The Catch-up Baby Blog

Gratuitous Gabrielle Reece photo. This has nothing to do with the blog.

This is the catch-all blog entry, designed to catch me up from all the recent events and put me on the trail to a happier, more-on-time baby blogging future. I hope. Yeah, but probably not.

So….here we go.

First of all, go to bebepool.com/mikeyj10 and fill out your entry to the baby pool. It's free because I'm lazy.

Besides lazy, I’m also kind of mad a myself because I sat in my office for about 45 minutes while my boss talked to me about all these “important” things and I didn’t realize that I was really just being held against my will. Politely.

Because, while Margot was going on and on about some thing or another that really wasn’t nearly as pressing as it seemed at the time, people were streaming along on the other side of the wall and setting up the surprise baby shower in the conference room.

One of the baby
shower beers. Yum!

Then it was time for the “meeting”, which actually turned out to be a quite fun little food fest (with red velvet cupcakes) and lots of presents. Like Melissa at her shower, I got many cool baby things. Onesies, diapers, bags, etc. Unlike Melissa at her shower, I got one really cool thing. Beer, jerky, onion rings…all imported from Columbus, Ohio because Teresa made her husband buy stuff a guy would like and he knew a place up there that was filled with that stuff. He was right!

Thank you to all the Habitat people! I’m sure Baby Readling will look great in all of her new clothes.

The next day was Melissa’s other shower, a pizza-themed lady bug fest, put together by Tori and Barb. Oh! And cooked by Marty.

I had some pizza and some of the salad and got to set up the champagne fountain (which I also got to take down, after making sure it was empty). I don’t really know how this one went because I stole Marty and went to the boat show. 

When we got back, there was clothes line with a bunch of onesies all the shower people had decorated. Apparently, Baby Readling is a surfer girl hippie Dolphins fan who does what she wants and tilts upside down when her father falls asleep. At least that’s what you get if you put all the messages on the shirts together. And, yes, I left out the Red Sox fan part because that’s a dirty joke by someone I no longer like.

And, you may have seen us writing down names at the baby shower(s). That's because everyone who gave a gift is officially committed to one day of baby sitting. Thanks for that!! I have your name...

Finally, we had another ultrasound and Baby Readling is, according to the tech, “trending to the plus side.” Ha! That’s putting it lightly.

They said she weighed 6 pounds, 12 ounces with a month to go. Most babies gain 2 pounds in the final

month, but ours (at the 76^th percentile already) will most likely gain more. That puts her right around 9 pounds when she’s born, if not 9.25.

Thoughts like that immediately bring the question to mind: What is the automatic cut-off for when a C-Section becomes mandatory?

"9 pounds????? Yikes?"

Labor and (breathe) birthing (think of the beach) classes begin (stretch)

This will apparently cure anything that ails ya

Just to give you an idea of how far behind I am, we went to labor and birthing classes LAST TUESDAY and I’m just now getting around to writing about them today. And then only because the internet is down at work, and I can’t really do anything until it’s back.

So, labor and birthing classes are 2.5 hours on a Tuesday night, followed by 2.5 hours on the next three Tuesday nights, bringing us to a total of 10 hours of sitting in a room, listening to a variety of people talk about all the joy we’re going to experience, showing us videos (mostly animated when it came to the actual birth, thank God!) and then telling us how all the pain, sweat and crazy positions we just saw can be alleviated by breathing properly. Please save your laughter until the end. I almost did.

The woman running the class showed us a couple videos of real women, giving real birth. There was much sweat and several contorted faces. Some of them were on their stomach. Some were on their back. None looked happy to be there. And these were the ones they chose to put on camera. I can’t begin to imagine what the other 97 percent look like.

Definitely the face of someone thinking of a beach
and things to interrogate her child about...

The whole idea behind this first class and these videos was to hammer home the point that proper breathing and relaxation will go a long way towards making the birthing process much easier. Which makes all the sense in the world. The less stress, the more movement. The more in control you are, the smoother things will run. Relax and things just fall out of you, I guess.

The final exercise of the night was our class leader putting on some kind of “relaxing” music. Enya. Or Ocean Sounds, Volume 17. Or something like that. Then, as we sat in our pretty little cushioned seats, in the dimly lit, air conditioned room, she told us to pretend we were at a beach. Make believe the baby is in the water. What would you ask your baby? (Can you swim? was not an option). Talk to your baby. Now tense the muscles in your feet. Relax. Tense the muscles in your calves. Relax. That continued all the way up to our faces, one muscle group at a time.

My only question – and I only have one – is: When Melissa is in the delivery room, heading into her fifth hour of labor, sweat matting her hair down into a slick ripple of stringy fur and this 8-pound baby trying to squeeze out of a 10 cm opening, is she really going to want to picture herself at Bathtub Beach, thinking of questions to ask her baby?

If only we'd not crossed God...

Okay, second question: And does breathing become a rhythmic exchange of oxygen and carbon dioxide, or a struggle against all that is happening in (and part way out of) your body?

We also talked about mucus plugs (I’ll spare you. You’re welcome) and some other crazy stuff that God probably didn’t intend to happen to human beings but, since we homogenize milk and train cats to pee in the toilet, he has allowed to occur anyway.

Anyway, tomorrow night is breast feeding class. Which is weird, because I thought I was pretty good at that already. Hopefully there will be films!

Showered With Reality



Peace!



You often hear people talk about how things are “getting real”. This typically occurs far too long into a situation that is completely irreversible at the point at which they utter those words.

So, I won’t say that Sunday’s baby shower in Orlando (Clermont, actually, but you wouldn’t have known the difference) make things “real”, but it certainly helped drive home the fact that we are woefully unprepared to bring a pooping, splattering mess into the world. How sad does that sound?

Okay, not woefully. But unprepared nonetheless.

This thought was compounded by the fact that not only did we have to Vaseline most of the gifts just to get them into the bed of the truck. And the cab. And under the seats. And anywhere else we could find that would fit onesies, binkys and the DIAPER GENIE!! Woo hoo!!

As if the first compoundment wasn’t enough, it was doubly compounded when we got home and started stacking it neatly (with the help of Barb and Marty) in what will be the nursery, if only because we have failed miserably at buying a house to this point. Granted, the stuff is still in boxes and the room won’t exactly qualify as the next wing for the Taj Mahal, but the baby shower haul took up about ¼ of the room. And that’s without the cool crib not being constructed yet.

What happens when a Babies R Us explodes. Or...what we call the nursery

It’s amazing how much stuff a thing that can’t even hold its own head up and whose main goal in life is to dirty as many diapers and throw up as many different colors as she can in the course of one day, actually needs.  

For one thing, her nickname is going to be Tina Turner because of the large amount of clothes she now owns, even though she is minus-7 weeks old. I saw Tina Turner in concert on back-to-back nights in 1993 and witnessed a total of 427 costume changes. Baby R will be able to come darned close to that if she is to wear all the clothes she has right now.

That said, the more clothes, the better. Until we get a real house with a washer and a dryer, I plan on piling those dirty little clothes up and washing them all at once. It takes a lot of I Love Mommy onesies to make a whole load of laundry, by the way.

There are also strollers, Jump and Jives, play saucers, diapers, diaper traveling things, bags, socks (which are actually called booties, who knew?) and little cute baby shoes.

In all truthiness, we are sooooo blessed and grateful to have friends and family that would go shopping (during the holiday shopping season, many of them) and provide us with enough gifts to almost not fit in my truck. That is amazing.

I just hope that everyone who has added to the pile in the nursery (and those of you who still might...) knows they are also on the hook for one day's worth of baby sitting while I play golf. Or fish.

So, it’s getting real around the Readling house right now. And I have a feeling it’s going to get more real this weekend when I have to move everything into storage and clear room in the baby’s room for the actual baby.

Can someone please move this piece of placenta? I can't see the camera!

Bee-stung Pouty Lips That Would Make Hollywood Jealous




She's already got the pout figured out

 Just when you thought we hit a lull in the baby blog, here comes all this exciting news!

            Like, for starters, I think we’re going to have to name sweet Baby Readling something along the lines of Angelina Jolie Lisa Rinna Readling. After the latest ultrasound that seems to be the only fair way to go.

People pay good money to look like Angelina...

      All I know is we were sitting there, minding our own business. I was sitting on the little chair they make father-to-be sit on, trying to remain upright. The Reparations Chair I like to call it, as it seems like punishment I have to endure for the crime of making my wife go through 9 months of hormones, weight gain, discomfort, hormones, warped feet and hormones. To be honest, we both have to deal with the hormones, so the Reparations Chair is really unjustified.

       Anyway, I’m teetering on the brink of falling on the cold floor and she’s all stretched out with the squooshy gel all over her belly. That’s when the experienced and very professional ultrasound tech lets loose with this… “Well, everything looks very good and, oh my, LOOK at those lips. They’re so big. I don’t think I’ve ever seen lips like that on a baby before.”

            So, we both crane our necks a little closer to the big screen monitor and there they are, clear as day, a pre-natal Collagen ad.

...But sometimes they come out looking like Lisa

 Once we calmed down from the shock of our daughter, the future Dizzy Gillespie, the tech broke out with some even more fun information.

            Baby’s weight at 30 weeks: 4 pounds, 3 ounces.

            Melissa’s jaw almost hit the ground and her eyes started spinning as you could see the calculations going through her mind. 4 pounds, 3 ounces with around 8-10 weeks to go. Most of the baby’s weight comes in the final few weeks. 4 pounds, 3 ounces times 2 = 8 pounds, 6 ounces. 8 pounds, 6 ounces squeezing out of a 2.3-pound wide hole. Think of the pain. The pain! What happened to my 6-pound baby? The pain! Can we get it out early? What if she’s late? 4 pounds, 3 ounces times 3 = 12 pounds, 9 ounces = Oh. My. God. 

Then she just laid back and started laughing maniacally. But it was one of those uncomfortable laughs like you don’t know what else to do, but people are watching, so I have to do something, I guess I’ll laugh.

I guess that’s all you can really do when faced with the prospect of everything going smoothly on the day of the birth…until those lips get hung up on something important on the way out.

Lindsay says "Smooches"!

           

BELL-AYYYYYYYY

There is an added bonus to this whole pregnancy thing…Melissa’s belly.

Not only is it big enough to make watching her try to walk through doorways more hilarious than I had ever imagined, but it provides hours of entertainment. I mean, this is like The Jeffersons plus All In The Family plus The Beverly Hillbillies multiplied by The Big Bang Theory. With some Mork and Mindy thrown in for fun!

Maybe we'll name the baby Elly Mae...

I first learned of all the belly fun at Halloween. That’s when Alex, our local artiste, showed up and painted it up like a pumpkin. We then fit the nice, new pumpkin into a hole Melissa cut in a pair of overalls that were either laying around, or someone left here when they visited. Then she walked around all night looking like a farmer holding a pumpkin plucked fresh from her patch. Very fun! I, on the other hand, being un-pregnant, was forced to go as a flashing banana and rub my exposed banana-ness all over whoever happened to be standing in front of me. Luckily, it was girls most of the time.

Lesson No. 1: If you’re going to be pregnant, make sure you’re pretty far into it around Halloween. The farther, the better.

Another thing I’ve learned about big bellies is they’re just fun to look at.

Pumpkin on the left, Amber on the right

I’ll be in the kitchen, slaving over another hot gourmet dinner (anything to keep the mother of my child healthy and satisfied), when I’ll look over and watch her just stare at her belly. It’s not like there isn’t anything else going on. We have a backyard full of jumping fish, three cats that like to do stupid cat things and, most of the time, the TV is on. There’s usually some sort of crap on that she likes to watch, like Aces of Cakes, or Extreme Dresser Makeovers or Being In Jail With Crips and Bloods, but she just stares at her belly. It’s like she’s waiting for the exact moment her belly button pops so she doesn’t miss it. I would think the KER-THUNK that sucker is going to make when it goes would be enough, but she apparently wants to watch it happen.

I used to wonder what in the living hell she was doing, until one day I put down the spoon I was using to stir the Cup O’ Noodles and asked her what she was doing.

“Watching for when she kicks,” is what she said. “You can see it when she kicks.”

Well, first of all, no you can’t (at least at that point, which was around 23 weeks, you couldn’t). Second of all, I stood there for about 10 minutes and waited for her to kick which, apparently she did once or twice, just not in a visible manner. The entire time, thoughts like “a watched pot never boils” were running through my mind. Yes, the Cup O’ Noodles was in peril, but this was an important step in my pregnancy. So I thought. Turns out…it wasn’t. And the gourmet Cup O’ Noodle Casserole burned. Have I mentioned how much I like Big Apple Pizza?

Now that we’re around 28 weeks, you can see little, itty bitty thumps. If you watch real carefully and have had enough beer and have been staring straight into a 100 watt light bulb for 5 minutes.

Backyard jumpin' fish (I wish)

In any case, it’s fun to watch her be so mesmerized by her belly. It’s not like we have DirecTV in two rooms, or anything. Or an iPod. Or a Wii. Or a BACKYARD FULL OF JUMPING FISH.

Another favorite Melissa pastime is laying on her back and pretending her belly is Mt. Everest as she walks those little green Army men up, making them stop at different base camps so as to not get too sick. Okay, not really. What she really likes to do is rub that Burt’s Bees lotion on her belly so she doesn’t get stretch marks. CORRECTION: Turns out it’s Johnson’s Baby Creamy cocoa and shea butter she likes. I still like typing Burt’s Bees, so that part is staying in. And I just got to type it again!  I told her I think stretch marks are a sign of accomplishment. She says “no”. But, then again, she stares at her belly like it’s a drive-in with quadrophonic speakers. What does she know?



Looking for a sherpa



I also like to watch her try to roll over in bed. It takes about 10 minutes per roll and is accompanied with a fair amount of groaning, followed by a big, heavy sigh of relief.

My FAVORITE part of the whole belly thing is every morning I can wake up, put my hand over on some quadrant of her belly and feel Baby R kick. It’s sooooo cool. One day, I felt the baby kick on the right side, do some sort of somersault flip thing, and then start kicking on the left side. Very strange, but very cool. Especially for someone who had never felt a baby kick before.

It could be the best thing I do every day. And I can’t wait for it to get better and better as the baby grows.

Speaking of growth, here’s one of my favorite updates. According to one of those crazy baby information sites that Melissa has emailed to her by the thousands each day, the baby is now about 2 pounds (1 pound, 15 ounces, last I heard from a real, live person paid to talk to us in the place of a real, live doctor), which equivocates to the size of a…are you ready?...English hot house cucumber.

Really?? An English hot house cucumber? Can’t they just say a stick of pepperoni?

Scarier still: If you do a Google Image search for English Hot House Cucumber, you get a bunch of images of unborn babies.

Self explanatory

The Coolest Baby Picture Ever (and a snot sucker update)

            One thing is for sure, the more Melissa’s belly grows, the better the pictures get. And I don’t just mean the ones of her right after she wakes up and her belly is hanging out the bottom of the t-shirt she slept in. Although those are pretty good, too.

            We went to the baby doctor on Friday and got our first look at a 4D ultrasound shot of Baby Readling in the womb. Freaky.

            It was a typical ultrasound with plenty of gray and shadowy things that may or may not be arms or hands. As usual, the probe would find the baby in the right spot and we could see really clearly the spine and ribs and the little heart beating a 100 mph. She has really long legs and likes to move her arms around. On this particular day she had the hiccups and we all had a good time watching her whole body (all 1 pound, 15 ounces of it) jump every time she hiccupped.

            Then the tech hit a button and everything went from gray and shadowy to bright and clearer than anything you can imagine. It was like someone pulled a chain and turned on a light inside of Melissa.

            It was then that we saw some of the coolest pictures ever.

            You can clearly see the baby’s left arm pressed up against the back of her head, complete with a little fist. We could even see ripples in the skin on her arm. There is the top of her knee and most of her upper torso. You can’t see her face because it’s turned away from the probe, snuggled comfortably in the placenta wall. Weren't THOSE the good ol’ days!

            Totally amazing.

Baby Readling chillin' in her placental home

            According to the ultrasound tech, she’s is the perfect size, though she’s gonna start booming in the next couple weeks. At 26 weeks she weighs just under 2 pounds, which means she’s got about 5-6 more pounds to put on the next 14 weeks. That also means Melissa needs to find some bigger t-shirts to sleep in because, if baby gets bigger, so does mommy. Exponentially!

            In the meantime, we got to finish registering at Babies R’Us (at least I did). Hopefully, I won’t ever have to go in there again. They did have some nice Miami Dolphins cheerleader outfits, which I got to run the gun on several times. Other than that, I’m learning real quick that manufacturing and selling baby implements is one hell of a scam.

            What other kind of business can you make something for $1, sell it for $19.50 and then turn around and sell the same thing (only one size bigger) for another $19.50 after the baby grows out of it at 3 months? That’s $40 worth of clothes that she most likely won’t fit into six months after she’s born.

            The rally cry the whole way through the store, as mulled over strollers, high chairs, pack-n-plays and wipe warmers, was “Do we have everything we need to get her home safely from the hospital and through the first night?” I figured, if we can get her that far, we can make a quick list in the morning and run out and buy whatever we need all of a sudden.

            One update: It turns out they give you a snot sucker at the hospital! I guess they don’t feel like recycling those. Who knew?

            Whatever….we’ll take it!

Can't We Just Call a Snot Sucker a Snot Sucker?

Hell!

         
           
For a truly humbling experience, you should take a little stroll through the baby department in your nearest Target. It’s quite fun, what with all the light blues and pinks and duckies, and bunnies and lady bugs.



Evil smile

There are pictures of smiling babies doing everything from bathing to sitting up, to crawling to pooping their brand new, snuggable diapers. You can tell they’re pooping because the ones on the diaper boxes always have the most evil smiles.

You can get lost in the array of bottles and bottle cleaners, soaps, lotions, bibs (my God! The bibs!), formula, binkies, teethers and a whole bunch of other things that are meant to go in (or keep things out of) your baby’s mouth.

If you look in the right section, you can even catch a glimpse of a boob. Or multiple glimpses if you’re wife isn’t looking.

At the end of the aisles stretches a whole other section which is, basically, an infant vehicle showroom. There are strollers with 8 wheels, three wheels, covers, no covers, covers with windows, recliners, cup holders, Cheerio holders and even one that had an iPod dock so you can listen to Shania Twain while you’re pushing your poopy spawn through the mall.

           

Yes, that's really an iPod dock

 It’s all very fun and exciting. And, if you’re registering for stuff you don’t want to buy, but will take for free from friends (as we were), they even give you a gun to scan your would-be booty with. I should say they give the daddy-to-be the gun because I saw four or five other couples registering and the guy was always the one with the gun. It's hunting and gathering in a whole new, sterile, ducky-filled, technological level. Although, in part because this is Martin County, there was one guy who was wearing camouflage. He didn’t want the 3-6 month, bluebird-designed Nuk to get away, I guess.

A Nuk, by the way, is something you stick in the baby’s mouth when they start crying too much. Shuts them right up and causes their front teeth to become buck teeth when they grow up. But it’s worth it because it shuts them up. Some even have the ability to put medicine (or whiskey, your choice) in the Nuk handle so the kid is sucking it up, all the while ruining their orthodontal future.



Just add Jack Dan...,um, children's medicine



Speaking of things that aren’t called what they should be…snot suckers are actually called newborn nasal aspirators. Do you think new parents actually ask each other to pass the newborn nasal aspirator? NO!!! They say, “Where in the hell is that snot sucker?” as they crawl around on their hands and knees, looking under the couch, or behind the toilet.

That said, this whole registering this is simple, right?

Lesson 1: Bottles.

What looks like
a standard
bottle.

There are soooooooooo many bottles and they come in every shape and size imaginable. You can get a straight one, or one that’s bent in the middle (I don’t know why). Some have bags in them. Some say they prevent colic. Some say lower air intake. There are different ones for newborns and those 3-6 months old and those older than that.

Yes, we were overwhelmed by baby bottles. Sad.

But that was only the beginning.

This may as well be a Ferrari

Lesson 2: Picking a stroller is equivalent to buying a car. They all have different features (although the easy-to-fold ones are still rarely that) and they all have pro’s and con’s. Snap-and-go. Britax, Graco. It was explained to us that some are better for traveling, some are better for exercising and some are better for, say, Disney World. Or the mall. Or walking around Babies R’ Us as you finish registering for stuff you should have registered for before she was born, but simply ran out of time.  



None are easy to choose.

Lesson 3: Diapers. Nice and easy, right? Go find the one that says “Newborn” and buy that for her for right after she’s born. 3-6 months is for when she’s 3-6 months. 6-18 months, etc. Basically, Huggies and Pampers have a stranglehold on the U.S. diaper industry, so you go with one of them. And, oh, by the way, none of those numbers mean a DAMNED thing. Your kid could be 4 months and be in the 6-18 month diapers. Or she could be 9 months and be in the 3-6 month diapers. It's nice that they spent the ink to confuse us though. We picked up two packages of Pampers because they were on sale and you got a $10 gift card with the purchase.

This is a shot in the dark

After carrying them around for about 45 minutes, a woman who was shopping with her bald 8-month old, stopped us and asked if this was our first baby. She then proceeded to tell us how Pampers gave her child a rash and all she could wear were Huggies and this is why and blah blah blah blah. It’s weird that people feel they have the right to talk to you just because they have a kid and you’re on your way. But she was helpful. I guess.

So we turned around and picked up two packages of Huggies which, luckily, came with the same $10 gift card and were also on sale. We still don’t know how the baby will react to them, but at least we have 304 to test on her.

The problem is, unlike registering for your wedding, where all you do is run around Bed, Bath and Beyond with a gun and shoot cool things like shot glass combo sets, barware and bath towels. Or stroll through Dillards and scan in crazy China patterns, leopard print silk sheets and silverware sets (20 percent of you won’t be able to find 5 years later), there is actually a degree of responsibility when doing this baby thing.

I mean, you can’t be registering for a bib that says “Cool Dude” in big blue letters, when you’re having a girl. That’s just not right. More importantly, you have to make sure the things you do scan in will actually be helpful when the baby gets here. And they have to match when you get them home. You don't want a mismatched pack-n-play, high chair and baby seat, do you? That's just tacky.

For the record, it was one and a half hours in Target on Saturday and more than an hour in Babies R’ Us on Sunday, in which we only covered about 1/8^th of the store before we had to go watch the Dolphins play one of the worst games of the season.

Despite Chad Henne's inability to complete a pass to a guy in a white jersey, I would have rather gone hoarse yelling obscenities at a big screen TV, than trying to figure out which snot sucker I'm going to lose behind the toilet.

Doesn't this look fun?