32 Weeks and Graduating!!!

Tomorrow I will be 32 weeks along in the pregnancy (5-10 more weeks to go!).  A number of my classmates have asked me what "common discomforts" I have encountered during my pregnancy.  Honestly, I really can't complain!  I don't have back pain or swelling.  I really don't have heartburn (only a tiny bit once in a while).  I haven't experienced leg cramps, varicose veins, or constipation either.  I suppose it's possible for me to experience some of these nuisances since I still have a few week lefts in the pregnancy, but I sure hope I don't!

On the school front...I passed my comprehensive exam!  This exam is supposed to be similar to the certfication exam I will be taking in a few weeks and we must pass it in order to graduate.  I have one more class (tomorrow morning at 9am), two faculty meetings (exit interviews), and then I get pinned on Friday!  The pinning ceremony is to commemorate the completion of the master's degree program.  I will have the opportunity to walk in the graduation ceremony in May 2011 (it is only held once per year).  I still don't think it has sunk in that I am actually done with school at the end of this week.  It will... 
   

The Third Trimester - Preparing for Baby

I am now in the beginning of the last trimester of my pregnancy (I'm 28.3 in the picture)!  I know I am going to miss feeling my little friend moving around in my belly.  This morning Gabe and I watched my belly protrude as the baby pushed out his or her back and bum.  It's amazing that we are only separated by a few layers of skin and muscle. 

I'm curious about what people think about baby accessories.  Gabe and I are pretty simple people, so what are the items that you think are essential for caring for a newborn baby?  In other words, if you were stranded on a desert island, what three things would you take with you for the baby? 

Private Parts

OK, this post is totally inspired by a recent conversation with a co-worker and I thought it might be funny to get a little feedback. I guess we will find out how many (or few) people read this and/or care.

We were talking about kids naming body parts and I couldn't help but think of so many of the funny things you tell kids to help them along the way. For example, I remember the answer to where does the pee-pee go when you flush the toilet is "pee-pee go to China". Nice one Santa! Surely most of us remember the spin on the Oscar Mayer bologna song "my bologna has a first name its O-S-C-A-R..." I guess there are lots of foods that resemble the male anatomy because I have heard it referred to as macaroni, Lil smokies, polish sausage, pickles, and many more. I have only mentioned the male nicknames because, well, I was unaware of what to nickname a girls part until I was a teenager and the things we called it are absolutely inappropriate.

I know kids make up their own words for things too! Especially when they are the 'private parts'. Emilie and I have this great vision that we are going to be open with our child and not sugar coat anything. A penis will be a penis and a vagina will be a vagina. But really, how many two-year- olds can say vagina and wouldn't that be a little creepy. I feel like if they were to say that type of word that young, it would sound like those creepy e-trade commercials where the baby calls Lyndsay Lohan a 'milk-aholic'.

CLICK TO WATCH COMMERCIAL

Anyhow, what I really want from you are examples of things you or your kids may have named body parts that are not 'appropriate' for kids to say. Please leave comments about the funny nicknames you have and make sure and tell the story of how they were created. Hey if they are funny or cute enough, we might just change our minds and let our baby nickname their parts too. Tell your friends to do it too. I want to get as many as possible.

Guys Eye

Well I know it has been some time since I have been on here. I am going to make an honest effort to post more regularly. I want to express things from my viewpoint so I really will try. Warning, some of the things I write may be offensive, inconsiderate, disagreeable, or dumb. Remember these are my opinions and you are entitled to yours as well. If Alvin Greene can run for South Carolina Senate, I can talk about baby issues.

First, I want you all to know that Emilie is an absolute champ. If it wasn't for the visual evidence in her belly, I wouldn't know she was pregnant. I have heard stories of how she would get cranky, and crave weird things at 2 a.m., and eat icing straight from the jar. Nope! She has carried on like normal and even takes care of me more because I am short on free time. She is amazing! I know we have 3 months left, but given her track record thus far it should be no problem (it is difficult to type while crossing your fingers that you didn't speak too soon).

One of the things Emilie has done is given me one of her school textbooks so I can read up on care of the baby immediately following birth. I like it because it sites references and is evidence based. The first chapter is on breast-feeding. Not that we are trying to decide-we are definitely breast-feeding. But I wanted to see what the benefits were and actually know why, rather than just do things because Emilie says they are right. Essentially, what I get is that if you breast-feed you protect your baby against illness, increase bonding between mother and infant, enhance cognitive development, and it is freaking FREE! Why would anyone in their right mind not breastfeed. I say in their right mind because it seems like the only dangers of breastfeeding occur when you are on crack (illicit drugs), or you have HIV, TB, etc. I guess some babies could have allergies and some mothers could potentially be physically unable to do it. But otherwise, you should totally do it. What I am shocked about is that the baby would eat 8-12 times a day during the first few weeks. I wonder how many times a day Jacob eats.

By nature i am curious and I have tons of questions. Like any other guy, I have ideas that my baby is going to be a "golden child". I want the best for the baby and I wonder how to achieve that through the mother's diet while breast-feeding. For example, if Emilie eats a diet only of super foods, will our baby also love highly nutritious fruits and vegetables? How about if she eats an abundance of cakes and Twinkies? Will that doom our baby to becoming Chunk ("Hey you guys!")? Well, we wont take our chances of that. Should I put her on a diet for a performance athlete or Paleo diet hoping we will soon have the youngest CrossFit champion?

Looking pregnant - 24.6 weeks

I think I'm finally starting to look pregnant and passing the stage of questioning whether or not the bulge of my belly is a baby or too much Mexican food. Three people today asked me if I was pregnant and I'm hoping they are the type who wouldn't ask unless they were pretty confident that I would say yes. My fundus (the top of my uterus) is just above my belly button. Speaking of my belly button...it has completely popped out! The baby is moving every day, especially after I eat. I have Braxton-Hicks contractions almost every day too. I can't believe that we could meet this little person in as little as 12 weeks! I'm expecting it'll be longer than that, though.

As for an update on other things going on in our lives...I only have four more weeks in my final clinical practicum. I have attended four births this semester, so I will be spending more time on labor & delivery to try to catch more babies! I have caught a total of 35 babies since June, but I want as much experience as possible at the end of my program since I won't begin working as a midwife for a while after the baby is born. Gabe is busy as usual with work and coaching soccer. He will be taking a trip over Halloween weekend to visit his college friends. I know he is looking forward to seeing everyone and catching up!   

Boy or Girl?

I got an email from thebump.com and my curiosity took me to a link with a Chinese gender calendar. Based on my age and month of conception, this chart says we are having a girl. It claims to be 90% accurate. I'm not buying it.

The most common old wives tale I hear from patients about knowing the gender of the baby is related to the heartbeat. Girls supposedly have a higher heartbeat than boys.

Here are some other old wives' tales:

• Carrying low = boy; Carrying high = girl
• Craving sweets = girl; Craving salty = boy
• Pee in a cup and add 1 Tbsp of Drano...if it's green = girl; blue = boy  
• Mayan method - age at conception (29) and year of conception (10)...both even or odd = girl; one even and one odd = boy (so, this tells us we're having a boy)

Anyone else know of any old wives' tales? It is so much fun to guess! :)

Ultrasound!

Today we had the anatomy ultrasound and we were utterly amazed at this tiny little person growing in my belly! Baby G didn't want us to see his or her face - as you can see from the hands playing peek-a-boo! I wasn't sure how we would feel about not finding out the baby's gender when we were actually having the ultrasound done. It wasn't difficult for me at all and when I asked Gabe later, he said he wasn't really tempted to find out either. I am just glad that the baby's anatomy was normal. We saw a four chamber heart, a brain, a stomach, a bladder, five fingers on each hand, and more! I can't believe we created this little person together! What a blessing!!

Halfway...maybe!

Today I am starting the 20th week of my pregnancy. So, I might be halfway there! Although my due date is Feb. 3rd, I am already preparing myself for the possibility of a Valentine's Day baby. I have posted a couple of pictures that Gabe took of me on Monday. As you can see I have a little bump, but it isn't really noticeable unless I am wearing a tight shirt. The baby was moving quite a lot yesterday! It's such an incredible feeling. I am constantly amazed that another person is living and growing inside me!!   

A Different Kind of Learning

I am so happy to be pregnant at the end of my midwifery schooling. Since starting my clinical experiences this semester I have a different perspective when speaking to patients. For example, I had a patient today who is 14-ish weeks and she asked me why she wasn't showing yet. I told her that I'm 19 weeks (and I'm barely showing) so she had something to compare herself too. I am excited to keep learning from the changes in my body and from my own labor and birth experience.

As for our little one...I'm absolutely positive that I felt the baby move today. For the past week or so I have been experiencing the sensations I described in an earlier post - pretty sure, but not 100% that it was the baby moving. Today when I was driving home from the clinic, I felt what was unmistakeably our babe. Now the next big milestone will be for Gabe to be able to feel the baby while touching my belly. I know he can't wait for that to happen!

Yoga

I went to my first prenatal yoga class today. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but I was pleasantly surprised. I have been practicing yoga on and off for about 10 years so I was concerned that prenatal yoga would be too easy or boring. I realized today that this weekly yoga class is just what I need to relax, breathe, and bond with my baby. Also, the instructor is pregnant and she and I are due at the same time!

Food

I just watched Food Inc. and I am re-inspired to change what I eat. I was originally very inspired to change our food shopping habits after reading Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. I made some changes after reading that book, but I slowly reverted back to many of my old ways.
Being pregnant, I think about the food I eat to feed my baby, the food that I will eat to produce breast milk, and the solid foods we will eventually feed our child. The thought of consuming mass produced beef and chicken or highly processed junk food disgusts me. I want to provide my baby with the best possible nutrition.
So, I have started doing some research. Living in Middle Tennessee, it is relatively easy to support the local economy and purchase farm fresh foods. I went to the website http://www.picktnproducts.org/ for guidance. I can purchase locally grown beef, chicken, turkey, milk, cheese, eggs, tomatoes, herbs, squash, potatoes, and much more at local farmers' markets and some stores. There are also a number of CSAs in the area. CSA or Community Supported Agriculture is a way to support a farm by signing up to buy a share of the farm's produce. You decide how large of a share you want and each week you pick up your basket of produce. The food is fresh (straight from the farm and only hours since it was harvested) and you know where it came from.
I am making a commitment to change! I will be buying as much food from local farmers as possible to support the local economy and to reduce pollution (tons of fuel is wasted on shipping food to grocery stores!). I will also plan meals with the season in mind. It is unnatural to be able to buy fresh tomatoes and strawberries year round. Not only that, but these foods taste exceptionally better when they are bought in season.

I hope I am able to sustain these changes so that our child will benefit from an exceptional diet and that he or she will learn to be a responsible consumer.

Kick?

Here I am sitting at the computer, watching a show on the Internet (we don't have cable), when all of a sudden I feel a little tap in my right lower abdomen. My first thought: It might be a muscle spasm or the pulsing of a blood vessel. I put my hand over the area and concentrate. Thump! There it is again...and again...and again. I think I just felt the baby move for the first time!   

Yoga!

This week I found out that there is a yoga studio about 5 minutes away from our place that offers prenatal yoga. The class is on Sundays from 3-4:30pm - much more convenient for me than the weekday classes offered by other yoga studios in town. I am excited to start classes, but I feel a bit like an impostor since it is still impossible to tell I'm pregnant based on my outward appearance. On one hand, I'm enjoying not having any problems fitting into my clothes. On the other hand, I can't wait to see some changes!

Go Tell it On the Mountain

Secrets are an incredibly interesting concept unique to humans. Even our closely related primate species, although intelligent and capable of abstract thinking, don't have this concept. Apes don't care if Bobby hooked up with Sally the day after he hooked up with Sue. In fact, I am sure Bobby and Sally probably hooked up in public, in plain view of all of the other apes-Sue included. For some reason, mostly because we humans like to over think everything, we decided that we would conceive a game that involves withholding information until precisely the right time. Now this can be fun when you are the one with the secret, but it can also be nerve-wracking. No matter what the case, secrets are unnatural and can cause a great deal of added stress and emotional confusion. If you don't know me or cannot tell by my tone, I am not a man who has many secrets. Although I will say can be trusted with them as I understand the reasons for keeping secrets.

Learning that Emilie was pregnant was one of the happiest moments of my life. I was in Orange Beach, AL on our annual beach training camp making final preparations for the state tournament with my girls soccer team (16-16 year old girls) and 4 mothers acting as chaperons. In fact, the beach house came with a separate guest house that the mothers referred to as the 'honeymoon suite' so that Emilie and I could work on our baby making. Unfortunately, Emilie wasn't able to come this year because that same weekend, she left for Texas for two months. As the mothers hinted at the prospect of Emilie and I having kids, it was extremely difficult to keep from telling them that Emilie had just sent me a picture of the positive pregnancy test she just took. So I did the only thing I knew to do. I told them goodnight and went and thought about it alone in my suite. I'll tell you that was a joyous moment, but it was very difficult because I wanted to share that with the person I love the most. At that point, I would have shared it with anyone.

The two months that we kept our pregnancy a secret continuously created emotional confusion for me. I wanted to stand on top of a mountain and yell to the whole world my incredible news and how amazing our baby is going to be. However, with so much still uncertain, it wasn't the right thing to do. This confusion began to manifest in common daily situations that I was previously oblivious to. I totally began to feel like a woman. I would see a mother with an infant in the supermarket and these weird feelings were erupting inside of me. I would get excited and start thinking about what our baby is going to be like and that pretty soon I will be doing that. This was all very new to me, and I am sure it was very creepy to the mother I was staring at with wide eyes and a huge grin on my face. As I encountered more similar situations, it became harder and harder to keep my secret. One afternoon one of the women I work with brought her son into work. As some of my co-workers and I were playing with him I wanted to say "I can't wait until mine is born". I was encountering these situations more and more and it was starting to wear me down.

To deal with the added pressure of the wonderful secret I was having to keep, I began to tell my secret to strangers, bystanders, and acquaintances. I found a good outlet was a haircut session with a new stylist I never met before. Based on an early evaluation of her performance I knew I wouldn't be seeing her again. I gave myself the green light and I talked for the full 20 minutes about how excited I was that I was going to become a dad. I began to tell the checkout people at stores and restaurants. For a while it was enough to hold me over, but I was itching to tell the people I truly care about.

I learned that one of the positives of keeping a good secret is that the reward of revealing your secret has a direct positive correlation to the difficulty of keeping it. The harder it is to keep, the better it will feel to reveal. I mean it was incredible getting to tell my family and friends that Emilie and I will soon be welcoming the next Garcia to the clan. I still have not told everybody, but each day I tell someone else, it makes my entire day. It brings me so much joy just to tell people this news that I can only imagine the joy I will feel when our baby is actually born. I think this whole secret experience has already changed me. Initially, I wanted to know the gender of the baby as soon as we were able to find out. Now that Emilie is pregnant and I already love our baby. I don't care what the gender is. I think it will be awesome for the baby to keep that a natural, wonderful secret until the day we get to meet him or her.

Introduction to Garcia Family Rundowns

In case you aren't as big of a fan of The Office as we are...in Season 5, Michael Scott leaves Dunder Mifflin to start the Michael Scott Paper Company and he is replaced by Charles Minor (an outside hire - gasp!). One day, Charles asks Jim for a client rundown. Being the dutiful employee he is, Jim says he'll get it done. In reality, he has no clue what a client rundown is and he is too scared that if he asks, Charles' already poor impression of him will worsen.

Hence, the title of our blog is a nod to our favorite show, The Office. Gabe and I plan to provide updates on our life here in Nashville, particularly related to our growing family. 

As you all know by now, I'm pregnant! I'm about 16-ish weeks along. Therefore, we are expecting the baby's birth to fall sometime between the last two weeks of January and the first two weeks of February 2011. The timing really couldn't be better. I graduate in December after which I will be studying for my certification exam. I will take this exam in late December or early January. After the baby is born, I plan to wait about 6 months before starting my first job as a certified nurse-midwife (CNM).

This past Tuesday we had our first prenatal visit at the West End Women's Health Center (http://www.vanderbiltnursemidwives.com/). We met with Elaine Moore, a CNM who works part-time at this clinic. The best part was hearing the baby's heartbeat! Our next appointment is scheduled for Sept. 22. We also have an ultrasound scheduled that morning to look at the baby's anatomy. At this point, the plan is to wait to find out the baby's gender.

We are so excited (and also frightened!) to become parents. Considering that we are so far from all our family and friends, we hope that this blog will keep us a bit more connected. I'll also post pictures as my belly grows (so far it looks exactly the same).