Week 18 pictures

We have a hodge podge of pictures to share today. Here is Carin and the pirate ship pumpkin she carved at 18 weeks 1 day pregnant:

Mandy visited us on that day.

You may recall we painted our living area a few weekends ago. Here are some pictures of our newly orange living space:

The orange color of the walls makes the beige elsewhere in the house look less bland and more, dare I say, intentional.

Now, below you will see an illustration of a lesson we recently learned. In Los Angeles, if you carve your pumpkins a week in advance, they might not make it until Halloween. Yes, the dots below are flies. And the black inside? Not shadows. Mold.

The newly trimmed tree in our front yard. (Click here for before pictures.)

Carin at 18 weeks 6 days:

Week 17 Ultrasound Pics (or: Is it wrong to post pictures of my son's penis on the internet?)

At 16 weeks and 6 days old, this is what our fetus looks like:


We could see a spinal column and rib cage, and we could even hear a heartbeat. Cool stuff.

We were also told we might be able to determine the gender on this visit. Carin's regular doctor was in surgery yesterday, so we met with one of his partners instead, who told us, "Well, you can't really say for sure until 20 weeks, but let's check it out and see what we can see." She was clearly trying to hedge her bets, telling us that even if we saw something (or the lack of something), we might find out we were wrong in a few weeks. So, disclaimers aside, we looked. And it seems we saw ... well ... boy parts. See for yourself (and click for closer view):


Again, if you are confused by the image above, I've added some scribbles to clarify this strange upward view of our little one.


Assuming this gender diagnosis sticks, I'd like to officially apologize to my future son for putting pictures of his manly bits on the world wide web for all to see, and I'd like to tell him that generally, this is not a good practice for him to engage in. Do as I say, son, not as I do.

As for expecting a boy, we are surprised but very happy. We both had our money on girl--due, in large part to a few girl-related dreams and an uneducated hunch. But then, as future parents, I suppose we must learn to expect surprise. Our paradigm has shifted, but we are ready and enthusiastic. We've already received our first mohel recommendation. This is getting more real by the day.

Pictures from the Swiss visit

These are pictures from when Cindy and Ilan visited last weekend from Switzerland. They made LA the first stop on their round-the-world honeymoon. Fun was had.

Carin is 16 weeks 1 day pregnant in these pictures.

Lunching in Santa Monica.

The requisite tourist visit to the Hollywood sign.

Week 14 in Photographs

It's been a busy week. Carin has been working medical resident hours due to the latest thingy going on with the thingy at her job (she has explained it to me and, yes, I do listen to her, but don't ask me to articulate what's going on to you; the explanation involves a certain phase of a project and uses words and abbreviations I don't understand). Tuesday night we had a comedy of errors when she was supposed to pick up a chicken for dinner, but then never left work, but then never told me she never left--until she finally did and I was able to order a pizza that she then never picked up. Funny stuff. It's okay though; we're still married.

As for me, I've been busy picking up all the domestic slack, recovering from a cold, trying to get on the substitute teaching lists of more schools, dealing with mundane-yet-time-consuming house issues---and, oh yeah, trying to write. I have also, as you can tell from the photo above, been applying blue tape to walls.

Yes, we are about to enter the weekend of the big paint. We're finally attacking the living room and hoping it won't attack back. Due to budget cuts, we've slimmed down our house TO DO list for the moment (or, to be more accurate, our TO BUY list. We still need to get that new fridge before we entertain on Thanksgiving, but non-ghetto window treatments and a tiled bathroom shower will have to wait a while. As for replacing our Craigslist bedroom furniture or getting anything resembling a headboard for the bed...we just chuckle about that now and say, "once the writer money starts pouring in..."). But, as I said, at the moment we are focused on the big paint. If we successfully conquer these 500 square feet of wall framed by an abundance of tape-worthy molding, I'll be sure to post pictures.

As for pictures, I know you aren't visiting the blog to see pictures of our living room. So here is the lady of the moment, looking bump-erific at 14 weeks, 5 days. First, the front view:


And, now, are you ready? The 3/4 side view. Bam!


Beautiful, ain't she?

(Remember, parents, you can see a larger version of each photo by clicking on it)

Now, I'll end our photo odyssey with some pictures of a botanical nature. Our guava tree has finally started to yield some ripe fruit. Here is the tree:



And now, some pictures of the fruit.






Yumm! Actually, eating these guavas straight up is kind of a mealy unpleasant experience, but we did have great success last week with making them into juice. We added some pineapple juice and a bit of honey to sweeten things up and then some more juice (some of Dole's delicious Orange-Peach-Mango and a dash of lime) to give it a smoother texture. We hope to repeat the experiment this weekend with the bowl of fruit of above, which has been sitting in our fridge waiting for us to give it some love. Hopefully, they won't go bad first.

But before we can get to our weekend of painting and guavas, I need to stop procrastinating and get back to work. So, I'll say "adios" for now. More blogging at a later time.

Week 13 Ultrasound Pics

We had our big Week 13 ultrasound yesterday, and everything looked as it was supposed to. I could definitely see arms and legs and a little person squirming around on the monitor. It was very cool. That said, the photographs that we took away from the ultrasound were not too inspiring. Our child looks something like a blob. An attractive blob, but still ...

Here is the wide shot:


Basically, you are looking at the baby's back, which is why it isn't too interesting. The face and limbs are in front where you can't see them. Hopefully, my doctored version of the photo will make things clearer. This is what I think you're seeing:


By the way, I believe the CRL stands for Crown to Rump length. Wouldn't it be interesting if doctors still took this measurement at adult physicals?

Okay, now for the glossy close up:



Takes your breath away, doesn't it? Or it looks like a zoomed in picture of a blob. Again, I've tried to make things clearer with my photo doctoring (not to be confused with actual doctoring, which I am not qualified to do). Here is what I think you're seeing:



Hope you enjoyed the photo spread. We're just happy that it looks like everything is proceeding as it should be, AND that we finally get to spread the word to our family and friends. Secret secrets are no fun. Thanks to our immediate families for keeping their lips sealed for so long.

Now, Mom, go tell all your friends!
(if there are any you still haven't been able to reach in the last 24 hours, that is)

Wait a second. Or five.

Say you had a small container of Trader Joe's chocolate-covered peppermint patties in your fridge. Say the container falls out of the fridge, and during the tumble, the lid pops off and all of the patties (roughly one-third of the container) fall on the floor. Say you aren't totally the best about keeping the kitchen floor super clean. The chocolate is cold and hard, not melty. And your pregnant wife runs in from the other room to pick the patties up off the floor within a very short period of time. Your pregnant wife can still eat those patties, right? WHY WON'T YOU LET YOUR PREGNANT WIFE EAT THOSE PATTIES? 5 seconds! 5 seconds!

The Pregnancy Closet

This coming Friday is my next ultrasound, the one where they check the nuchal translucency. I will be 12 weeks and 6 days along, according to my due date. I had some blood drawn last week, and the blood draw in conjunction with the ultrasound constitutes the first trimester screening, where they calculate the risk of there being some anomaly with the baby like Down's syndrome, etc. G-d willing, everything will be fine, and then we can start telling people. And more importantly, our moms can start telling people. Bravo to our moms for holding it in, by the way. We know it's been tough.

Roughly two weeks ago, the doctor's office called me to tell me that they found that I was a carrier for cystic fibrosis. Oh! There is zero family history of it, so it was surprising, but I didn't freak out. But when the nurse told me on the phone, she said to me "Now DON'T. FREAK. OUT." and I replied, "I'm... not." I guess it's normal to freak out in this situation? She tried to launch into an explanation of how it all works, but through years of college and graduate education in biomedical engineering, I have more than just a layman's education in genetics, so I cut her off because I had already done the Punnett square in my head.

And so there are two ways to look at it. I knew that even if Bill was a carrier too, our kid would have only a 25% chance of having CF. Or, more pessimistically, our kid would have a 1 in 4 chance of having CF. Wouldn't you buy a lottery ticket if you knew you had those odds? Those are pretty good odds. (By the way, it has subsequently been determined that Bill is not a carrier.)

I first learned about CF from this movie. I actually have a memory of watching it at the Gumperts' house in East Windsor during Passover when I was nine years old. I used to think that the life expectancy was not past the teen years, early 20s if you're lucky, but according to wikipedia (so it must be true), it's now like 37 years old. Not quite as bad. Hooray for medical advances! I happened to get all this information about being a carrier as I had just started reading The Art of Racing in the Rain, which was amazing by the way, and you should totally read it. In the opening pages, a beloved dog is dying, and I was in tears in the first few pages (shut up, I'm pregnant). So it was hard to imagine having to deal with the inevitability of outliving your child the way you deal with the inevitability of outliving your pet.

This is all to say that in the past few weeks, I've been thinking occasionally about what would we do if some test result should come back in an outlier sort of way. It's an incredibly personal choice, and author Ayelet Waldman speaks elegantly and eloquently about her and her husband's choice in a similar situation in an episode of Fresh Air from 2009, which I also happened to listen to earlier this week. And as we quickly (yet oh-so-slowly) approach the date that we finally get to step out of the pregnancy closet, it's making me suddenly want to not tell anyone at all, because what if something else goes wrong later? Then any difficult decision we make at that time gets to stay private, and we don't have to explain it to people whose business it isn't.

Don't worry, family: as long as everything comes back okay on Friday, you'll still get to tell.

It just a weird experience for me to have to come to terms with taking that leap of faith that things having to do with the pregnancy -- having to do with the health of the baby specifically -- will be okay. A leap of faith that there won't be some screening test in the middle of the 2nd trimester that comes back positive. That there won't be some freak occurrence of the umbilical cord wrapping around the baby's neck in utero at month 8 and causing a miscarriage. That the baby won't be critically deprived of oxygen during delivery. And I'm not saying that these are things that I am actively worrying about or that are keeping me up at night, because they aren't. I'm sleeping just fine (except for the waking up early to pee thing). It's just that all these leaps of faith won't really be answered until I'm holding a healthy (G-d willing) baby next spring. I mean, I guess if we're being realistic here, this worry regarding the health and welfare of your child never ever goes away, right mom?

Also, a girl can only wear so many flowy cardigans before people begin to gossip, and if I'm not wearing loose clothing, (I think) I'm definitely showing. So if I keep it a secret much longer, people who see me every day are going to think I'm weird. Plus it's pain in the ass to wear flowy clothing all the time. Can't I just wear stuff that lets me show already?!

I'll finish with two stories regarding people knowing & not knowing at work:

1) I was complimented on my outfit last week. A caramel, ruched, jersey top with a cowl-neck, and a black jersey skirt, topped off with my black flowy cardigan. It looked really professional, but was seriously so comfortable that it was like wearing pajamas. But then I pulled back the cardigan to point out to the complimenter how comfortable it was. Mistake! The complimenter asked me if I was pregnant. I was taken by surprise, and we were alone, and she is quiet and trustworthy, so I admitted that yes I was, but asked her to please not tell anyone yet. She has a kid, so hopefully she'll keep it quiet for a few more days. But also, who asks you like that if you are pregnant? What if I had just had a big lunch?! It was suggested by a third party (who knows my secret) that maybe it's a culture-thing. As an engineer, I work with a lot of international people who maybe have different concepts of these sorts of boundaries.

2) Later last week, I was in a room with three other women. We were waiting for a lot of other people to arrive. Let's call these women B, T, and M. B and T both have 2 kids, and M is ~7 months pregnant with #2. B, Mrs. Inappropriate, says to M, "Wow, you're ready to go, huh!" Then conversation picks up as to whether it was pregancy #1 or #2, and they're all comparing notes as to how long their labors took for #1 vs. #2. A few snippets of conversation later, B says to me, "Good information for you to know, Carin!" And in my head, I'm all, "What what WHAT!" but my back was turned at the time getting something from the sideboard, so I was able to conceal my saucer-eyes. So then another one of them asked me if I was pregnant, and I was like "Um... nooo?" I said it more like I was trying it out, like what would happen if I lied? But the bonus is that if you say it that way, it sounds like you are the sane one, and they are the crazy one (which B sort of is anyway). Well I guess I was wearing flowy clothes that day because none of them seemed to think that response was amiss. And then they all started kibbitzing, like "Not unless we know something you don't hahah!" Me: "hahahah!" Inside my head: "Fooled! For now..."

The Week In Photographs

This is a picture of Carin at 10 weeks 6 days. Notice the adorable little baby bump.


Below is a picture of a new art installation in our front yard, an environmental post modernist piece entitled "Arborial Revenge on a Summer Morn." As with all these photos, click on the picture to see the larger version.

This is the view from our kitchen window on the morning we discovered said artwork.


This is our Rosh Hashanah dinner from last night. I post this only on account of it being ridiculously delicious.


And finally, a picture of Carin today, on Rosh Hashanah, at 11 weeks 5 days. Again, note the adorable little baby bump (it's subtle, harder to see in this photo). Also note that Carin is standing in front of our new picture wall. It only took 10 months in our new house to put these pictures up, but they make us very happy.

A Sympathetic Appetite

For the last couple weeks of my wife's pregnancy, I've noticed an intense craving for cookies, candy, and ice cream. I'm talking about myself here. Saturday night, I made S'mores and then put the S'mores into a dish of ice cream (in case you were wondering, this was a spectacular idea).

I realize that I am still eating for one, but could there be some medical reason for MY cravings?

Thank you, Old Navy, for giving me my ego back

Last summer, I joined Weight Watchers and lost about 12-13 lbs. over the course of a couple months. I was unsustainably skinny. After I reached lifetime in October, I gained 3-4 lbs. back which was a little bit more realistic. In the end, I had dropped about 1 pant size, so I bought all new flattering skinny pants and packed away all my larger pants into a giant tupperware container for a future day.

That day came 3 weeks ago, when I was 6 weeks pregnant and bloating enough that I could no longer fit into my skinny pants. I pulled out the larger pants from the garage, and ahhhh sweet relief. Until about a week and a half ago, when I couldn't button the larger pants, so I used the rubber-band-button-extender trick and ahhh sweet relief. Until earlier this week.

My skirts are still comfortable and wearable, but now, it is a struggle to pull even my "fat" pants up over my hips. Forget about the rubber-band-button thing, I can rarely even get the pants that far to begin with. So all week, in order to save myself from going crazy, my mantra has been, "I'm not fat, I'm pregnant. I'm not fat, I'm pregnant. I'm not fat, I'm pregnant."

Not helping the crazy is when I google at what point I should be in maternity clothes. The consensus seems to be towards the beginning of the 2nd trimester (another five weeks for me). Some women are earlier, but they all seem to be on their 2nd or 3rd kids. SOME bitches are all like, "I'm at 26 weeks and just had to buy my first pair of maternity pants yesterday!" Face-palm.

But whatever -- enough of feeling like crap every morning when I want to not shave my legs (because by the way, my leg hair is growing a LOT more quickly these days). So I broke down and bought semi-official maternity pants. Official because they were in the Maternity section, but semi because they aren't full-blown panel pants (I'm not big enough for those yet).

Baruch Hashem to Old Navy and their "real waist" maternity pants. These pants have no panel, but what they DO have are more room in the hips and a hidden adjustable elastic waist. AND, the ones that fit me best are my old "skinny" pant size. Such a cliche, but I am feeling so much better about myself just because of that stupid number on the tag. Old Navy, maybe it's marketing genius, or maybe you just understand. You're not fat, you're pregnant.

8w5d

On the subject of pregnancy progress: the 8 week ultrasound was yesterday. Bill got to come to this one with me. (I'll leave it to him to post his thoughts on the experience, if he so chooses.) Strangely enough, the picture looks even MORE like an amorphous blob than it did at 6 weeks. Saw a heartbeat again, which is always reassuring. They also took seven (7) vials of blood. Feeling a little lightheaded and run down now even though it's the next day.


On not quite feeling pregnant: If you google chance of miscarriage by week you will learn that the odds of miscarrying go way, way down after you see a heartbeat on the ultrasound at 8 weeks. But I tell you, it seems like every woman who has ever had a miscarriage AFTER this point has found the same page, and they all want to tell you about their experience. It's heartbreaking. I am generally feeling really well - tired in the afternoons & evenings, chest a little sore, sometimes queasy if I don't eat often enough (or if I eat too much). So on the days when my chest isn't so sore, or I haven't really felt any queasiness, it's easy to attribute the tiredness to going to bed too late the night before and talk myself into considering the more morbid possibilities. It's also easy to attribute the increasing difficulty of buttoning my pants to the increase in White Cheddar CheezIt intake.


On nesting: We finally cleaned out our garage. Technically it's a two-car garage, but since we moved in (nine months ago) it's been a one-car garage plus all our junk we don't have room for in the house (suitcases, Disturbing Leonard DVDs, sporting equipment, gardening tools, etc) in a pile where the other car would go. Some prior owner hung the original kitchen cabinets in there, and there was a completely useless built-in workbench that was blocking the 2nd car from pulling in, but other than those, there was NO organization system. We'd been planning on hanging shelves and pegboard, but kept putting it off. We didn't intend to wait until it was 100 degrees in the valley to take on this project, but last week, "NO PARKING 6 AM - 6 PM on Thursday [today]" showed up all along our street due to some planned paving activities. I could park a street over, but I didn't feel like fighting for a space with all the other displaced cars, nor lugging my laptop that far, so last weekend we (Bill) cleaned it out. Now we are in the process of hanging the shelves and pegboard, and then loading up the shelves and pegboard.


We also finally got our patio table put together, so we are one step closer to that reality too. (Still need an umbrella base though.) There are a bunch of other projects on the list that suddenly have become a bit more urgent:

• retiling the shower (actually, getting someone else to retile the shower),
• painting the living room
• clearing out junk room #1 (yes we have a junk room #2, also known as the "gym" -- a term I use verrrrrry loosely) so we can make it into a nursery
• painting the junk room nursery
• mounting a tile backsplash in our kitchen (this one I actually want to try to do, and I know a person from whom I can borrow a tile saw)
• building built-in bookshelves in our living room. There is a nook which would make this a really easy job, if only I owned a saw. And knew how to support the shelves correctly so they don't bow under their own weight or the weight of our massive photo albums.

Because suddenly 7 months seems like it's going to come tomorrow, and when that happens, I'll barely have time to wipe my own ass, let alone mount a tile backsplash.

Landocalrissian Folman

For a while, we had a plan. When Carin got pregnant, we would name the fetus "Landocalrissian." This would not be the actual name of our eventual child, but we thought it was a fun idea as a placeholder for the still gender-less fetus . We were inspired by an article in the Poughkeepsie Journal from 2008 featuring one Landocalrissan Butler (note misspelling). It drove home the point that, yes, parents sometimes give their kids unfortunate and hilarious names.

But now that Carin is actually pregnant, Landocalrissian Folman just doesn't feel right as a name for our little embryo. Something about it seems ... well ... forced. So we're still searching for a good fetus name (and an actual name, but that's another story). Our current placeholder is "Baby BaFolman," and I've come up with a song to go along with it to the tune of Raffi's "Baby Beluga." The song makes Carin laugh.

I suppose I should come up with a more profound first post to this blog, but I'll save the profundity for later. I'll just say, as an introduction to this pursuit, that I hope the blog will be a good way for Carin and I to share our experiences with our family and friends. Being on the other side of the country (even the other side of the Santa Monica mountains) can make staying in touch a challenge. This won't replace phone calls and visits, of course, but here you will find a few more details, a few more stories, a few more pictures. It will be here if you're interested.

Right, honey?

(I ask my wife, because the blog was her idea. I support it fully, and I'm happy she invited me to join in--but I am a notoriously inconsistent blogger. My own blog has lain fallow for the past year. It's hard to predict how much I'll be adding to the discussion, but for now, let's just say I'll try to chime in when I have something to add. Until then ...)

7w1d-ish

Lesson # 1: Never send the hungry pregnant lady to the grocery store on the way home from work.

or, alternately:

Lesson # 1: Always send the hungry pregnant lady to the grocery store on the way home from work.

My cart was a model of contradiction:

• Thomas' English muffins (original style)
• Skim-milk mozzarella cheese
• Pizza Sauce
• Zucchini
• Cinnamon Life
• A handful of Lean Cuisine frozen lunches
• 1 box of frozen Stouffer's french bread pizza
• White Cheddar Cheez-Its (nom nom nom)
• Frozen Pink Lemonade
• Fit Pregnancy magazine

The Cheez-its, lemonade, and Cinammon Life were all busted open within minutes of arriving at home. The Fit Pregnancy magazine is still sitting in the wrapper hours later.

So, wait a second. I'm pregnant?! Way to bury the lede.

2.5 weeks ago, after a beautiful Saturday at Zuma beach, I peed on a stick. I was assuming a negative because of lots of personal medical reasons having to do with timing and medications, etc. But I peed on a stick anyway, because it's a thing that I did like every 3rd and 4th (and sometimes 5th) weekend of the month. (Hot tip from Kim: they sell pregnancy tests at the 99-cent store.)

So. I'm waiting for the shower to heat up, and lo, there was a second line. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Kim, I will admit to being surprised. (But go read Kim's blog to find out what REAL surprise is. Remind me to hook up a link once she knows I'm pregnant.) Surprised because I had been through an odyssey in the past 18 months of endometriosis surgery, medication that effectively put me into menopause (for ~10 months when it was supposed to only last 6 months), and subsequent drugs to attempt to kick start my body's natural rhythms. If I had gotten pregnant this cycle, it would mean that this was the first spontaneous ovulation that my body experienced in roughly 13 years.

Not surprised because yes we were trying. Trying to the point of basal metabolic thermometers and the like. So when the second line appeared, I called Bill in urgently from pruning our roses outside:

Me: I need you to look at something in the bathroom.

Him: What is it?

Me: Just, it's important.

Him: What's the matter

Me: Just come inside. ....[We walk to the bathroom.]... Do you see a second line?

Him: Huh. ... ... ... Is that a second line?

Me: I don't know. Is it? ... I took one a week ago. That line wasn't there last week. Maybe I threw it away too soon. Maybe I didn't wait long enough.

Him: I think that's a second line.

Me: Maybe I wasn't pregnant enough last week. Shit. I drank 2 glasses of wine last Sunday night at book club. [Later realized I also had 1 glass the night before that with some friends after seeing Inception. And ALSO 1 night before THAT at Shabbat dinner with Mike and Kim.]

Him: Huh. Do you feel pregnanty?

Me: I thought I was just PMS-bloaty. But these are bigger than PMS boobs. Can you run to Target and get the good kind? Get a 3-pack.

The more expensive kind confirmed it, and then the very next morning I left for a week-long business trip in Wisconsin. Can I tell you how frustrating it is to find out you are pregnant and then 12 hours later have to leave your husband for a WEEK? Anyway, I was traveling with 4 coworkers, one of whom is also pregnant and was very willing to chat it up about her pregnancy. Convenient! But also close-to-impossible for me not to be like, "and I'm pregnant TOO!!!!!! WEEEEEE!!!!" She and I flew back on Friday night on a separate flight from the other 3, and in all our chatting, I guess I was Captain Obvious because she made a comment to me that was more or less "I know your secret but I'm not outright asking."

So the next Monday (now 10 days after the home test), I went in for blood test 1 of 2 (to establish a baseline of the hormone level). Tuesday night there was some light spotting. Dr. Google told me not to worry if the spotting was light. Only be worried if I started cramping really badly (I wasn't cramping at all) or if it got heavier and/or red. Wednesday was supposed to be confirmatory blood test 2 of 2 (to make sure hormone levels are increasing rather than decreasing). When I went in, I figured it wouldn't hurt to mention the spotting. They were all, "We'll tell the doctor right away! DON'T. WORRY." Me: "Um, I'm...not?" I really wasn't. I had slept just fine the night before. I was just kind of hoping it would earn me an earlier ultrasound. It TOTALLY DID!

So I saw the teeny teeny tiny baby nubbin and the doctor pointed out the faint heart beat and made some measurements to find out how far along I was (at that point, 6w1d), and that is the story of how I found out I was pregnanty.

p.s. If you know us and you have magically found this blog without our telling you about it, please do NOT share this news with anyone. Including cryptic posts to our facebook pages. Including cryptic posts on YOUR blog or facebook page. (I'm looking at you, Shmeith Shmerman.) I'm only 7 weeks in. G-d willing, we will be telling people around mid-late September, at the end of the first trimester.