#1, I think Will and I will take a trip to Jamaica in October. I want to see the Caribbean again before I have a second little kiddo to feel guilty about leaving (it has been 3 years! Waaah!) so I decided we'll hop down for 4 nights and stay at one of the super-cheap all-inclusives down there (i.e. not Sandals, unfortunately). I chose Jamaica because it is the cheapest place to fly to aside from Puerto Rico (and I don't want to go there). So now I just have to decide whether we want to go to a resort that has a higher satisfaction rating and is near town, or a resort that has a slightly lower satisfaction rating but has a really neat location with a snorkeling lagoon and lots of rocks and tide pools to hop around and explore. Not to mention it is right next to Hedonism 2, so if Will and I get tired of sitting on the beach looking at the ocean, we can just turn our chairs 90 degrees to the left and sit on the beach watching people have orgies. And then probably 180 degrees to the right because I doubt many people who go to Hedonism are young attractive people anyone would actually be interested in seeing in the nude.
#2, We are going to convert Emily's crib into a double bed, skipping the toddler bed phase altogether. She is still in a crib because she has never tried to climb out and I am afraid to mess with what works. She sleeps like a champ, and I don't want to change something for the sake of changing it, then start waking up to a little girl poking me in the arm at night just because she's tickled she can get out of bed by herself. But on the other hand, we DO need to change her bed over at some point, and the earlier we do it, the less likely it will be that she associates the change with the new baby, and there are going to be enough changes going on then that we don't need to add more.
So then I had to decide on bedding. Emily's room is light pink, so I didn't want anything that was too light pink because I don't want her bedroom to look like the Barbie aisle at Toys R Us. I fell absolutely in love with this set, but was forced to fall right back out of love with it when I realized it would cost about $700. So now I'm in love with this bedding (CUUUUUUUUUUUUTE!) but of course it is sold out. So now I have to wait. And I hate waiting. But I guess while I wait I can consider the intelligence of putting a dry-clean only comforter on the bed of a child who is probably a year or two away from being nighttime potty-trained. Hmmm.
#3, I think we ARE going to go up to Camp Gorham with Will's parents, but we're going to be staying at a different place about a mile away so that we can have our own room. We'll have to pay more than we would've of course, but it makes a fairly impossible situation actually possible so I guess we'll suck it up.
Ha! I guess I didn't really spare you the minutiae of my decisions. Except that this really is the abbreviated version...I like to make things difficult.
So now onto the main event! We got to see Zippy up close and in person today!
We arrived at the office about 15 minutes early, my bladder "comfortably full" as was instructed. We didn't end up going back to the ultrasound room until about 10 minutes late though, so my bladder was starting to verge on uncomfortable by the time I hopped up on the table. The technician started going to town on my stomach with the ultrasound thingy, and the first thing she said was "Oh my gosh, look at your bladder! It's this great big black abyss over here and it is FULL. Are you ok?" By that point I had already glimpsed a little miniature human being on the screen and it really wasn't terrible, so I bravely soldiered on. This makes the second time an ultrasound technician has been shocked at how full my bladder was, so I guess I don't have to drink quite as much water before these things as I assumed.
So we got to watch the baby kicking around for awhile, but Zippy stayed stubbornly curled up on his/her stomach so the tech couldn't really measure the nasal bone. She had me roll onto my side and jabbed me repeatedly in the stomach with the ultrasound thing, creating earthquake-like conditions in my uterus, and we finally got the baby to roll onto its back. Then she said "Stay right there, when the doctor comes in he'll want to take a look too, and since this is the best we've seen the baby the whole time just keep that position."
So yeah, then we waited for over 30 minutes for the doctor to show up. Laying in one place with your goo-covered belly hanging out and without any pillows for support is not real fun, and Will did not seem to pick up on my subtle comments that he was perfectly positioned to give me a nice backrub, but the time eventually passed and the doctor finally showed. It's always nice to meet someone for the first time while covered in goo with your pants pulled obscenely low, but at this point I am used to the fact that pregnancy robs you of all dignity. The doctor had quite a lot of personality, he was the type who will just keep going with the jokes if he has someone who will joke back, so we all had quite a humorous conversation for awhile. He was young and he seemed like someone who we would hang out with even outside of doctor's appointments, which made it all the more shocking when he started asking me about "last menstrual periods" and "previous vaginal deliveries". When I think of someone who is a High Risk Obstetrician, I think of an older guy who is very serious, and this guy was quite the opposite. That was a good thing for us, but it's difficult to imagine him breaking the news that your baby doesn't have a heartbeat anymore or other such serious things that he probably deals with on a daily basis.
The minute he put the ultrasound thing back on my stomach, he said "This baby is a pain in the butt". Apparently Zippy was laying facedown again, perpendicular to the way babies usually lay, and with his/her hands in front of his/her face. But at that point I had seen that the baby had all the expected appendages, along with a heartbeat and was moving around a good bit, so I didn't really care whether they got the measurements or not, I had seen what I came there to see! But they eventually did measure the nasal bone, and it appears that the likelyhood of Zippy having a genetic disease is quite low, so that's definitely good.
Another good thing is that while the OB told me "If you're going to have anything wrong with you while you're pregnant, treated hypothyroidism is one of the best" (woohoo?) he also said that we'd throw a few extra ultrasounds in every 6 weeks or so just to track the baby's growth and make sure things are progressing as they should. This makes me exceedingly happy, but also irritated because I had hypothyroidism when I was pregnant with Emily too, and what I wouldn't have given to have an extra ultrasound or two thrown my way! I will enjoy my plethora of ultrasounds this time around, but I already have the peace of mind of knowing that I've made a normal baby once before and I can probably do it again. Poor Sara of 2006 was a terrified wreck until she got to see her baby at 20 weeks. And I know, I know, waah waah, about 99.999% of women who have given birth since the beginning of time never saw their babies prior to delivery, but what can I say, I am a selfish American with an overblown sense of entitlement and easy internet access and I want what everyone else is getting!
I am also very glad though that someone is taking my thyroid thing a bit more seriously. My regular OB and my endocrinologist are fairly blase about the whole issue, and I know that most of the time things are fine, but there ARE issues that can arise, and if we have the technology available and the insurance to cover it, shouldn't we monitor things if we can?
In closing, Zippy pics!
The top of Zippy's head, with 2 hands (I only count 4 fingers on the one hand but I'm sure the other one is there somewhere, RIGHT???)
The elusive laying on his/her back position...poor thing looks pretty uncomfortable despite the cushy placenta bed upon which he/she rests. I don't blame him/her for preferring to curl up on his/her tummy.
This position made the technician chuckle...Zippy is working on sitting up already! Also butting me in my abyss-like (abysmal?) bladder (not pictured)
And here is the piece de la resistance. The only picture we got of Emily at her ultrasound was a front-facing picture where she looked like a terrifying skull emerging from behind a curtain that she was pulling aside with little bony fingers. I tried to find this picture, but it's nowhere to be found, leading me to fear that it's hiding somewhere waiting to quietly creep out and scare the heck out of me. Well, terrifying skeleton, meet even MORE terrifying alien with exposed brain baby:
I can already see the family resemblance.
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