Eighth in the Hole

It's hard to believe that our 8th month is almost over. That's right, buddy, you're now well into your 35th week of growing in your Mom's belly and, come Saturday, your Mom and I begin our 9th month.

That means that the end of pregnancy is nigh and that a new beginning is just around the corner. You're going to be born in approximately 32 days! (Although, some people are rooting for you to be born in as little as 13 days so they can win the chocolate bar bet!) But your Mom and I are hopeful that you'll make it to full term, and be born sometime in March!

As we're settling into the last month, you may be settling into place: head down. With your head down toward the cervix, you're in primo position to be born. In fact, we're pretty sure that you spend most of your time upside down now, since your Mom can feel you kick BOTH sides of her ribcage simultaneously!

But, don't worry, your kicking isn't really the sole culprit for your Mom's growing discomfort. She and you are both just getting so big that your Mom's belly is just plain cumbersome. You may have reached your final birthlength, estimated at around 17-20 inches, but you haven't reached your final weight yet. As the weeks go onward you're just going to be packing on the pounds, adding some girth and adding discomfort, (though it's unintentional).

In fact, just a few days after I re-earned my place sleeping in bed and not on the couch after my surgery, your Mom has taken to moving to the couch in the middle of the night. Apparently the firmness of the couch allows her more support to prop up her heavy belly. We tried propping up the belly on her body pillow- but it's "too tall" to get the belly on. We tried propping it up on one of those airline neck pillows- but that's too small. And last night, your Mom went into your nursery and grabbed a wedge pillow and tried to wedge her belly up with that, but it just didn't work, apparently.

I know this because when I woke up this morning, your Mom was sleeping on the couch.

A few more nights of this and, perhaps, your Mom will become one of those people rooting for Febraury 15th after all!

Bed, White, Black and Back

As you continue to grow, your Mom's tiny back starts to hurt more and more. We've already taken some not-so-drastic steps to try to help her back, including Preggoga, Body Pillows, Massages, Heat Packs, Exercises, walks and acupuncture. All of that is true except for the acupuncture.


But a few weeks ago we tried something a little more drastic. We gave your canine brothers the boot. Preston and Toby (or "black" and "white," as we refer to them when we don't want them to know we're talking about them (yes, we're weird (but, yes, it works)) have slept in bed with us since they were puppies. They are both good snugglers and cuddlers and like to curl up in little balls, mostly on your Mother's side of the bed...mostly directly on your mother. Of course we knew we were breaking the cardinal sin of dog-raising by letting them sleep with us (that puts on equal ground instead of establishing us as leader of the pack). But, seriously...could you say 'no' to these faces?

But, as the belly and your Mom's discomfort grew, the dogs sleeping habits (which are acutally just OUR human sleeping habits) started causing more and more discomfort. She couldn't be pinned down by the close-sleeping canine comrades any longer. And then, when the body pillow came, the dogs got displaced and encroached on my side of the bed. Our queen bed suddenly felt like a tiny twin and Holly and I had a talk. A very serious talk. It went a little something like this:

Aaron: "I think we need to start training the dogs to not sleep in bed with us."

Holly: "Okay!"

So, night one came and we just didn't lift the dogs into bed no matter how much they begged. Luckily, our bed is so high that they can't get up there themselves.

After a few minutes of whining, the dogs gave up and went to sleep on the couch. Two nights later they didn't even beg to get into bed anymore.

This was much more painful on the humans than it was on the dogs. I was so subconciously worried that we had hurt their doggy feelings that I had tortured dreams of the dogs pooping in bed or messing things up. One night, in my sleep, I even went and found Toby and brought him to bed.

But, two weeks in to the no-dogs-in-bed experiment, and we're no worse for the wear. The dogs still love us (trust us, we know) and the curl up every night on the very cumfy green couch. And we've reclaimed what piece of the queen bed the body pillow leaves us with.

But, your Mom's back is still hurting her!

Thinking that, perhaps, the softness of our bed has been doing her back in, your Mom decided to try sleeping upstairs on the guest bed since it's a little firmer. Now, when the guest bed WAS our bed, I only had nice things to say for it. Granted, we bought it out of some guy's storage locker after seeing an ad in the newspaper, but it was comfortable enough!

Apparently, sleeping on the King Coil pillowtop amazing mattress we now have has spoiled me and my little back. After sleeping upstairs, I awoke feeling as if I had been broken into a million pieces...upper back, lower back, parts of my back I didn't even know I had...they were all hurting.

Your mother's back felt mostly the same as it did after sleeping in the real bed. Major experiment fail. We were back in the King Coil pillowtop soft-bed heaven last night, and my back is now fully repaired. Your Mom's...not so much.

But, not to worry, for her birthday, Mimi and Pops got your Mom a pre-natal back massage at a massage parlor. Hopefully this will work. If not, maybe we'll try swaping with Preston and Toby-- they sleep like little babies on the couch and never complain about sore backs.

Bumps: Growing and Arriving on our Doorstep

It's very odd to consider you a 1/2, rather than a third. But, statistically, week 17 is just about half way for a normal pregnancy! Heck, that means you're 5 months old (in utero...and sorry none of this time counts towards birthdays...because the day you're born is your Zeroth birthday...sorry, Charlie (and no, that's not your name)). You've really come into your own, and while I hope you're getting comfy in your Mom's belly, you shouldn't get TOO comfy...after all, March is sooner than you think! It's already October! That means We've known about you for almost 4 months!

And, baby, you've come a long way already! We've been taking pictures of your growing bump for 10 weeks already! Take a look for yourself:

Weeks 8- 17

Fall is definitely your Mom's favorite time of year, and it seems that by the end of this Fall, we're definitely going to have a pumpkin on our hands!

So, the progress is remarkable, I know, but the arrival of yet another bump on our doorstep this week has made the growth of your bump seem slow. One minute I'm just sharing the bed with 2 dogs, your Mom and your growing bump; the next minute, I'm sharing the bed with 2 dogs, your Mom, your growing bump and this cushy monstrosity:

'C' is for " 'C' ya later, Aaron. There's no room in bed for you!"

That giant letter C is your Mom's body pillow! It finally arrived! And despite coming with worse instructions that a piece of IKEA furniture named "SKÄRPT," we figured it out and set your Mom up just right. And boy is she sleeping like a gem now!

Those are the instructions? Seriously? I'd have better luck putting together "KERPLOONKTER"

The only problem is that the pillow itself is the size of a large hobbit, which means I'm even more convinced that a King-Sized bed will be in our future! Seriously, this pillow looks like a speed bump in our bed, or some sort of small hobo under the covers.

But your future is about 4.5 more months of growing in your Mom's belly. For me, this means a lot more time with my favorite growing bump on the block! For your Mom, though, it means 4.5 months with her two favorite bumps: the body pillow and you!

Holy Guacamole!

I can't believe it! You're already 16 weeks old! According to the ever-increasing fruit-scale, you are the size of an Avocado! Whoa!

That doesn't surprise me too much because your Mom's tummy is REALLY starting to show now. Forget all that stuff I said before about her showing; comparatively, that was just a little Root Beer Belly. Now she's legitimately beginning to show!

In fact, her belly has grown so much that your Mom is constantly marveling about the changing (read "shrinking") depth of her belly button.

"Aaron, look, I can see the bottom of my belly button!"

The belly button is definitely becoming more and more shallow. Without a flashlight or anything, we can see the bottom of that little button. And when your Mom's about ready to pop, just like a pop-up turkey thermometer, her belly button may unceremoniously turn from an inny into an outie.

You may have also noticed that this week your eyelashes, eyebrows and hair are starting to fill in. On an even cooler note, your taste buds are forming! That means, for the first time, you might actually care which fruit you are equatable to in size. And it's a good week for that. Avocados are among your Mom's favorite foods!

But, what I think is the coolest, is that teeny tiny versions of the teeniest tinyest bones in the human body are now forming...creating the inner workings of your ears!



That means that you can probably pick up your Mother's voice this week, and possibly mine too. I'll try to sing on key!

Hopefully you didn't hear us on Sunday. In an attempt to get a coupon at Babies R Us so that we could get a discount on your Mom's body pillow, we signed up to register at that superstore.

It was overwhelming to say the least. How does one chose items to buy for a challenge they've never faced before? We didn't know what was what...what kind of breast pump, diaper genie, stroller or anything to get! Holy Guacamole, talk about shopping for someone else being difficult! This was downright stressful! AND they didn't even have the right body pillow in the store anyway, so your Mom wound up ordering it off Amazon today.

A good visual representation of how I felt in Babies R Us. Minus the Latina baby Girl, of course. They made me give her back.

But about 2o minutes in to the registering, you would have heard me whine and basically throw in the towel on the whole deal. Not the pregnancy; just the registering. It was not my finest moment, so I'm glad your ear bones weren't fully developed yet to hear that miserable excuse for a power shopper.

We did see lots of cool stuff that we want to get for you (and for us for you); but most of it seemed foreign. Stacks and stacks of stuff that we didn't know if we needed or absolutely didn't need.

We've never done this before, so we're gonna have to seek some advice from some of your Uncles and Aunts and some other key advisors.

Maybe by the time you CAN hear me from inside your Mom's tummy, we'll be better prepared to make a decent show of registering for Baby gear. And then you'll hear that cash register ding and be a little less stressed about the whole deal.

But for now, you've got all the gear you need: umbilical cord, amniotic fluid, a growing womb in which to play less cluttered by an intrusive belly button and (this is news) a likely candidate for your Name!

That's right...we may have decided on your name! More on this later though!