Great Landings

Hello everyone and welcome to week #31 of Baby Watch! We have about nine weeks left in this wild ride and I for one am 100% ready to move on to the next phase. Well, maybe 100% ready is a bit of a stretch maybe more like 90%… or 82%… OK, maybe I am not as ready as I thought. But that doesn’t mean I don’t want it to hurry up and get here! Erin and baby are doing fine. As I said last week Erin is getting more and more uncomfortable every day and just when I think she has reached the limit, she somehow gets more uncomfortable. Aside from the crazy amount of swelling, and aches and pains that come with carrying a giant baby-saurus around she now is awake more at night then asleep. Between the 200 trips to the bathroom there is the constant heartburn, stuffed up nose, and tons of tossing and turning going on. The good thing is she is not completely alone, she likes to wake me up to tell me she is awake. Nothing is better then a nice 2AM heart to heart talk.

Speaking of being ready, we have come to realize that we should have about nine weeks left. But as it has been proven many times these things sometime happen sooner then expected. Little Jackson was 6+ weeks early, and a friend of a friend just had their little girl 10 weeks early. Not that this is something we are expecting, but in the interest of being prepared Erin and I have started getting things together just in case. This has included buying cute little outfits to bring the baby home in, cute little pajamas for Erin to wear at the hospital, and cute little diapers for when we get home. All of this is going in “the bag” that Erin is getting ready for when the time comes. I asked if I could put some stuff in “the bag” but was told no once I started getting my PSP, laptop, Lego men, etc together.

The last bit of news is our most recent ultrasound and doctors appointment was today. It is getting harder and harder for them to get the whole baby into the ultrasound picture. Plus it keeps moving around almost like it doesn’t want to have it’s picture taken. Apparently it has no idea what is in store for it once it comes out! We did get to see in one of the pictures the babies hair. Anyway, nothing ground breaking at the appointment. The baby is bigger then “normal“, measuring in the 80% and currently it is at about 4 lbs 9 oz. But they said we don’t have anything to worry about right now, but we should expect to have one more ultrasound to check on things down the road. I have added the pictures to the Ultrasound album if you want to see the rest of them.

Here is what the baby site has to say for Week #31~

Baby’s Growth and Development When You’re 31 Weeks Pregnant

During your 31st week of pregnancy, your baby’s body and brain continue to make the connections that enable her systems to work as a whole. Also when you’re 31 weeks pregnant:

• When you’re 31 weeks pregnant, your baby weighs more than 3 pounds and is 11 inches long from crown to rump, about the length of a bunch of bok choy.
• Your baby’s reproductive system continues to develop. In boys, testicles are moving from the kidneys through the groin to the scrotum. In girls, her clitoris is visible, but her labia are still growing to cover it.
• Your baby’s lungs are now more developed but are not completely mature.
• As trillions of brain connections develop, your baby is already using all five senses.
• You might notice that your baby has more defined periods of being awake (and active) or asleep.

Well if you are anything like me then this will be the first time you are happy to have a picture of the food they are referencing because I personally have no idea what a “bok choy” is. All I do know is that it must be pretty big! Roll on week 32…

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I spend a lot of time during the week looking for random stuff of interest to put on the website. Stuff like the recent “WWW by the Numbers” video or the cool pictures of Earth and stuff I posted a few weeks go. I do this for a couple of reasons, but mostly it is so there is something to separate the baby updates and make it easier to see that the site has been updated. Well this week I have something that actually involves me!

One of the websites I visit regularly is called Gizmodo. It is sort of a technology site that has articles on geeky stuff about gadgets, computer stuff, and other nerdy things most of y’all don’t care about. One thing they also do is hold a weekly “Photo Challenge“. They present some sort of photography challenge and let people email in their submissions. They then pick a winner and the cycle starts again the following week. I have been watching these challenges for a while and always thought it would be cool to submit something.

Well last weeks challenge was to take a photo using only candlelight. So on Saturday I enlisted the help of my whole photography team (Erin, Buddy, JD, and Molly) and we took a series of photos in search of the perfect shot! I then submitted my picture and waited for the results. Fast forward to today and while I didn’t win, I did get selected as a sort of runner up. Since this isn’t a contest and there are no prizes or anything the site just puts up a few that were in the running, and then makes their pick for the winner. So that is it, our “Lego Indy” photo made the short list out of 133 entries and I could not be happier to just see my little picture highlighted on a big name site. Pretty cool… By the way you can see a bigger version of the picture by just clicking on it, or check out the post on the Gizmodo site for yourself by clicking HERE.

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Interesting video about the internet and how many of what goes on each day. If I took one thing away it is that Facebook will soon rule the world.

JESS3 / The State of The Internet from Jesse Thomas on Vimeo.

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Welcome to Baby Watch for week #30! This week we have some interesting developments, but first just to say Erin and baby are doing well. Erin is getting increasingly more uncomfortable every day and has more aches and pains then a 80 year old stunt man. But she is dealing with it and knows it will all be worth it in the end, although she may walk with a limp the rest of her life. I also want to thank all the people who answered our call last week and posted comments with name ideas. Both Kathy’s suggestion of “Kathy” and Carol’s suggestion of “Carol” have been noted.

On to the interesting developments. I said last week that we had one of our now regular every two week doctors appointments. At these appointments they generally don’t do a whole lot. They ask how things are going, answer any questions we might have, and listen to the heartbeat. Usually that has been it, but the last two or so appointments they have added measuring Erin’s belly with a tape measure to the list. This measuring of the belly is what prompted the last ultrasound where we learned the baby was on the bigger side. Well last week they did their little belly measuring thing and once again have scheduled an ultrasound. The doctor said the reason was so they could keep an eye on the babies size. When we started asking a lot of questions he said they don’t like to talk about “what ifs” and that the size of the baby was just something they wanted to watch. After a couple more questions from Erin the doctor did say that in their office babies over 11 lbs were done via C-Section, and that given the size of the baby right now and how much time is left an 11 lbs baby-saurus (my word not his) was not out of the realm of possibility. But basically for right now the baby is on the bigger side and they are going to keep an eye on that. In the mean time we get some more sweet ultrasound pictures so I am not going to complain!

On to what the baby site has to say for week #30 ~

Baby’s Growth and Development When You’re 30 Weeks Pregnant

During this 30th week of pregnancy, your baby continues to steadily add weight and important, insulating layers of fat to his body.

• At 30 weeks of pregnancy, your baby weighs about 3 pounds and is about 10 1/2 inches long from crown to rump, or about the length of a bunch of celery. (His legs and feet increase this measurement by many more inches.)
• From this week until week 37 of pregnancy, your baby gains an impressive half a pound a week!
• Your baby might be practicing breathing movements as he rhythmically moves his diaphragm. You even might notice a slight twitching in your abdomen when this happens.
• Your baby’s brain continues to expand and develop, creating additional grooves and folds in the brain’s surface. These wrinkles give your baby’s brain tissue the needed room to expand as he develops and learns throughout his lifetime.
• Your baby’s brain can now regulate his temperature, so he begins to lose the lanugo — fine hair that has been covering his body for warmth.

Well we know that gaining a half pound a week means it takes after its daddy, so that is cool. Crazy to think that not counting the legs and feet the baby is the length of a bunch of celery! I don’t understand how it all fits in there! Only 10 weeks left people, Woo Hoo!

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I might be the only one who is a big enough nerd to care, but I came across a few cool pictures on the internet and I thought I would share. First two below are closeups of some common items everyone has probably held at one point or another. The one on the left is a 1,000x closeup of a vinyl record grove. The bumps in the image is dust on the record. The picture on the right then is a 20,000x close up of what a CD looks like. Pretty cool…

Since I am showing my inner geek here I might as well stick with it. The two images below come from our nice friends at NASA. In addition to doing crazy stuff like fly around in outer space, build space stations, and drink Tang, they also provide some pretty awesome pictures on their website. Of course 99% of their work just ends up as computer wallpaper, but still amazing stuff. The two images below are two of the highest resolution images of the earth ever taken. Probably make some nice wallpaper right?! By the way you can click on any of these to get a larger view. Enjoy~

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Welcome to Baby Watch for Week #29! As I said last week things are starting to move very slowly around here. I am not sure if it is because I am getting more and more excited, or if Erin has somehow managed to actually slow down baby growing at a molecular level. Either way the time span between week 28 and week 29 felt like 7 years rather then 7 days. But on the upside Erin and baby are both doing great. No problems or issues at all, and we have our regular two week appointment later this week. All and all things are slowly great!

Since we seem to have nothing but time on our hands I thought we could do something a little different this week. If you remember way back to the very first Baby Watch (Week #5) I said there was two things Erin and I would not be discussing, the sex and the names. So far at least half of us have held true to at least half of those things. But just because Erin and I are not going to be discussing names and what not, doesn’t mean you all can’t. Since you can vote in the poll on the left side of the site to guess the sex, I figured we should have a week dedicated to putting up names. So sign up, log in, and leave a comment with your picks for both Boy and Girl names. Who knows, maybe your suggestions will make the final cut!

Here is what we have no the baby site for Week #29~

Baby’s Growth and Development at 29 Weeks Pregnant

Your baby in the 29th week of pregnancy might be best described as long and strong!

• Your baby probably weighs almost 3 pounds. From crown to rump she is about 10 inches long, about the length of a large cucumber.
• Your baby’s activity probably keeps getting more frequent and stronger during the 29th week of pregnancy. Hold on — some of your baby’s jabs even might take your breath away!
• Your baby already might be within almost 3 inches of her birth length, although she still has weight to gain to fill out.
• During the next 11 weeks, she might more than double or almost triple her current weight. Much of this weight gain will happen as she gains important weight under her skin.

I’m not so sure about this weeks food item. Seeing as last week was Zucchini and now this week it is cucumber, feels a little like cheating if you ask me. But I can confirm the whole baby movements getting more frequent and stronger. Erin is constantly telling me that the baby is really moving around. Of course if she wants it to stop all she has to do is ask me to come put my hand on her belly. Crazy kid! See ya next week for the big 3-0!

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