The Last Waltz

Sorry for the drought in posting. So I think this is going to be the last post on Baby K. It’s been a great run, and your support has been tremendous throughout the whole process. I’ll likely be starting a new blog soon with not only baby-related content but also whatever else sprouts from my mind. In the meantime you can still get photo updates by using the link on the right over there. Alternatively you can just bookmark this link http://picasaweb.google.com/kofner or just ask me and I’ll add your email to a distribution list.  Once again, thank you for reading and writing along with us. It’s been a great experience. Click on the photo below for photos of Adam from his 2nd month.

Love, A³K

Day 281: Let’s Get This Show on the Road

After many hours of contractions we’re about to head out to the hospital. We’ve got a birthing ball, tons of music on an iPod, and a pervasive sense of fear and excitement. Check back for updates throughout the day, I think we might have a little football (get it, that’s a Superbowl joke) before tomorrow.

5:00 AM, Feb 4 update: No big news yet — still at the hospital. Anat’s being a real trooper (Posted by SS).

1630 EST ACTION UPDATE: Some very minor progress to report. Healthy baby boy born at 1147 PST, 8lbs 7.6oz, 20″ long. Mother and baby are doing great and resting comfortably. Father is bizarrely and atypically tranquil. More information to come, including name of aforementioned baby. Thank you (Posted by MS).

Day 280: Six More Weeks of Winter

Today’s Groundhog Day so that means we’ve arrived at our due date.  I’ll save the reflections for another time but I just wanted to put something up here so the break in posting doesn’t cause any false alarms.

As for an update, Anat has been experiencing more contractions.  Last night she had a bunch and they’re occurring more frequently but haven’t reached the magic, ‘every 5 minutes for 2 hours’ point yet.  We just went on a long walk to try to extend the contractions and we’ll likely do the same after breakfast.

Day 277: Haikus

No baby just yet
I promise we’ll let you know
But thanks for calling

Too much work at RAND
This kid better get here soon
Paternity leave

Wish I could sleep more
Many nighttime bathroom trips
Bedpan for Anat?

Mother-in-law’s here
Maybe she’ll cook something good
Mmm, tasty schnitzel

Day 271: It’s the Final Countdown

As of today, depending on whom you ask*, we’re at 9 days and counting until the expected due date. So after going through a period of time where it felt like we were just hanging around and waiting, things have finally started to rock and roll. Check out what’s happened since the last doctor’s appointment:

• We got and assembled a co-sleeper (crib/bassinet) as well as some other baby-related furnishings
• We finally packed a suitcase for the hospital
• Anat changed her last name officially
• We had another doctors appointment and guess what: those ‘menstrual’ cramps that Anat’s been feeling recently are actually pre-labor contractions. The doctor said she’s 1.5 centimeters dilated. The doc even thinks there’s a shot that we’ll deliver around our due date (if not sooner)
• And last but not least (but certainly not most), lowly University of Maryland, the same U of MD that lost home games to American and Ohio Universities, beat the (former) #1 team in the country, University of North Carolina. So what does this have to do with the baby? Well, nothing really… except I hope the kid allows us to watch MD beat Duke this weekend before making his/her way to the world.

*According to the doc, who uses a slightly different metric, we’re due January 30th, but the countdown on this blog which uses patented Kofno-Fetal-Chronography (KFC), is based on a February 2nd date. That is all.

Day 254: Outlier

Research from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) shows that as many as 80 percent of all car seats are improperly installed and used.

Guess who installed his child’s car seat correctly on the first try? Yup…. me.

Day 250: The First Curve Ball

At this point in my pregnancy I’ve thought about labor quite a bit. I have thought about the way I would like it to go and the millions of different ways it could go wrong. It’s the truth, I can’t help it. But, at the end of each of these thought processes I’ve relaxed and remembered that it doesn’t matter how labor goes, as long as baby and I are healthy at the end. Bottom line.  

Well today Aaron and I went to the doctor for our 36 week appointment, the first of five weekly appointments where we look around and check on things. The doctor told us that I tested positive for the group strep b bacteria. What this means is that I have a bacteria (yeah!!) that is not at all harmful to adults, that could be harmful to the baby as it comes down the birth canal. This isn’t a big deal at all, it just means that I need to get antibiotics while laboring, before I deliver. Not a problem, unless my water breaks. If my water breaks and I have not progressed enough then I need to be induced so that the bacteria does not have time to make its way to the baby. I picture those little green germs you see in commercials making their way up … very strange!   

Instantly my vision of labor has changed.  I can no longer stay home through most of my labor as I had anticipated doing, and there is a chance that I will need to be induced. While I am grateful that this is really not a big deal at all, and that medicine is so good that with a little penicillin my baby will be healthy, it is a good reminder that labor is natural. What I mean, is that labor does not care what my vision is, or when my due date is. Things are going to progress the way nature intended and it is my duty to just stay calm and ride the waves. I had my first test this morning and I passed!

On a different note — I had my first contraction last night. Crazy! It woke me up and hurt like an intense menstrual cramp. When I told the doctor this morning, she laughed and said they are going to get a lot more intense than that!  This month is going to be interesting.

The Delivery Will Not Be Televised

…but it will be Bloggerized.

The hospital we’ll be delivering in, does have Wi-Fi, and when time permits and I’m not dodging whatever Anat decides to throw at me, I plan to let you know how it’s going. However, I’ve noticed a lag between when I first post a blog and when it arrives in my inbox, so we now have a listserv to supplement the blog (thanks Marshall). This listserv will only be used to alert subscribers that we’re either in, or on our way to, the hospital. After that we’ll just be live blogging.

So… in order to subscribe, send an email with any subject and body you want to babyk-subscribe@sidehatch.net.

Day 157: Change

From interactions with other people, to sleeping, eating, and breathing; everything changes when you are pregnant. At first, it’s not as obvious how much your life is going to change, but as you start “showing” it only becomes more and more different than normal life.

There are the obvious changes, clothes don’t fit, legs cramp, emotions run high. But what I didn’t realize for a long time is that everything else changes as well. There are not many people that pass me that don’t instantly think, “oh, that woman is pregnant.” It is an instant stigma attached to you at all times. Now there are definite perks to this, people tend to be more polite around you, and smile lots. But it is weird to have almost every person you pass stare at your stomach. Though, the problem is not the stare, it’s what comes with that stare: a random (sometimes insensitive) comment, a generic question, unwarranted advice. Now, to be fair it’s not always easy to say something “right” to a pregnant woman, you don’t know what mood she is in and well, maybe you’ve never really dealt with pregnancy before, so it’s ok. I don’t mind the stuttering because it usually comes from a good place. What I do mind are the questions about twins, guessing what month I am in (and always over estimating), and of course, changing your mind about what sex the baby is based on how I look in my clothes that day. Let’s be honest no one really has any clue what sex the baby is going to be, and the best way to give someone a complex is to constantly tell them that they look like they are carrying a girl! (random yoga man that Lisa met is exempt from that statement — he really did know she was having a girl).

As for the sex of the baby. Yes, we have the answer written down at home and we have not looked. Why? Because we don’t care. Honestly that is the only reason. We really do not care if we are having a boy or a girl. We care that we have a healthy child and that we provide it with a loving home. Will we look at some point? Maybe, it is always possible that our curiosity will prevail and we will know, but for the time being there is a child inside of me that is kicking me all night and the only thing Aaron and I want is to meet this beautiful child and give him/her a big hug.

Day 143: (S)he’s Gonna Be a Soccer Player

At 3am this morning (we both wake up at odd hours these days) Anat helped me feel my first baby kick. Pretty cool!

Day 138: Almost Halfway – The Tricks of the Trade

Some things I have learned in the first half of my pregnancy:

• Never keep your pre-pregnancy tops in the same drawer as your post-pregnancy clothes. It is just depressing. You end up trying things on that just don’t fit.
• When someone says something stupid to you like “Wow, really, well, you’re not glowing” remember that they’re an idiot. (no joke that happened to me)
• When someone tells you that based on how big you are now, they can tell that you are going to be HUGE, imagine what they would look like 100 pounds heavier and laugh at how you won’t gain nearly that much weight.
• When you get the urge to go #2 – GO! You just don’t know when it will happen again.
• Accept random acts of kindness from strangers — you would do the same.
• No, there is not a sudden surge in lesbians hitting on you recently; women love to smile when they see a pregnant woman
• Don’t ask your husband, or for that matter, any man, if you are looking fatter/bigger. You don’t want to hear any answer that comes out of their mouth, and you’re setting them up to get yelled at, or for you to start crying.
• Reading is for confused people who want to get even more confused — Do yourself a favor and pick out ONE book to read about pregnancy (don’t worry if you start to hate the authors and think they have no idea what they are talking about).

Day 132: We Have Movement

The last time I was on the East Coast I was sitting next to a dear friend who was 29 weeks pregnant at the time. We were talking and suddenly out of nowhere I could see her stomach jolt. Little Baby Z had kicked her and it was no joke – strong kid. This is what I came to expect out of a kick.

Well today for the first time I felt our little one, I think. It was no kick like Lisa’s baby, but it was a definite sort of movement. It was sudden and amazing! It took me a while to realize what it was and then it hit me: there’s a growing human inside me that is kicking me.

Day 104: Ticking Away

Whoa!

I just had a thought… the kid won’t graduate high school until 2026.

Whoa!

Day 103: Baby K’s First Temblor

WHOLE LOTTA SHAKIN GOIN ON
Jerry Lee Lewis

Come on over baby
Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on
Yes I said come on over baby
Baby you can’t go wrong
We ain’t fakin’ – Whole lotta shakin’ goin’ on

Early this morning, just before 1am, I woke to a bit of confusion. Our apartment felt like someone had crashed a dump truck into it. It took me a few seconds to realize what was going on. What surprised me, was that the place was still rockin’ even after I woke up and recognized what was going on. Once it stopped I went to the computer to see that we had had a 4.5 earthquake centered in Simi Valley (about 30 miles away), home of the Reagan Library and a particularly funny scene from The Big Lebowski where the Dude and Walter are supposed to deliver the ransom money but instead leave a satchel of dirty underwear and shoot up their own car with an Uzi, but I digress.

So… baby and baby-mama of course slept through the whole thing but it got me thinking that we’re probably going to have to earthquake-proof the pictures and bookshelves (something we should’ve done long ago) and be extra careful where we put the kid. It’s funny, I’ve enjoyed the few earthquakes I’ve felt since we moved. Of course none have been very traumatic so I just see them as a fun reminder of how awesome and alive the Earth is. I remember once I was on the phone with my mother-in-law, working from home, when one hit. It shook for a surprisingly long time and I even told her, “cool – the building is shaking.” Of course then she said, “idiot, don’t you want to go outside?” She had a point but I didn’t see it this way. This time around though, while I still was excited, I also thought that months or weeks from now, I’ll have to worry about getting a less than mobile wife and/or child down 2 flights of stairs, which of course takes some of the fun out of quakes. I guess it’s a trade-off — I get to enjoy quakes less, but I have a good reason to start going back to Chuck-E-Cheese’s.

Day 102: Yeah, Definitely Pregnant, Definitely

I woke up this morning and decided to embrace my pregnancy.

I’m not sure what happened yesterday, but it suddenly became obvious to me and Aaron that I had a belly. It was just suddenly there — all round and protruding. So when I woke up this morning I decided that instead of wearing the really baggy tank tops I have been wearing, I am going to dress like I normally do and stop trying to hide the fact that I am growing horizontally.

See, this is a very strange time in pregnancy-wear. I am still too small to fit in most maternity clothes, but too big to fit in my normal clothes. My only option is to wear really loose shirts and pants/shorts that sit really low on my hip (aka my fat pants). You know, the ones you wear two days a month when you feel bloated and ugly. Well, those two days are now my next six months, or as long as they still fit.

So today I am taking a new approach. I am wearing a tighter tank top and a button down and it is completely obvious that I am pregnant, and I love it! Though I must admit that it is strange that people’s gazes have shifted from my white hair to my abdomen.