The Linda Family

Well folks, it looks like Baby Day is here.  My darling wife, Katy, decided to break her water in the driveway of our friends home last night.  We’d like to start by thanking Hillary and Neil Pennington for the towels that allowed us to get home without soaking the new car seats in our Sante Fe.

The night has been a fun one, filled with some cleaning, installing the new car seat, calling friends and family to put them on notice, and of course, Katy laid in bed with her feet up while I did all the work.  Okay…perhaps that last part isn’t quite true, but I know how unimportant I’ll be today, so I’m claiming last night as a victory for the men in this world.  Not that I know what that means, but it’s fun to stake my claim.

Anyways, back to the important folks in this wonderful drama called childbirth.  My darling wife is experiencing more and more contractions, which I hear is a part of this labor thing.  She’s been a real trooper so far, making sure not to wake me too much while I get my beauty sleep preparing for the photo opportunities on this great day.  It looks like we’re getting close to heading to the Birthing Center, so, not sure how much we’ll be able to post till we get home.

We ask for your prayers to keep the day as calm and as wonderful for us as possible, well, mostly for Katy, but I wouldn’t mind a little calm.  And one more thing that we need prayer for…and we hate to admit this…but we don’t have a GIRL’s NAME!!!!!! Can you believe it!!!! We’re such slackers…anyways…lets cross our fingers for a boy and a last minute revelation on a girls name if a girl comes along.

Now that you have a full update, go spend some time on Hulu while you anxiously await more news.

The baby! How is our little one doing? Great. We went into to get a peek today. We got to see our perfect little baby today on the ultrasound machine. The first thing we saw was a perfectly formed skull and brain. YAY! Then we got to see the hart. The machine was so high tech that we could see all 4 chambers and both valves beating away at once. With Ashleigh they showed us chamber by chamber. We also got to see that the spine looked perfect! We saw 2 hands and 2 feet and teeny tiny toes. Wes counted fingers on the left hand. He saw 4, the sonographer showed us the 5th. It was so wonderful to see all the bones and little parts moving around and looking great. When the doc came in he switched over to 4D for a minute and printed a few of those for us too. The baby had his/her hand up by their face as if to say, “PLEASE STOP!” by that point we had been poking around at the poor baby for 20 minutes. I asked how the baby was measuring. The baby’s head is measuring 5 days ahead (lucky me!) and the rest of the body is about 3 days ahead. No one seemed concerned at all, as ultrasounds become less accurate to measure by date the further along you are. So, the first ultrasound 10 weeks ago is the more accurate date. Also, Ashleigh’s head was 95th percentile and higher for the first 3 years of her life. It wasn’t until she hit 3 that it started to come down towards where the rest of her is! So, all is well, and the little one weighs 8 oz at this point.

We headed off to the midwife after we visited with the Peri. I’ve lost another pound, so one pound between each visit so far. Really, this morning I weighed the same at home that I have been. I haven;t really lost a pound, I just didn’t gain anything. So, I got a “talk” about how I need to eat more protein and even though I am not at an ideal weight I still need to gain 10 – 15 lbs. I guess she forgot that I’m only 18 weeks pregnant! I have 22 weeks go to. I’m sure that is PLENTY of time to gain 10 lbs. Wes of course found it funny that the overweight woman was giving me health tips to make sure I’m getting enough protein and gaining weight properly. We got to hear the baby’s hearbeat (after seeing it hours before), and it was a good strong beat in the 150s. Perfect. Sometime between now and my next visit in 4 weeks I have to fill out their 3 day food consumption chart where I keep track of everything I eat and drink for 3 days. What a pain, but without it I can’t birth at the birth center. I certainly don’t want to end up at the hospital, so I’ll suck it up and deal

I think that’s about it. So, enjoy the pictures!

[Show as slideshow]

I guess I never did tell you the Ashleigh story behind the baby. When we decided it was time for a new baby I started discussing the thought of a new baby with Ashleigh. She was less than thrilled. That honestly surprised me because she loves her friend’s younger siblings so much. We talked about how Owen has a little brother, Blake, and Mia has a little sister Simone, and they both love their siblings. She then realized that she loved their siblings too. It was then that she decided that she wanted a brother and a sister.

While we never hid the pregnancy from her, we waited a few weeks before we outright told her. Her reaction was very cute. We sat her down and told her that she is going to be a big sister, and that there is a baby growing in Mommy’s belly. Her eyes got very big and she had a huge smile on her face. She then turned and gave me the biggest hug. She really was excited. It was so precious.

Since then she will tell you that she wants a brother and a sister. If you ask her which she wants, her response is always “BOTH!”. It never varies. This made me slightly nervous, since kids seem to have a second sense about such things, and my blood levels were higher than the average for twins for my first two blood draws. I didn’t check where #3 fell, because by the time I had gotten those results we had already been to the doctor and they had searched all over for a second baby. There really is only one.

About 5 – 10 times a day, depending on the day, Ashleigh comes over to me to ask if she can say hi to the baby. She lifts up my shirt and talks to my belly. She usually says something along the lines of, ‘Hi baby! I love you! Oh Mommy! Baby says she loves me too!’ and then she kisses my stomach and goes back to playing. It is the cutest thing.

Ashleigh is also very much into her imaginary friends right now. She has 4 “kids” who are all 4 (this week, this does change). She and her kids have purchased many rattles for the baby, and she tells us all the time how she is going to help take good care of the baby. She is apparently excited for diaper duty. Only time will tell what will actually happen, but I think that she is on the right page. We keep telling her how excited we all are, and she tells me how much she loves being a big sister. There’s no doubt in my mind that she will be a great big sister. Hopefully she’ll find the patience to wait until January! Tonight she told us she wanted the baby to come out now! Yikes….