Welcoming FBG

I may not be blogging regularly anymore but you know I'm going to document this:

It's a boy

 23 September 2019

8 lbs 6 oz

20.5 inches

Beloved by all.

Surprise Arrival

Quick, before it's July!  ... Before it's July 4th?

SURPRISE!!!!!

M.D.G., 8 lb 2 oz, 20 in

We had a baby.  He is super cute and super sweet and was in a reeeeal hurry to get here (read all about the amazing delivery here -- spoiler alert: my wife is a champion).  We thought it would be fun to not say a thing about it on social media and then just have a big surprise announcement, and you know what?  It WAS fun.  Of course family knew and it became increasingly difficult to hide the impending events from some friends who we saw in person, but it was still preeeeetty satisfying to drop this post on the Insta:

>O<

So he came right on schedule and we were basically in and out of the hospital and back home with our other two hooligans who just love baby brother, especially Little Girl, who can't stop asking to hold him, though the holding never seems to last too long.  It's been interesting to see the difference in how the two of them have reacted, and I suppose it will continue to be just that.

For those who wonder, we had the perfect girl name picked out so of course when we knew who we were expecting we had to shift gears, and there's no real explanation to his name other than that we liked the sound of the first name and then in a random association game of things we love we thought of the second one and then they sounded so nice together and had such a solid meaning that we had to go with it, and it has matched him perfectly so far.  (Cryptic enough?)

Now and then we just say, "Um, we have three kids."

Highlights from his Day 1 photoshoot by Auntie.  She also made an awesome little video with some footage she took.

Striking a pose.

Such a wise little face, with a touch of sleepy.

We had Grandma visiting for a week or so after the birth day, which was lots of fun and so very helpful.  The day she left we looked at each other and the three kids around us and were suddenly like, oh...

But so far so good!  He had his two-week checkup today and he's gaining weight and is very tall and has nice coloring and is eating like a champ and sleeping in between and overall a good boy, for which we are very grateful and hope will continue.

The best kinds of Father's Day presents.  Our belated celebration was a home run by The Wife.

Already outgrowing his newborn clothes. *sigh*

And that's our (second) boy.  One more to carry on the name, and bring us so much joy along the way.

First official portrait.  That pointy li'l chin!

Add him to the roster.  This boy is loved.

Until next update.

Presenting The Poppy

Three weeks ago tomorrow, this happened:

A.C.G., 8 lbs. 1 oz., 20.5 in.

Poppy no more!  Our little girl arrived right on schedule, and as healthy as can be.  We're so grateful to have our little one here safe and sound and doing so well.

First portrait

*almost winks*

These three...

A few newborn photos my sister took on day 1

Everything went as well as we could have hoped (almost... epidural man...), and The Wife and The Girl are both doing really great.  You can read all about the birth story here.  (And we were excited to welcome a cousintwin on the exact same day in a neighboring state!)  She's sweet and snuggly and wWe really weren't expecting QUITE that head o' hair, but here's hoping it sticks around, ha ha

Heading home (and, with only three of us, an incomplete family photo!)

We're happy to be home (and watching plenty of Parks and Recreation) and big brother is adjusting to life with a little one just fine.  He's usually quite gentle with her, and even though he can sense something is different, and can be a little sensitive sometimes, he's quickly acclimatizing to our new family dynamic.

Adorable art by my sister to commemorate the occasion

We love our beautiful and bright-eyed and dark-haired little girl!  It's already hard to imagine our family without her.

Family of four

The Month of The Speck

(This one has lots of text, which is a change from the previous photo-heavy posts, but I think it's fairly interesting and worth documenting, so read on if you like!  I'm sure some will be interested.)

Now that the babymoon is all said and done and documented, the time has come to give a little update on the preparations for the imminent arrival of The Speck.  That's right, the month of May is well upon us, and that means that by the time the month is up, we will have a little one finally joining us on the outside.  As of this week (week 37 [almost last week by now, since that's how long this blogpost has been sitting waiting to be posted]) he's considered full-term, which means he could technically come any day!  We're not really expecting him for another week or two at least, but we're really hoping for before the 20th, right, Wife?  *fistpump*  Our big plan of going to Star Trek next week and its subsequent inducement of labor is still the hope, so we'll see how that goes.  In the meantime, I was thinking that maybe we haven't been documenting our preparations that thoroughly, and certainly not as thoroughly as many people do (though some perhaps document a little TOO thoroughly), so here's a little update of what's been going on.  The Wife has been posting some of her own great preparations and projects (here, here, here, here and here), but here are a few more general ones:

• We're up to weekly appointments at the lady doctor (who is usually a man), which is ever so conveniently located immediately across the street from us (honestly, we walk ten yards and we're at the building).  Our insurance covers this clinic, so that's where we've been going, which means they have several doctors, and we sometimes see a different one every week, and whichever one is on call when we go into labor is the one who will deliver The Speck.  Some people might prefer having the same doctor throughout the process, but we're the type that don't mind and in-and-out kind of visit with whatever doctor happens to be there, as long as they're all qualified and appropriate, of course, which they all have (mostly) been so far.  We're just not very high maintenance as long as people know what they're doing, and the insurance coverage is pretty darn good.  Also, they did a great job of removing The Wife's tennis ball, so we have plenty of confidence in them.

• Speaking of the tennis ball incident and previous struggles with fertility, there don't seem to have been any issues with that (*knocks on wood*), for which we are very grateful.  It's crazy how you try and try and there are issues and complications, and then when it finally happened, it really did just that and has been going along apparently without a hitch.

• A couple of months ago we signed up for and attended a series of classes offered at the local hospital, which were somewhat interesting and informative, and mostly just helped us feel better prepared in general (though that Miracle of Life video... oh my).  Julie was... glad to be a little more prepared for the whole nursing scene too.  It's funny to think that pretty much everyone in that class by now has a little baby on the outside, since most people were further along than we were when we went to it.

• We've been slowly accumulating baby things over the months, and we're just about finished checking things off our list!  We figured it would be easier to buy things piecemeal as we go along rather than buying everything at once at the very end, which would be just crazy and expensive to do all at the same time.  So we just picked up a thing or two whenever we did our weekly grocery shopping, also ordering the big things every week or two online (crib, carseat, play yard, stroller...), and then gradually putting them together as the time draws near.  (We didn't want to buy them all too early, since then they would just be sitting there in boxes for all that time anyway.)  The nesting instinct has kicked in, our house is getting cleaned and sorted out, and as of now the nursery is pretty much assembled (and appropriately separated from the office, though they share the same room), and it's looking great!  I can't wait to see a snuggly little swaddled bundle in that crib.

In there.

• We also have plenty of clothes from sisters and friends and shower gifts and various other places, so that we've hardly had to buy any baby clothes at all!  (Thanks so much, sisters and friends!!!)  It's so nice to have plenty of things for him to wear at various ages, and we're definitely not 2 kewl for hand-me-downs.  The closet and dresser are in place and organized, the diapers and wipey-dipes are on hand, and there's also a nice little children's library building up.  Speaking of all this, my sisters and mom threw a really nice shower, and many friends and family were so kind as to attend.

Invitation art courtesy of Elise.  Love iiiit.  It's hanging on the bulletin board above my desk.

• We've been keeping track of things we need to do, like find a pediatrician and pre-register for labor & delivery, and contact the insurance and work for the necessary paperwork for family leave and such.  Julie hopes every day that it will be The Day so that she won't have to go to work anymore (I tell her just to go as much as she feels like or feels able to do, we don't want her overdoing it!), and I look forward to my two weeks paid leave myself (I could technically take several weeks longer, but it's unpaid, and I do have plenty of vacation days, so we'll see what happens and how things are going).

•  Julie has big plans to make some freezer meals for the crock pot and such, so we'll have plenty of ready-made and delicious things to eat when we don't have a lot of time to make something fresh and new, though we're also really looking forward to her mom coming to visit and my mom visiting too, and both of them making us delicious foods and treats (right, moms?!?).

• We have plenty of movies stored up on our DVR and Netflix TV shows to catch up on, so if (when) we're up late nights and spending a lot of time at home we'll have plenty to occupy us while we're trying to keep a newborn occupied and happy and sleeping when he should be.

• As far as the pregnancy itself, I have come to the conclusion that my dear wife is a pretty great pregnant lady.  She's a good sport and she's been active and even when she's grumpy or upset she tries not to let it get to her too much.  She has NO trouble sleeping (for real, she could probably sleep ten hours straight every night if she didn't have things to do each morning, and which she definitely does NOT take for granted), and after the first trimester [correction:  the first 20 weeks] she hasn't felt that sick (there's this short period every morning around 10 or 11 where she feels a little gross, but it always passes pretty quickly).  We've heard so many horror stories, and also dream situations, and so far she seems to me at least a little better than average, which is a great blessing to her, me AND The Speck.  She's had some of the usual symptoms and side-effects (no crazy cravings in the middle of the night though... remember what I said about sleeping great?  Though she still does like a few things to eat especially, like cheeeeese, though that's nothing really new), though I myself have been breaking out, putting on a few extra pounds, being unusually emotionally sensitive, feeling especially awkward and clumsy, having disturbing dreams and feeling really tired.  Sympathy symptoms?  I'm a believer.   Julie has been checking out and reading and studying from many books about various methods of delivery and rearing young ones, and it's been good to take bits and pieces from here and there and thinking of how we can adapt them to our own parenting ideas and such (though of course we have NOTHING to learn about parenting, since we already know it all and we will be PERFECT parents!  Aren't all first-timers perfect parents??).

• A lot of people have been naturally wondering about his name.  All we can say right now is that we have a few ideas and have narrowed it down considerably, but we're not ready to reveal our idea(s) yet.  Don't worry, in just a few weeks it will all be clear, and don't worry, we're not going to name him something ridiculous like Zerrick or Tomaquino or Pilot Inspektor or Google or Holy Tnetennba or anything with an apostrophe (yes, these are all true names I have found in a brief scouring of the interwebs for unfortunate infant nomenclature [except for Tomaquino, I made that one up, and Tnettenba, which Moss made up]...  people... don't be ridiculous).  Apparently, occasionally some people don't decide on a name before leaving the hospital, so the nurses write "Male" or "Female" on the paperwork as the first name, and some go back and change, but I guess several thousands don't... Why.

• As for The Infamous Speck himself, he's reportedly doing great, moving around a lot and keeping his mum on her toes (more like, keeping his mum sitting back with her feet up) and his dad on his too (gladly running about to respond to mum's every whim and need).  He's about 6.5 pounds now, and his heartbeat always sounds nice and strong, and he doesn't seem to be causing many contractions, real or otherwise, so who knows what that could mean, if anything at all?  It's still WAY exciting to me to feel his little movements and jabs, and it's great to know he's moving about plenty.  Sometimes I sing to him and sometimes Julie pokes him back when he pokes her, but often we just watch as he stretches his boundaries and makes her tummy nice and lopsided.  It's still amazing to me that there's this child inside of there just finishing up his cooking so he can join us in the outside world in just a few weeks.

My wife is not prego (that's spaghetti sauce), and she's not preggers (that's just stupid), but she is a beautiful and radiant pregnant girl with active, squirmy offspring inside of her, and she's doing a great job of creating the physical body for this human that our Creator has seen fit to bestow upon us.  I can't wait to take a more active and personal role as this child's daddy-o.  Keep going by, May!  And come see us soon, Speck!  Just a couple more weeks and you can join us out here.  It's a scary place sometimes, but I promise we'll take care of you.

Doctors and Hospitals and Tennis Balls: A Husband's Perspective

I have an epic Valentine's Day post about ready to go, but in the spirit of doing things chronologically, I wanted to do a quick post about The Wife's recent visits to see the doctor from my point of view.  I don't need to give a lot of details here, since she has done such a good job of chronicling her adventures over at her blog, but I still wanted to give a little info and some links to her posts for people who are interested and might not regularly visit Hinkypunk Station (though of course you all should... she is funny and clever and witty).  I don't think this will be TMI or anything, but just be aware.

First, a story:  One day it was Christmas 2011.  In the earliest morning my beloved wife gave me my first Christmas present--the news that we were finally expecting our firstborn.  Most of the dozen or so people who read this blog are probably aware by now that we've been hoping to add a small humanoid to our little family for a while, so this was really exciting news.  She was just a few weeks along, so we didn't spread the word right away (it was the hardest secret to keep during the Christmas festivities, believe you me), but things took a troubling turn just a few days later when certain curious bodily signs and/or symptoms led us to visit the doctor.  To make a long story (involving several hospitals, a very long ER visit --a word to ER doctors:  DON'T say something like, "There's some kind of big mass here..." and then never address it again--and finally seeing a good specialist, which Julie has documented much more fully here and here), it was discovered that we lost the poor wee thing, but this led to a few tests and getting some real information.  As it turned out, what Julie was carrying, as it were, and had been for some years, was a benign mass the size of a tennis ball on her uterus (it was attached to the outside by a stalk, which leads to it being termed a "pedunculated fibroid," which is like the funniest medical term ever).  It wasn't extremely serious, just a mass of tissue, especially since she didn't even know it was there (some people feel extreme pain from them), but it could cause problems with future pregnancies and life in general, so a few weeks later out it went (which Julie has documented here).  It was a fairly non-invasive surgery due to interesting and exciting technology described in the links above, and she was left with just a few little incisions on her tummy.  I really wanted to be present for the procedure, I was like, come on, I promise I won't get in the way, I'll just stand in the corner quietly and watch!  I even (later) illustrated it to get my point across:

But I guess that's just not how things are done. While she was in recovery Doc came out and gave me the scoop, including showing me high-quality, super-sharp pictures of my wife's insides.  I mean, how many people get to see that?  It was fascinating.  He showed me her appendix and her fibroid and her many other innards, and explained to me what he did and what was removed and how it all went (that is, successfully).  He also indicated that she has endometriosis and that they removed an endometreoma from one of her ovaries, which might have had something to do with our difficulty conceiving for these past many many months.  So that was taken care of too, and when it was all said and done she spent a couple of hours looking like this:

Awwwww.

Julie was a champ in surgery, especially for a rookie, and it was my great pleasure to wait on her hand and foot until she was feeling better, and beyond of course.  Before too long we went home and recovery continued.

Fast-forward a few weeks, and a few days ago we had our follow-up appointment with Doc, where he showed Julie the pictures I saw (which she was really hoping to see), and checked her incisions to make sure they were healing well and right (they were), and where he explained again the things he told me while she was recouping.  He gave us some options for managing the endometriosis and assured Julie that biologically and reproductively she's still young and has many child-bearing years ahead of her, should she desire such, and was particularly encouraging when we reminded him that she had in fact been pregnant before the surgery.  Anyway, there's a lot more to it all, but that's the gist, and Julie wrote about it here, including an artist's rendering of what has been dubbed the Tennis Ball, since (alas!) we didn't get copies of the pictures to take home.  In the end it was a good visit, and we know our options going forward.  We are of course sad to have lost our first positive pregnancy, but we have high hopes for the future, and we're glad to have resolved some of these issues about which we wouldn't even have known otherwise.  Like our neighbor said, it's like when you get glasses after all your life and only then realize that you weren't able to see very clearly.

This has been a heckuva way to start the new year, but we have come a long way and are determined to make the rest of 2012 better than the first part of it!  Mostly at the moment my biggest concern is with the obvious miscommunication between hospitals and billing and insurance people, since they keep sending us odd statements that don't make much sense.  Here's a tip, hospital folks:  Don't send the bill until the insurance has had a chance to process and figure out their portion, and THEN send the final statement and I'll be glad to pay it.  Having said that, I am ever so grateful for our excellent insurance and our having added Julie to it just last fall.