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Friday, August 31, 2007

Ultrasound & Chaos

An eventful day. Pierrette almost didn't make the ultrasound appointment because she was stuck on the DVP which was closed down to allow the passage of a carful of bombs. Really. And the dude they arrested lives on Ashdale, a few streets east of here. Is someone trying to tell us something?

But she made it, and we got an ultrasound. No multiples, just the one baby. So far, so good.

Surprising how much he or she (we don't know yet) moves around. Pierrette can't feel it yet, but she's an active little guy. He rolled over on to her side and onto his face several times during the ultrasound. We could see arms and hands and a spine, and a little tiny beating heart. Well, ok, we could see a little patch of pixels twitching, but the ultrasound technician tells us that was a heart.

Having seen a lot of static ultrasound pictures before, I hadn't realized how much the 'motion' helps you to really see the baby. It felt, for those moments, very real, although it's gone back to being somewhat abstract.

There was some irritating mixup with our ultrasound photo. It wasn't ready with the ultrasound results, so they said to come back after we drew blood. It wasn't ready when we came back from the blood, so they called up again and then said to come back after the genetic counselling. When we left the genetic counselling office ... the ultrasound desk was closed and locked up. Gee, thanks guys, not like we WANTED our copy of the first picture of our baby. Nooo, not at all.

Anyway -- guess we'll have to bug 'em to get it now. So I don't have any pictures to share.
Yet.

We saw Cirque du Soleil tonight; it was great, but most of the acts were high up in the air and we were very close, so I've got a sore neck.

Thursday, August 30, 2007

Ultrasound and Gear

We have our appointment for an ultrasound tomorrow; imagine that'll make this all seem more "real" and less abstract.

Since Pierrette has some history of twins on her side, it'll be interesting to finally get some sense of 'how many'. I imagine 'one' is by far the likeliest, but in some ways, twins would be neat, and useful given the size of our house.

We've been talking about strollers and slings/carriers, but haven't settled on any of the above yet. I had saved a great no-burp bottle from Cool Tools, but with the advent of the whole no-plastics-or-at-least-safer-plastics debate, I'm not sure if that bottle has kept up with the times.

Also read a little about the Baby Plus prenatal education system. Sounds interesting, and mildly plausible, but also sounds like something difficult to prove. Are you spending $200 for what amounts to some in-flight entertainment for Baby that could be replaced by a $20 mp3 player and $20 headphones, or is it really a reliable way to improve your baby's earlier years? Hard to say.

Sunday, August 19, 2007

Counting Down

Well, I guess I've gotta use these web mad skillz for something; I put a little countdown timer on the right-hand sidebar. Sadly, that took about an hour of messing around in Javascript, it's just been too long since I've spent any real time in Javascript.

But it's done, it's up. I might take a look at the css for the page as well.

Day 70

This morning we bought a rocking chair for the nursery. It's a bentwood chair with caning on the seat and back, it came with a cute bamboo foot stool.

Some you have been asking me if we are going to register, we have not decided yet mostly because we have not yet seen one store that has tons of items that we want. However I have started a list on "wishlistr" to keep track of items that we are interested in:

http://www.wishlistr.com/baby-wiseman


My extreme fatigue seems to be gone unless I have a bout of insomnia.

Baby and me are well and off to do some organizing in the basement.

Thursday, August 16, 2007

9 weeks 5 days

I started charting the food I eat to make sure I get the correct amount of each food group and the proper amount of servings. I also signed up for Yoga Classes every Monday; I start next week. I think I might try to see if I can find an aqua-fit class to sign up for also.

I was very happy when our midwife said that acupuncture is OK at this point, since my joints are killing me. Can wait to be poked by Julie :-)

I was talking to mom last night and she asked me what was the probability for twins, I said I don't know but they should be able to tell by my next appointment. She told me that both of my grandmothers had twins I always though only memere Arsenault had twins... Should I be scare? Should I be excited?

I find I am slightly less tired the before but still exhausted, I think watching what I eat carefully is probably helping.

Je t'aime mon petit, I decided soon you will no longer look like an alien.

Wednesday, August 15, 2007

Midwifery

So, we met our primary midwife today; she delivered Sebastian: Christie (sp?). Our alternate midwife was Kim and Jamie's primary. So, all in all, I guess we're in good hands; Sebastian seems to have come out ok. ;)

Also discovered that the Ella Centre for ... well, whatever the rest of the name is ... is closed 'til 2008, sadly.

Picked up a Le Creuset casserole so that I can do no-knead bread and casseroles when 'mommy' is getting 2h-stretches of sleep.

Saturday, August 11, 2007

Busy Weekend

Busy weekend so far; I've been priming and painting the bathroom door, and working on applying and sanding drywall compound. In between, I went up to the Taste of the Danforth, had some lunch, stopped by Home Depot on the way back, and watched The Prestige from TMN.

Tomorrow, more sanding and drywall compound to apply; if the door's dry, I may take it out back and apply more paint (once it's out of the house; Pierrette's coming back tomorrow evening, and we'd prefer not to subject her to paint fumes).

9 weeks 1 day

I finished sorting all the items placed aside by Tara for us. We have one large box of boy clothing, one large box of girl clothing and one large box of unisex clothing. Also some infant toys, a play pen, a beautiful crib, a small tub and many more miscellaneous items...

It's about 8:30 pm and I'm starting to get tired got to remember to move the car back into the driveway.

Friday, August 10, 2007

9 weeks

I started going through the items at Tara's. She put tonnes of stuff aside for us. It's great because we won't need to spend quite as much money on baby stuff. However, it's a bit surreal.

A Weekend of Renovation

I'll be renovating this weekend. Not that that's much different than any other weekend, but Pierrette is aiming to spend the weekend at my Tara's (my sister), so that I can focus on renovation and painting without any VOCs or other such toxicities affecting her.

That means I should be able to get more done than usual, assuming I don't tire myself out too quickly. Fingers crossed. I'm hoping to finish most of the mudding (drywall compound) and sanding, and paint the bathroom door, but ... we'll see how it goes.

Wednesday, August 8, 2007

A mommy to be diary - 8 weeks 4 days

Geoff says I should contribute to the blog. Since I guess the Wiseman Conspiracy is inside me that probably makes sense. Everyone keeps on asking me how I am doing. Overall pretty good if you dont count the constant tiredness, feeling ill if you put any pressure near my stomach, a sudden new love for lemonade ( I hated lemonade most of my life), thinking everything including the dish towel smells funny and I wont even go into the strange things my body is doing. Now that I am done ranting I am excited about going to Tara's next weekend she has been stock pilling everything and anything to do with kids that hers have outgrown so I will be sorting and choosing some items for my alien ( that is the nickname I gave baby).

The Secret's Out

Pierrette joined a few pregnancy-related groups on Facebook without managing to hide the join messages from her contacts.

So she signed in just now and had some inquiring messages from those of you who noticed.

I guess that means the secret's out. No sense trying to control the flow of information anymore:

Yes, we're expecting.

If you're interested in keeping up to date, this is the place to do it. Of course, you're welcome to talk to us directly, but in terms of a 'broadcast medium', I think we're going to try and put the information here.

Thanks for all your well-wishes. If I'd previously asked you to keep it on the down-low, you can ignore that now.

Tuesday, August 7, 2007

First Round: Family, Closest Friends

Roy came down on Saturday, so we gave him the news.

That's the last of the parents, so I went ahead and told Jamie and Michael this morning over IM. Jamie told Kim, and I imagine Michael might tell Danielle, but both are aware we're still controlling the information flow for now.

There's only so long I can keep that under wraps, so we might set up a dinner with a wider set of friends to let 'em know, and send emails to those who can't make it. I dunno, we'll figure it out.

Kim says this is still within the period where the fetus can 'detach', so she's sending us "Sticky Vibes".

Thursday, August 2, 2007

The News Spreads

Pierrette has told her parents, and we've told my mother and sister. My father is next; we're seeing him this weekend, so we can spring the news on him then. Pierrette's also told Lisa, I think she was the first to hear.

We'll have to tell the rest of our friends soon enough, but I'm not in any rush.

The baby is now seven weeks in; his or her heartbeat would be detectable on ultrasound, I'm told.
It still feels a long way away, but it's exciting.

A Discovery

Wow.

So this is it.

We're pregnant. I say 'we', but obviously it's Pierrette.

This is not a complete surprise, as we were trying for this very result, but it's still a lot to absorb.

Pierrette took this test on 10-Jul-2007. We've since had blood work done with her doctor, and Pierrette's expected due date is 16-Mar-2008.