Progress

PROGRESS

This page is up here specifically because the soon to be Uncle Richard wanted to know if we'd graphed the weight and waist statistics yet, probably because we feel the need to update him every week.  While we're pretty sure he was just being a smart@$$, we thought we'd do it anyway.

May 24, 2002 - 37 Weeks - Yippee!!!

Today's doctor appointment brought good news.  She's finally decided to flip over and looks like she's in good position now.  The doctor says that at this point he considers her full term and would not stop labor if it started.  So, we got our final instructions on when to call the hospital after the contractions begin and we go back to the old fashioned method of just waiting it out.  Not only are we happy that we won't have to go through surgery and/or attempts at turning the baby, but Mommy is happier now too.   Since the baby flipped and dropped the heartburn has gone back to manageable levels and I can breathe again.  The doctor did an ultrasound to confirm the baby's position.  We didn't get a good picture of the face because of where she was, but we did get a really good look at a confirmation that she is in fact a girl.  Even Chris and I could tell right away what we were looking at.  So, no need to keep a couple of emergency boys names on hand "just in case"!

May 15, 2002 - 36 Weeks

The news this week is that the baby has turned breech. So, everyone is to spend the next week and a half thinking about things flipping over. We're crossing our fingers that when we go to the doctor's next Friday she will have realized the error of her ways and will have turned herself over like a good little girl. Other than that, everything still looks good. She's amazingly active, I'm expecting that she'll be a soccer player when she's older.

Week 36 Mommy Stats
Weight: 138 pounds
Waist: 41.75 inches

A close-up on the belly of the T-Shirt I'm wearing. There is a website where you can upload any picture and they will put it on a T-Shirt. So I scanned our last ultrasound and had them make a T-Shirt.

May 2, 2002 - 34 Weeks

The doctor's office had just gotten a new ultrasound machine today and they tried it out on us. We got to see her open her mouth and move her hand up to her face. Below is a really nice picture of the profile of her face. In this picture her mouth is open.

April 28, 2002 - 33 Weeks

Week 33 Mommy Stats
Weight: 131.5 pounds
Waist: 40.25 inches

Our dog Bob. He has no idea what's coming..

April 16, 2002 - 31 Weeks

The kitchen is looking better..

Week 31 Mommy Stats
Weight: 129 pounds
Waist: 39.5 inches

Countertops are in, we have all major appliances back. Now we just need to get the tiling done.

March 28, 2002 - 29 Weeks

The kitchen construction continues...

Our cooking arrangements this week.

The kitchen at the beginning of the week.

Kitchen at the end of the week.

Week 29 Mommy Stats
Weight: 126 pounds
Waist: 38 inches

March 17, 2002 - 28 Weeks

This week began the major construction on the kitchen. This week's mommy picture isn't side on. My brother took it as we were clearing the way to move the fridge out into the living room. I think we might have taken the nesting instinct just a little too far.

Week 28 Mommy Stats
Weight: 125 pounds
Waist: 37.75 inches

The kitchen as it was before we began the upgrade project.

The first step. Everything had to come out so that we could do the floor.

At the end of the week, the floor was in. See next week for more progress.

March 8, 2002 - 26 Weeks

 This is the week we found out what the gender was.   Click here to find out!

Week 26 Mommy Stats
Weight: 123 pounds
Waist: 36.75 inches

February 22, 2002 - 24 Weeks

 Yeah!!! We got our new digital camera. This should make the weekly updates much easier and much more likely to happen.

Week 24 Mommy Stats
Weight: 120.5 pounds
Waist: 36 inches

February 6, 2002 - 22 Weeks - Ultrasound Day

Today we finally got to see the baby.  During the ultrasound we had at 7 weeks, it looked like a tiny smudge in the snow on the screen.  Today we got our first glimpse of arms and legs that moved around and well, it just finally looked like an actual baby.  It was really cool to feel it kick and see it happening on the screen.  The baby was above average in weight for 22 weeks based on all the measurements the doc took.   It placed in the 85th percentile for baby's at this stage.  Yikes!   The measurements also predicted that the baby weighs 1 pound 3 ounces.

 

 

You are looking down on the baby from above. The head is on the right and the two arms and hands are pointing toward the left. 

 

You are looking up at baby from underneath in this picture. The body is to the right and the legs and feet are extending to the left.

Gender

March 6, 2002 - 26 Weeks - Success!!!
We weren't expecting to find anything out today, but it was a slow day at the doctor's office and we were trapped there for an hour waiting for the sugar to kick in for the glucose tolerance test.  So, the doctor suggested that we take a quick peek to see if we could find out the gender.  Well, the face was pointed toward my spine so we didn't get good pictures of that, but it meant that the area of interest for finding out whether it is a boy or a girl was aimed right at us.  The doc said that while he never gives a 100% certainty with an ultrasound, it's as close as it's ever gonna get.  He also said he's never been wrong.   It looks like all the predictions were correct!

February 6, 2002 - 22 Weeks - Ultrasound Day
We were hoping to get a definitive answer on whether we had a boy or a girl, but it was more interested in squirming away from the doctor poking it with the ultrasound wand.  So, from what the doc could see, he said he was leaning towards it being a girl (since there were no signs of any boy parts in view).  At this point he says he has a 65% certainty that it is a girl.  He'll do another ultrasound when we're just past 7 months to see if we can find out for sure.

Pre-Ultrasound Predictions
Ancient Chinese Gender Prediction:  Every pregnancy website out there has this calendar on it.  It takes the lunar age of the mother at conception and the lunar month during which conception occured and uses those items to determine the gender.  According to this ancient method, we're having a girl.

Scientific Statistical Prediction:  This method takes into consideration the date of ovulation and the last date you did what it was that got you pregnant.   The idea is that male sperm swim faster, but die off more quickly.  Female sperm take their time getting there, but live longer.   The closer the date of ovulation you snuggled a little too close, the better the chances of a boy.   Based on this method, the chances are better that we're having a girl.

Dream Prediction:  This is the old tried and true, what does the mother dream about method.  I've only had one dream in which I could actually tell the sex of the baby, and in that one it was a girl, but the previous two predictions might have had something to do with that!

Weeks 18-21 Pre-Digital Camera

Weeks 18-21 Pre-Digital Camera

I decided to consolidate the earlier pictures that didn't come out as well onto one page.

January 10, 2002
18 Weeks

No Mommy Stats



January 17, 2002
19 Weeks

Mommy Stats
Weight: 113 pounds
Waist: 31 inches


January 31, 2002
21 Weeks

In the Beginning

The very first site I made was to keep the family updated while I was pregnant with our then unknown boy or girl. It went live on February 6, 2002 and it was pretty basic. I took a screenshot to preserve how it looked:

A Time to Refocus

I am writing this entry in July of 2020. Our family blogs have been scattered across several homemade sites, and a few blogspot sites. Many of these sites are using old technology that has started to fail and we are losing access to these memories. I am going to move all of them to this site, so that they will run again. In so doing, we will lose the original look and feel of those sites, so I will post a screenshot to the first post from each site. The blogs started before my daughter was born, while I was pregnant. They continued until she was 11 years old and my son was 5. I then took a 7 year break from blogging, mostly when Facebook came along. If I can get all of the blogs moved, I will try to then catch up on the intervening years. Please enjoy!