The Newest Gummy Bear Weinstein

Little one, today we got to see you again! Your brother was at school, but I skipped out of work -with permission, of course- and met your Mom at the Doctor's office. Dr. Bertrand said this would be one of our best photo sessions, and he wasn't lying!

First he found you, and your mother commented on how much you've grown in two weeks. It truly is incredible how much shape you've taken. Last we saw, you were a smudge in an equally smudgy sonogram. But when we looked at you today, we saw a little gummy bear person!


First, Dr. Bertrand listened to your heart beat: a whopping 181 beats per minute! Your heart beat was far faster than last time, and sounded good and strong. That made your mother and I very happy. It's gotta be one of the best sounds in the world. Some people say that a fast heart beat indicates a female gender, but we'll just have to see if they're right!

Then we took a closer look at the beautiful you!

Can you see yourself? You're growing arms and legs...they're just little buds at this point, but soon they'll be long enough to help you crawl and reach and hug and hold. But, since they're little buds, they make you look a bit like a gummy bear. See?

Still not seeing, it, huh? Well, don't worry. I wasn't quite figuring it out either. But, the Doctor drew us a diagram that illuminated you in all your gummy glory. I've crudely recreated it here.Seeing your little face turned toward us and your little arms and legs growing along was very awe inspiring. It's hard when you've been through this already to feel like an old pro...but, I must admit, seeing you taking human form and growing your human legs and arms was pretty awesome. I don't want to be too mushy or over-sweet, but I think I'm in love with a gummy bear.

The Doctor measured you from crown to rump. The result: 2.78 cm! Which somehow translates into us gaining two days on you. We estimated that you were 9 weeks and 2 days old, but, no, you're 9 weeks and 4 days. Which scoots your due date back to 10/14/2012...which is awfully close to the awesomely cool 10/11/12 birthday.

So, you're 9 (almost 10) weeks along, and you're the size of a green olive. Congrats: you're no longer technically an embryo; you're now a fetus! It's a bit creepy, but I think it's actually pretty cute...you look a bit like this:
It's not a big stretch to jump to this conclusion: Continue growing, my little gummy one. You and your mother are almost out of the sickies and cravies and yuckies of the first trimester; hang in there...with your little gummy arms and legs!

Love, your Proud Papa

7 weeks and 2 days- Heart Beat, Baby

We went to the Doctor today and, though we couldn't see you too well (perhaps because you're the size of a blueberry), but we did get to HEAR you!

That's right, we heard your heartbeat. 149 beats per minute, which is, as the doctor said, 'perfect.


You can even see a graphic representation of the heartbeat in the first image.
The second image shows...you! From crown to rump, you were measuring at 7 weeks, 2 days! Which puts you at an estimated due date of October 16, 2012.


You'll be joining your Mommy and Aunt Rebekka as an October baby. How cool!


It was chilling to hear your heartbeat for the first time. I had forgotten how cool that sound is.


A little from the books about you at week 7:

• He/She's generating about one hundred new brain cells each minute!


• Not only is his/her brain becoming more complex, but his/her heart is too.


• Also important: He/She's developing a permanent set of kidneys


• His/Her arm and leg joints are now forming.

No wonder your Mommy is so tired (and nauseous): look at all you and her are building together!

Beat it

It finally happened last night!

After months of trying, and waiting patiently, and continuous effort, it finally happened.

No, your Mom's belly button didn't turn into an outie. It's still an inny. Although, it is a weird one...sometimes it protrudes more than others. But, overall, it's an inny.

No, you weren't born. It's too early for that!

Yes, "LOST" came back on, but that's not what I'm talking about.

What I'm all excited about went down like this:

After LOST was over, I tucked your Mom into her new bed (the couch) and sung you a lullabye. Then I put my ear to your Mom's belly to try to hear your heartbeat again.

After several ear placements (and several iterations of you pushing against my face), I finally heard a heart beat.

Convinced it was not your beat, but your Mom's, I started tap the rhythm out on your Mom's arm.

Not knowing what I was doing at all, she said "What are you doing?"

"Is that your heartbeat?" I asked.

She put her fingers to her neck to check her pulse.

"Nope!" she replied.

And with that "nope," I knew that the loud, strong heartbeat I was hearing was actually yours!

I've been putting my ear to your Mom's belly for at least 10 weeks- because the books all said I should have been able to hear your heartbeat. And for 10 weeks, I never heard it.

And finally, last night, I heard your heart pumping blood through your body. I've heard your heart many times on the Doppler, but to hear it with my naked ears- now that was something special. Even more special than the premiere of "LOST," if you can imagine that!

So, be warned, I'm putting my ear to the belly again tonight, for a chance of hearing your ticker tick once more.

Sugar, Sugar!

If the past month of sweet treats has taught me anything, it's that your Mother is NOT diabetic, or she would have needed some sort of major insulin shot by now, after candy, ice cream cake, pie and cookies galore.

But, nevertheless, we went to the Doctor yesterday for our 24 week checkup and they had to make sure that your Mom didn't have pregnancy diabetes. The test was pretty fun (for me anyway).

They gave your Mom a pretty big bottle of orange liquid and say "you have 5 minutes to drink this."

Apparently it was like pure sugar and your Mom said it tasted like flat orange soda.

The nurse said sometimes it gives people the jitters, like a sugar high.

And, no, they wouldn't give me one at all!

After the first couple sips your Mom said "it's not too bad!"

A few sips later her opinion had migrated elsewhere. "This burns."

And with about a quarter of the bottle left and a minute and a half to go, she asked if she had time to take a break before finishing the chemically-orange liquid.

But, she did finish it before the 5 minute time frame was up. The nurse told me to "watch [your Mom]...she may get shaky." And watch her I did.

So, an hour after downing the drink, she had to get blood drawn to test the ol' levels.

Your Mom's tummy hurt. And, when she was told that she couldn't drink or eat anything in the hour between drinking and testing, she decided that she was starving to death. That's the power of suggestion in action!

In the meantime, though, we met with Dr. Hagood and had a stellar appointment. It was just heart-beat checking again, and your heart sounded great!

It was about 147 beats per minute, which was slower than we'd ever heard it.

But the Doctor said not to worry, because the heartbeat really just depends on what we catch you doing.

And sure enough, right after she said that, you bolted and she had to chase you around your Mom's tummy (probably the sugar drink kicking in). Once she found you, your heart beat was back up to 160 bpm-- racing as you were chasing!

The Doc measured your Mom's belly and sent us on our way.

All in all, it was a perfectly uneventful appointment, but your Mom might not be drinking Orange Soda, Orange Gatorade or Orange Juice for a while.

And, after dinner last night she didn't have cravings for any candy.

Maybe this Glucose test Sugared your Mom all out!

The test will come in less than a week: Thanksgiving is coming, and Thanksgiving means PIE!

Roger Dodger- Hiding from the Doctor

First of all, don't worry- you're not going to be named Roger.

But, apparently, you are really good at hiding (hence the "dodger")! Which is pretty amazing, considering that -now at 20 weeks in utero- you are the size of a cantaloupe!

Your Mom went to see Dr. Hagood today for the standard heartbeat-hearing-only examination. But, at first, the Doctor couldn't find you!

She said you wouldn't hold still and she was having to chase you all over your Mom's tummy with her Doppler device to hear your heartbeat.

That takes some skill, son, because a cantaloupe is pretty hard to miss!

But, after you gave your Mom a brief scare, Dr. Hagood pinned you in a corner and was able to find your heartbeat: 154 bpm!

You are consistent, for sure, with your heart rate; but this whole experience shows that you may be a crafty little guy: Playing games and hiding from the Doctor!

But there's no real hiding from you now: your Mom's belly is most definitely showing (and still growing). The belly bump is getting in the way more often, your Mom feels you kick all the time and she has gained 4 pounds! The Doctor said that Holly's gaining the right amount of weight, but - as for now - the weight gained is "all baby weight," meaning there's not much extra fat on your Mom.

It's not for lack of effort, though: we basically spent the weekend eating. I think I probably gained more than 4 pounds at the Texas State Fair alone!

4 pounds is pretty good, though; and Dr. Hagood is really happy with the way you're growing. With the added weight, growing belly and a cantaloupe-sized you, though, there's no missing that your Mom is pregnant! You may be able to hide from the doctor, but you're not hiding from anyone else!

p.s. We're officially halfway through the pregnancy! March will be here before you know it!

Here Comes...the Son!

Your Mom, Aunt Shamsy and I just got back from your 18 week sonogram and it's 100% positive now: you are a boy!

They even took a nice picture of your "boy parts." Don't worry, I won't embarrass you by displaying this picture at your graduation or anything. But, I am gonna post it right here, right now:

See that arrow? See what it's pointing at? Now stopping looking at it, before you go blind!

Your appointment went perfectly: 8 fingers, 2 thumbs, 10 toes, 4 ventricles in your heart, 4 brain lobes, 1 tail. Everything was just as it should be!

You are a consistent little guy too: your heartbeat was, again, 150 bpm! Way to go!

But, you were sleeping with your hand draped across your face, so we couldn't get a good look at your profile! The nurse even tried to wake you up again by jostling you, but you wouldn't budge!

So, instead of a cute-as-a-button profile pic, we got a series of more "Skeleton Baby" pictures!

The good news is that you've really graduated from looking like an alien child and/or Predator. But, your skeleton REALLY makes you look like Jack the Pumpking King now (which is quite fitting for the upcoming Halloween!).

But, since you do now have a lot more subcutaneous fat, giving your face a little more shape and a little less skeletal appearance, you kind of also look like the ragdolls from "9."

So, you're clearly moving up on the cuteness scale! That's definitely a plus, but it's not like we had any doubts! Take a look for yourself...at yourself!

There you are, in all your glory! I think you're cute! It also looks like you have your mother's eye sockets! But, as we officially learned today, there's one trait for which you're definitely following in your father's biological footsteps!

Your Father, the Fattener

Your Mom took her first solo trip to see Dr. Hagood on Monday this week. Since it was just a 5-minute heartbeat checkup, I opted to stay at work and save up some goodwill to take off for our next sonogram in 2 weeks!

Good news, of course, your heartbeat sounds perfect and is just tick-tick-ticking away.

The other news, though certainly not of the "bad" variety, is that your Mom has had a net weight gain of 2 pounds. This isn't weight gained from the beginning of the pregnancy, but weight gained from two appointments ago. So, she lost some weight two times ago, and gained some weight from then til now. Confused? Me too. Point is, though, that, though no one's in danger and nobody's at risk, your Mom is still 2 pounds lighter than the Doctor was expecting.

Thus, I've taken it as my personal mission to fatten up your mother!

I'm immediately reminded of an episode of this show called "The Simpsons" (it's a cartoon about a yellow family that started when I was 8 or something! don't worry, it'll probably still be on for you as well). Anyway, the resident huckster doctor has a formula to help the oafish dad, Homer, gain weight rapidly so he can get on disability:

"Be creative. Instead of making sandwiches with bread, use Pop-Tarts. Instead of chewing gum, chew bacon. And remember, if you're not sure about something, rub it against a piece of paper. If the paper turns clear, it's your window to weight gain. "

Your window to Weight Gain!

My first attempt at this evil plan backfired. Using the okra overstock from our garden, I made a corn, okra and cheese casserole for dinner. This dish called for a whopping 6 tablespoons of butter. Being the gourmet chef that I am, I opted to add even more butter than that! But, as it turns out, this dish wasn't all that good. Too much butter makes things too rich, leaving your Mother taking only one bite. The biggest backfire, though, was that I managed to eat half of it and gain 27 pounds just by eating one dinner.

That's a lot of butter.

But last night's dinner plans went a lot better. Instead of forcefully cooking unhealthily, I just cooked like usual. The dish I made was a big hit, and your Mom ate a whole bowl (which is a lot for her these days).

She was so full afterwards that she even said, "Ohhhhh, I'm so full. Why did you have to make it taste so good?"

I just smiled and said "I don't know how to cook any other way...except for that casserole. That sucked."

But little did she know that the well-prepared dinner was just a plan to fatten her up! And I did a little evil laugh in my mind will twirling my imaginary evil mustache:

Muah-ah-ah!! Ah-ah-ah!

All that is true except for the last bit. I told Holly about my plan to fatten her up from the get go!

Picture Perfect, Part II

Today we went in for our Week 13 sonograms (thanks to Iris and David for convincing us to go)...and they were AMAZING.

We have an early surprise! Well, it's not a surprise to you, as you already know. But, anyone who wants to know our baby's gender should check back tomorrow!

That's right, I'm such a torturer that I'm going to make them all wait til tomorrow to find out, if they don't know already!

But, I don't want the gender news to overshadow all the other awesome things that we saw today.

We saw you kicking your legs like crazy, and we saw a close up of your little foot. (all 5 toes accounted for!)


We saw your heart pumping blood; all four ventricles are working! And we saw your brain!

We saw you scratch your head, stretch down and play with your toes, and scratch your chin.



We heard your heartbeat again- still in a great range: 160 bpm!

It was really amazing. Your Mom and I didn't cry, but we were both just floored at how much you've grown since your last picture session and how human your movements were. Actually, most of your movements were very human, but your legs looked a little bit like when Kermit the Frog rides his bicycle. You know...kind of almost as if they were moving independently of the rest of your body's motions, but this might have been heightened because we couldn't see your arms!


But, Muppet or not, the experience was incredible. And then to make it even more incredible, we discovered your gender (with 90% certainty!)

It was so great to see you again and count your fingers and toes. It was the stuff of dreams to watch you kicking and squirming and moving around.

And, at the very end, you gently fell asleep on your Mom's bladder. Face down. The doctors tried to wake you up by jostling the belly, but you wouldn't wake up for anything! You sound like a Weinstein already!

They even made DVD of the whole sonogram for us, so we can watch you whenever we feel like it! Words aren't doing justice to how jaw-dropping today's sonogram was, so hopefully these pictures below will send the message. And hey, we may even rip the DVD and put it in here too!

Book Learnin' : Ear to Belly

We used to think "What to Expect When You're Expecting" was THE only pregnancy book you needed. In fact, it was really the only viable pregnancy book we had, aside from The Caveman's Guide to Pregnancy, the creepy, hilariously out-of-date, cartoon fetus book Mimi gave us from the 60s ("Freddy the Fetus") and the equally creepy, out-of-date, incredibly graphic photo book from the 70s Bibi gave us.

Not quite the same as Uncle Jeremy's poster.

But, when visiting our friends Iris and David the other day, they opened our eyes to a bunch of really cool books, including one by Jenny McCarthy (who used to be on a poster in your Uncle Jeremy's room...but not for her skills as a pregnancy humorist.) But one of the coolest and most useful books they showed us "Your Pregnancy Week by Week."

Hopefully she's asleep and not passed out due to a severe allergic reaction to daffodils and ragweed.

I bring up these books because, you know kids these days, they'll try anything they see in a book.

In the 13th week chapter of that "Week by Week" book, I saw a picture of a Father placing his ear against his wife's pregnant belly, as if he were on the belly phone. I thought, "well, if that guy can hear his baby's heartbeat with his naked ear, then I should too!"

So I gave it a try, and put my ear directly on your Mom's belly. This was very weird. I heard all sorts of gurgles and squeaks and crunches and sizzles...but no heartbeat yet. I think the book lied to me.

But I'm definitely going to keep trying!

I bet you can hear your Mom's heartbeat...and maybe soon you'll be able to hear us out here in the non-wombed world! So, maybe we should start reading these books aloud so you can hear!

Heart and Soul

Boo! Your Mother and I misunderstood the Doctor last time. There was no photo shoot today- no sonogram, no pictures for the fridge (or blog (or the fridge's blog)). I guess now's as good of a time as any to find out that your Mother and I are not perfect. But, to be honest, it was Holly's fault; I am perfect. The end.

Moving right along, though, today's Doctor's appointment wasn't a complete bust. We got to hear your heart beat loud and clear again. Dr. Hagood jelled up this device that was about the size of an old school Walkman (I'll show you one of those in a museum one day) and put it to your Mom's belly...and out from the speaker came your heart beat:

Woosh woosh woosh woosh.

An antique.

It was really great to hear the old ticker again! It sounded strong. Dr. Hagood said "that's a good sound." Your mother replied, "I like that sound." It was a really cool moment.

Hearing your heart lifted my heart this morning. Yeah, that's the signature Weinstein sappiness, which you should probably get used to.

The device used to hear your heart: a "Doppler".

The device instantaneously counted how many beats per minute your heart was pumping out and the result is (drum roll please) 160 beats per minute.

This is pretty fast for a baby, but definitely within the normal range. But, there's an old wive's tale that says fast heart beat means the baby is a girl; slower heart beat means the baby is a boy. But, this is not scientifically proven. Not even the National Enquirer thinks that's true. So let's just let the theorists and predicters think what they will of these 160 bpm.

Officially, let's still say there's a good chance you will either be a boy or a girl!

Since you probably don't have a built-in metronome (unless the future turned out to be pretty lame), here's what 160 bpm sounds like.

Listen for the ticker...not the piano...



Actually, your heart was beating a bit faster than that! And it sounded really good.

Now if only we could figure out how to get a piano in there...