiar with human pregnancies, they normally last 40 weeks.)

This week was marked by a few new things.  Firstly, one of M.'s students came out and asked if she is pregnant.  Tact is apparently not in the five year old vocabulary.  Anyway, M. told the children that she is indeed pregnant and this elicited some excitement and a unanimous class vote that we're going to have a boy.

Also new are the jeans that you see M. wearing in this photo.  Yep, she's invested in a couple of pairs of maternity jeans.  I had no idea that elastic around the top was the trick.  You learn something new every day.

This week also saw a surge in M.'s appetite for beef.  She doesn't have any odd cravings or anything, just a hankering for lots more beef than usual.  We even randomly headed to Izzy's on Thursday with a friend so she could get her fix.  Given that I enjoy a good steak myself, I'm looking forward to more than a few steak dinners over the next 20 weeks or so.

Daddy Types

During my campaign to convince M. to let me do a blog about our pregnancy, I went out and found a bunch of blogs written by other folks about their experiences.  Needless-to-say, I found plenty of them by women talking about every aspect of pregnancy, from IVF, to miscarriages, to birth date countdowns.  It seems that the female gender is well-represented in the blogosphere when it comes to the topic.  What I really wanted to find was a blog like this one - written by a recently-inducted dad or dad-to-be.

Well, I've found one - Daddy Types, The Weblog for New Dads.  While it doesn't exactly match my particular situation, many of the posts are certainly relevant to things that I'm thinking about.  Also, there's a healthy dose of humor which is welcome given some of the heavier stuff that the ladies are writing about.  And while I may disagree with their taste in strollers (personally, I've got my eye on some Dutch designs - more on that later) I'll be checking them daily and have added them to my blogroll.*  Check them out for yourself.  Oh, and I wear a size large t-shirt.

*For those of you wondering, a "blogroll" is a list of blogs that you follow or are relevant to your own.  You'll see Daddy Types in the right column.  I'll add others as I find them.

Detailed Instructions

At about ten weeks or so, after hearing the baby's heartbeat for the first time, M. picked up The Girlfriends' Guide To Pregnancy, Or Everything Your Doctor Won't Tell You.  From what I understand, this isn't the usual pregnancy book.  We were warned away from those by the doctor who said that the only thing they were good for was scaring the crap out of you by talking about everything that could possibly go wrong, regardless of how remote.  By contrast, the GG is written from the perspective of a woman who has been through the whole thing before and is talking with a younger girlfriend about what she can expect.  I've read more than a few pages myself and have found it both amusing and informative.

Last night in bed I picked it up and randomly turned to the chapter entitled "What to Take to the Hospital."  The last two sentences had me fully laughing out loud.

In addition to yourself, you will need to bring a suitcase to the hospital.  Unless your baby comes very, or you are still having trouble accepting the fact that you are, indeed, pregnant, you will have a bag packed and ready long before you go into labor.  If, however, you need to go to the hospital and your bag isn't packed, JUST GO.  Do not worry, because there is nothing you will really need until after the baby is born.  In the relative calm after the baby is born, you can ask someone, preferably not your husband, to pack a bag for you and bring it to the hospital.  If it absolutely must be your husband who packs your bag, give him a written list specifically itemizing every single article you want.  If you just give him general instructions like, "Bring me something to wear home from the hospital and some things for a shower," there is a very good chance that you will be given a cocktail dress, tennis shoes, a shaver and shaving cream.

As much as I hate to say it, I can unfortunately relate to the proto-husband described here.  Case in point - one day in the not-so-distant past when M. asked me to pick up a few things at the grocery store.

I was raised in a "whole milk" household and can't recall ever seeing anything labeled "non-fat," "low-fat," or "fat-free" during 18 years of familial cohabitation.  As a matter of fact, to this day I retain the bias that "non-fat" really means "non-taste".  So when M. asked for low-fat yogurt and low-fat Triscuits, my mind naturally ignored the fat content part and I brought home "regular" versions of both items.  Now here's the part where I tell you that I had been given an actual, physical, grocery list specifically requesting and detailing such low-fat items.

I should probably have M. pack that hospital bag sooner than later.

Week 17 (Picture!)

Finally I've gotten M. to agree to let me start posting about her (our?) pregnancy.  It took some convincing but here we are.  And what better way to kick things off than with a picture?  Look for more photos in the coming weeks as we chart her ever expanding bust belly.

Tomorrow we're officially at 17 weeks and things are going pretty well.  The morning sickness - which, funnily enough, never occurred during the morning - is finally gone.  M. tells me, however, that it's been replaced by a kind of "spaciness" that she's read about in her pregnancy books.  Needless-to-say, I've not noticed much of a change.  ; )

To provide some perspective on the above picture, M.'s always had a very flat tummy.  What you see here is a BIG change from even just a few weeks ago.  During a walk today we popped into a hardware store to pick up a tape measure so we can quantify her belly's outward expansion.  We're not really sure what makes an accurate measurement so we're going straight around from her belly button.  Today we're at 32 inches in circumference.

I plan to update the site weekly with pictures of M.'s progress.  Other posts will appear as well - I can't believe how into strollers I've become - as we go through this exciting time together.  I invite you to check back often.  Who knows, maybe I'll even get M. to blog a few times as well.  Now THAT would be a miracle too!