Well, first things first: It’s still a girl– very obvious. There’s absolutely no way around that when your child has her legs spread wide open and a huge grin on her face. Phew. Now that we’ve gotten that out of the way we can move on to the more fun aspects of this whole Saturday… the drama and of course the recovery from said drama The reason I want to talk about the drama is because my website gets a lot of Google hits, and I don’t want any other expectant mothers to go through what I did with the first ultrasound place we signed up with.
We had an appointment for over a month with Motherhood Sonogram (the one run by Vital Systems Imaging) in Falls Church right down the street from Tyson’s Corner. One hour before our appointment we get a phone call from the manager, Jhia Khan (the irony of the last name is astounding if you’re a Star Trek fan). She tells us that the power is out at the building. The backup generators are busted and the ETA they got from Dominion Power of VA was 5pm. How convenient. She offered no discounts, no late evening appointment recovery, nothing. She did offer to contact us later in the day with a rescheduled appointment for later this week as well as several apologies. I thought she was sincere, until I rushed downstairs and checked the Dominion Power website. Hey guess what? There are no outages in the Northern Virginia area, especially near Tyson’s Corner or Falls Church on Saturday morning! THIS is pretty much how I felt after that. I can handle everything under the sun being done to me except for lying… Maurice’s theory is that they overbooked Mother’s Day weekend and bumped us for a couple that wanted to get the next highest package or they overran their schedule and had to knock off people.
Anyway, the crisis was averted when I called up InfantSee4d, a very nice facility in Fairfax that I wish I had called in the first darn place! The manager/owner, Maria, picked up the phone and I quickly explained the crisis. My mother drove up five hours to see this… mother’s day weekend… desperate. You get the picture. She was so sweet and so helpful. She took us right under her wing and stayed LATE (note, 2 and a half hours past their normal Saturday hours) to do our ultrasound. She also informed us that women had called the night before claiming the same power outage situation with Motherhood Sonogram (aka “Motherhood F***ergram”) and were all frantic last night as well. She set us up for a 6:30 appointment that evening.
Mom, Maurice, and I ran out and got lunch, then shopped a bit in the Tyson’s area. We went home, relaxed and ran over to the sonogram place around 5:30pm. The facility is REALLY nice. They have plush couches for the family to sit on, and a huge theater screen for everyone to watch. The mother has a cushiony bed with a nice pillow to hold her up so she can watch. There’s about 3 screens in the room to look at: the massive one, the smaller one for family next to the mother, and the one that Maria uses with the ultrasound wand. It was nice. Even though it was late on a Saturday and she had worked all day long, Maria was just as enthusiastic with us as if we were her first customers of the day. It was really refreshing, especially after the mess we went through that morning! The video quality was excellent. We saw so much of Olivia it was insane. She stretched, stuck her tongue out, smiled, smirked (a lot — must be my genes), and we even caught the fact that she really does have Maurice’s ears! We’re pretty certain she’ll have his nose too. She also has a head full of dark hair.
Below is one video clip that I could strip out on my own this morning. It’s of Olivia yawning in the beginning of the ultrasound! It was very neat to watch. Hopefully Maurice will have better clips for you later, since he’s much better at this video editing thing than me:
Below are some pictures from the ultrasound. Comments are above the picture they’re talking about. We have over 30 of them, so naturally I can’t post them all, so we’ve put up a *.zip file here: Baby Olivia 3D US Pictures Archive.First, the best picture of our little girl! She looks so angelic in this picture. The little “dots” you see around her neck and chest is her umbilical cord. The fuzziness over in the top-right section of her head is actually her hair!
Here’s her princess pose (note to Grandma Evy - Check out the ear lobe! Is that all Maurice or WHAT?):
Her little feet (she was wiggling her big toe in the video when Maria took this shot):
Streeeeeeeeeeetch… and smile! (You can’t tell me that isn’t the spitting image of Maurice smiling…):
At the end of the session she decided to suck her thumb instead of her umbilical cord:
I found this on the Nest this afternoon and thought it was so funny and true:
BIRTH ORDER OF CHILDREN
1st baby: You begin wearing maternity clothes as soon as your OB/GYN confirms your pregnancy.
2nd baby: You wear your regular clothes for as long as possible.
3rd baby: Your maternity clothes ARE your regular clothes.
Preparing for the Birth:
1st baby: You practice your breathing religiously.
2nd baby: You don’t bother because you remember that last time, breathing didn’t do a thing.
3rd baby: You ask for an epidural in your eighth month.
The Layette:
1st baby: You pre-wash newborn’s clothes, color-coordinate them, and fold them neatly in the baby’s little bureau.
2nd baby: You check to make sure that the clothes are clean and discard only the ones with the darkest stains.
3rd baby: Boys can wear pink, can’t they?
Worries:
1st baby: At the first sign of distress–a whimper, a frown–you pick up the baby.
2nd baby: You pick the baby up when her wails threaten to wake your firstborn.
3rd baby: You teach your three-year-old how to rewind the mechanical swing .
Pacifier:
1st baby: If the pacifier falls on the floor, you put it away until you can go home and wash and boil it.
2nd baby: When the pacifier falls on the floor, you squirt it off with some juice from the baby’s bottle.
3rd baby: You wipe it off on your shirt and pop it back in.
Diapering:
1st baby: You change your baby’s diapers every hour, whether they need it or not.
2nd baby: You change their diaper every two to three hours, if needed.
3rd baby: You try to change their diaper before others start to complain about the smell or you see it sagging to their knees.
Activities:
1st ! baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics, Baby Swing, and Baby Story Hour.
2nd baby: You take your infant to Baby Gymnastics.
3rd baby: You take your infant to the supermarket and the dry cleaner.
Going Out:
1st baby: The first time you leave your baby with a sitter, you call home five times.
2nd baby : Just before you walk out the door, you remember to leave a number where you can be reached.
3rd baby: You leave instructions for the sitter to call only if she sees blood.
At Home:
1st baby : You spend a good bit of every day just gazing at the baby.
2nd baby: You spend a bit of everyday watching to be sure your older child isn’t squeezing, poking, or hitting the baby
3rd baby: You spend a little bit of every day hiding from the children.
Swallowing Coins:
1st child: When first child swallows a coin, you rush the child to the hospital and demand x-rays.
2nd child:! When second child swallows a coin, you carefully watch for the coin to pass.
3rd child: When third child swallows a coin, you deduct it from his allowance
And this is yet another attention whore post to point out that we are now entering the third and final trimester as of today. There’s just three months to go now before we greet Olivia!
Olivia was being really active tonight, so I took some video! It may be hard to catch it on the first time through, but watch the belly shortly after I poke at it and tickle it a bit and you’ll notice Olivia reacting to me. It’s pretty neat. I didn’t realize that the babies started doing that at this stage!
Long hair sucks. Really it does. It’s very hard to manage and as thick as my hair is, it can take about 30-40 minutes to dry it once it gets past my shoulders. That isn’t fun at all! With Spring coming in (gradually, to my displeasure), I decided to lop off my hair and go short again. Here’s a shot of it at different angles… note that I took the picture myself, so it may look a bit fishbowled in the middle since I was really close to the lense
Alright, Liv and I are back to waiting for Grandma Evy and Grandpa Ed to get in from their long drive!
We headed down to D.C. this Sunday to take a peek at the cherry blossom trees. In the five years I’ve lived here, I haven’t actually seen the trees in bloom during their peak time. This weekend happened to be the peak, so we ran down on the Metro to gawk at them with thousands of other tourists. Fortunately for us, it wasn’t all that crowded. The weather was nice, but very cold. Not too many people were keen on going out into 50 degree weather to look at trees I suppose! We got some good shots of the trees as well as the petals. Here is one of our favs:
I also have the obligatory “fatty” picture of my 24 week belly. My face is generously cut out of the picture because I was given Maurice the “please take this picture quickly so we can go to the slaughter house and slice off some bacon from my growing fat arse” look — at least, I feel like my face is puffy! I don’t think it helps that I’m so shrot-waisted. It seems to be all baby at this point, which wouldn’t be far from the truth. Bah. Anyway, belly shot:
I have to admit, I thought it wouldn’t be so bad walking up to the Austin Grill (our favourite D.C. restaurant). It was about 2.5-3 miles from the area where we took the pictures, and it would have taken forever for us to use the Metro with all of the line switches. Never again. I never knew what an aching pelvis felt like until I reached the doorway of the Austin Grill and begged for a seat. Note to self: don’t be a hero, get a freaking cab next time.
SLEEP! Oh — my — god… Maurice snores, that is no big deal for me usually except when I am kept awake not by him really, but by the baby. I got up to use the bathroom last night around 3:30am, right on time given my 2-hour interval rushes to the porcelain god, when I noticed crazy vibrations in my belly every few seconds. Great. Olivia had the hiccups for over an hour last night. At first it was funny and cute, then after 10 minutes I really was like “ok… you can stop now” so I could sleep. Not so lucky.
She finally stopped hiccuping around 5am, but I already booted Maurice out of the room so I could sleep at least somewhat in between the hiccuping and odd snorting noises he was making. Personally, I think he conspired with Olivia to ensure I wouldn’t get any sleep last night. I feel like death today, but at least I can post saying I felt the hiccups for the first time.
Needless to say, I demanded a Starbuck’s Mocha Latte at lunch to help give me at least some caffeine. I get decaf, but it still has enough in it to make me feel somewhat alive and in the conscious realm. I think I should stay away from Warhammer code today though, just to make sure I don’t destroy something…
We didn’t expect to get to this part this weekend, but we had both finished a lot of school work yesterday afternoon and decided to go ahead and put together the IKEA nursery furniture. It’s actually a lot more sturdy than you’d think. We didn’t feel comfortable with the crib; however, the rest of the furniture is splendid. Besides, who wants to spend $500 on a dresser and hutch that’s just going to get beaten up by a toddler in a few years? We spent in total $370 (including tax) on the set. There’s one other piece that needs to be hung up, but it’s just a shelf with some decorative hooks on it. Below is a picture of the IKEA furniture and how we arranged it in the room:
The model is “Leksvik,” which is the same model we used for our shelving in the living room. What you see here is a thin hutch (with the lovely keepsake gift from Maurice’s grandmother) and the changing table/dresser. The attachment for the changing table actually detaches so you can just use the dresser portion in the later years. It’s pretty nice!
Maurice and I ordered the crib last weekend thinking it would take 15 weeks to get here given all of the horror stories we had heard regarding special orders for cribs. Though we had received many generous offers for cribs, this is one pleasure we really needed to take part of with our first child together. We received a phone call this morning that alerted us to the fact that our crib arrived in 6 days from the time we ordered it. Honestly, I was floored. I didn’t think it would get here this soon, much less on a free day when Maurice wasn’t working so that we could go pick it up.
We were both so excited that we rushed back (after a pit stop at Famous Dave’s BBQ of course) and started putting it together. I had to clean out the sewing room. This was a little sad, because it’s as if I lost a bit of my studio for the handbag business. I know that’s slowed down quite a bit since starting graduate school though, so it’s easy to let go of having my own personal space. Here’s the before picture:
And here are the after pictures! Note, this is only the beginning. We have several gorgeous pieces of nursery furniture from IKEA that we’re putting together for the dresser/changer, hutch, and shelving. We just couldn’t do it tonight!Maurice happily putting the crib together (after I gave the pouty face around 9pm):
The crib after it’s been all assembled with a nice, firm mattress (Note: the dropside is in the down position… it’s not really supposed to be that low. We’re going to refrain from using the dropside anyway, since it isn’t really needed when the mattress is so high in the first few months):
And of course, an obligatory close-up shot of the teddy bear that I just had to get:
As we add more pieces, we’ll update the pictures in the blog. For now, we’re going to just settle down to play some Warhammer and watch TV!
Little Bit was very cooperative this morning for most of the ultrasound. I say “most,” because she was very… how do I say this… discrete about her nether-regions. The ultrasound technician was very patient and kind. She got one really good shot of the baby’s girl parts though, and we both agreed (of course Maurice is sitting there wondering what the heck he’s looking at). As soon as she let us see the goods, Little Bit put her hand down there and surprised the ultrasound tech, who immediately said “OH darn! She moved her hand down!” Haha. Very cute indeed!We only got one picture of our little girl today, a profile, but it’s better than nothing:
She’s got a very cute nose there and her hand was up at her face before this picture was taken, so you may see a bit of how her lips are pursed as if she had just suckled a bit. It’s very neat to see it up front on the huge television screen, that’s for sure! Let’s hope the poor kid gets a better chin profile later, or the poor thing will look like me from the side
Additionally, she is measuring in the 34th percentile, so pretty much right on target for her gestational age. The doctor said everything was “perfect” and we had nothing to worry about in terms of abnormalities. We are truly blessed!
So, sometime in July, we hope to show even more pictures of Miss Olivia Grace Nelson
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The reason I want to talk about the drama is because my website gets a lot of Google hits, and I don’t want any other expectant mothers to go through what I did with the first ultrasound place we signed up with.
SLEEP! Oh — my — god… Maurice snores, that is no big deal for me usually except when I am kept awake not by him really, but by the baby. I got up to use the bathroom last night around 3:30am, right on time given my 2-hour interval rushes to the porcelain god, when I noticed crazy vibrations in my belly every few seconds. Great. Olivia had the hiccups for over an hour last night. At first it was funny and cute, then after 10 minutes I really was like “ok… you can stop now” so I could sleep. Not so lucky.
