Quinn's Blog

Progress

Well my suspicions where confirmed yesterday. Our little boney bundle of joy has found her way to a head down position. This means the hard round boney end that bumps agains my ribs is all butt! I also measured down to 36 inches, meaning everything is heading south. Not allot of progress but I think we're both equally excited. I've started to efface and dialate a whole 1/2 a centimeter. Nice slow progress for 37 weeks. We'll see how it goes next week.

Tomorrow we meet with the Doula.

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So much going on, it’s getting hard to keep up with posts. I’ll try to recap, I’ve been taking notes.

June 18th, officially 1 month until my due date. But Sunday is the official day I’m at 36 weeks. It depends on how you want to count.

Last week was quite crazy. I went in for the timed glucose test on Monday. I haven’t heard anything. I’m going on the no news is good news. I am feeling much better, not sure what was causing the dizzy spells. I think it could be diet. I've made an effort to pay more attention to what I'm eating. I was craving massive amounts of sugar (donuts, potato chips) and I let myself to indulge. So I'm making sure that I am eating more fruits and veggies. Mmmm, peaches!

As of Sunday I'm considered full term. If she were to join us now she would no longer be considered premature. Also means if I go into labor there will be no effort to delay delivery. Officially my due date is one month from today. This means being prepared for anything from now until August 1st. (Anyone want to place bets?) I think that's the hard thing, to be consistently ready. I go back and forth from impatient and excited, to feeling not quite ready (after all I have things I want to have done and a baby room to finish).

We set up diaper service this weekend. Our first delivery was yesterday. I spent some time organizing to find room for the 80 diapers. I sorted the clothes we have by actual size (instead of tag size). I have no idea if what we have is enough, but we have a washing machine. So I guess that’s good enough.

Friday was my last day at work. I missed most of my last week with a trip to the hospital and a couple days of rest. I’m glad to be home. I spend most of my time napping. In fact I spend almost all of Wednesday and Thursday asleep.

I have noticed some changes. I think the baby has finally turned down. The doctor will check next Tuesday. She still has some time. But it’s nice to have her out of my ribs. The unfortunate part is that with all the weight shifted down it’s almost impossible to sleep. In that respect I’d be glad to have her out at any time. Otherwise, I’m happy to let her take her time.

On Tuesday, I went to a mother baby group at the same place we took our classes. It’s a discussion group for mothers with babies 0-4 months old. It was suggested in one of our classes to start going before you have the baby. And I agree and they agreed - it was a great idea. It was great exposure. I hope Ethan can take some time off of work to come. There were babies from 11 days to 3 months old. Even one mother has the same doctor. I will go back as long as I can.

Special News

This weekend we were graced with the news of a new arrival for our friends Meera and Mark in Colorado.

Mnemosyne Amber Lintz

Born at 28 weeks she weighed in at 1 pound. According to all reports both mother and baby are doing well, although Mnemosyne will remain in the hospital until her due date. We are so excited for the family and hope to see some pictures soon!

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More Baby Shower Photos

If you liked the baby shower photos I posted earlier, and would like to see more then go here:

http://www.packthecat.com/babyblog/pictures/BabyShower/index.html

Just click on any of the thumbnails to get a better look of the picture, and then click again on the photo if you would like to see a full size copy of the picture. If you would like to keep the picture just right click on the picture and choose save as.

Let me know if this photo album takes too long to download. I can make the files even smaller if it does.

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Photos From Our Baby Shower

Here are some photos from our Baby Shower:



Our Wonderful Host



Trying On Some of the outfits



Blanket made by Allison's Mom



A couple of the guests: Luke and Tamlin

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Becoming Dad - A good old fashioned rant


I haven't posted anything in a long time now. And it's not for lack of news. There's a lot has been going on. (I hope Allison will help me fill you all in.) We've had Checkups, Doctor's reports, and a quite amazing baby shower (I'll post pictures soon). There's a lot to fill you in on, but we've also been very busy and it's been hard to find time to do it. But we will get it done don't worry.

That said I'd like to do a good old fashion RANT, because somethings been bothering me and I'm in the mood to rant:)

There's something that's popped up into my field of awareness. I don't think I would have ever noticed it if I wasn't in the middle of having a kid. But now that it's there it's kinda hard to ignore.

It all started off when I finished the book "The Expectant Father". The last chapter was called: Fathering Today. It talked about the world of child raising and how it's difficult being a father in today's world. It described the world of child raising as being dedicated to the "mother child" relationship with very little if any emphasis given to the "father child" relationship. It talked about how this is reflected in the media, where fathers are seen as stern distant people and women are seen as nurturing care givers. How most public restrooms don't have changing stations in the guys room but they do have them in the girls rooms. Etc, etc, etc.....

To be honest, I really didn't give it much thought when I read it.

But then I came across this a cool website called Blogging Baby. It's kind of like slashdot but instead of being all computer related, it's all baby related stuff. Basically it was geeky enough to be just up my ally. (Pluss it has an rss feed:)

One day Blogging Baby had this entry, which led me to this blog. Which lead me to many more blogs of similar subjects. In one of the blogs they talk about a website called "The New Homemaker". It's a website dedicated to women who suddenly find themselves staying at home raising the family instead of chasing a career. It teaches them the basics of home maintenance like how to use a washer and dryer. If you go to the website you'll notice that it's all very "woman home maker" related. But to be fair, it does toss a bone to the stay at home dad. But as a whole the website has an underling tone of the fact that men would be better off running around in the cube mazes at work earning a paycheck then raising the kids.

I have to say it must be tough to be a stay at home dad when this is the kind of place you have to go to try and get your information. To be honest, I saw these blogs as being interesting because they confirmed what I had read in "The Expectant Father" but nothing new, nothing I really should care much about. I wasn't going to be the stay at home dad. So why should I care, right?

Well, I'll tell you about the straw that finally broke the camel's back for me:
It was in a breastfeeding class that we took at Blossom. The class for the most part was very good. Then Allison asked a question. You see, Allison has been asking me for months if I would be interested in feeding our baby with a bottle. This would give me a chance to bond with our new baby. Well the answer was yes of course. But I was concerned. You see I read some articles about using a bottle and the issue of "Nipple Confusion". The idea behind nipple confusion is that babys have an easer time getting milk out of the nipple of a bottle then they do out of a woman's breast. The worry is if you introduce a bottle they may never go back to the breast. Well of course I wanted to help feed our child and gain the bonding experience. But I didn't want my desire to bond take away from Allison's opportunity to nurse. So in the breastfeeding class, Allison asked how we should handle this dilemma. The answer ended up being: don't introduce a bottle untell after the baby's been nursing for six weeks. Then the baby should be at ease with the breast and you won't have an issue of nipple confusion. But she went on to say that there's no need to use a bottle, ever. A woman will always produce enough milk and bottles are just a pain in the ass to use. Then she went on to say that there's plenty of other things a father to do to bond with the baby like changing the baby's diapers.

In all fairness I don't think she meant anything bad by this. But then you run into the situation where every time a fathers picks up his child, the child screams and crys it's head off. And when the mother holds a child they calm down. Then you blame the father for holding the child wrong and the father becomes more distant because he doesn't get it. What's really going on is the child associates the mother with the calming, comfort of nurturing and it associates the uncomfortable aspect of having ones diapers changed with the father. This was the first time I had directly been hit with the whole "mother+child but not father" thing directly, and I didn't like it. Sense then I've started noticing it more and more on TV, Target, at the zoo, etc.

Now don't worry, I'm not going to run out and buy one of those nursing vests that allow the "father to experience the bonding of nursing a child". I don't want to BECOME a mother, that isn't my goal with this rant. All I want to do is figure out a way that I can become close to my child. I am not a mother, I am a father, I have my own strengths that must use to find my own path into my child's life. I do realize that Allison will be doing most of the work. She is currently carrying the baby, she will be delivering the baby and she will be doing most of the work staying at home with the baby. In consequence, she will have most of the opportunity to bond with the baby. I have my own strengths, my own opportunitys and I will have to find my own path to find.

I did find a Yahoo newsgroup for new fathers. I have found several blogs on being a father and it has been suggested that I find a new father's group to meet with once a week. I don't know how much of that I can honestly do with the time I have. I'd rather spend time with my child then spend my time finding out ways to be with my child. But I also have a new fight to fight. Thanks for listening to my rant, you'll be hearing more from me on this subject I'm sure:)


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Tomorrow is supposed to be my last day at work.I've been at home today. I haven't been feeling all that well. Really light headed and head achy. We spend all of yesterday at the hospital under observation. It's not that we needed to be there the whole day, but they were so busy it took long to get to us. My blood pressure still looks fine, but I had slightly elevated blood sugar levels. I'll go in for a timed glucose test on Monday. I'm not to worried yet. I took it easy today and that seemed to help.


From now on, Pack the cat will be the new best place to email me.

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