January 15, 2010

Here are some updated pictures of Jonathan’s room after we fixed it up.

January 6, 2010

Jonathan is scheduled to arrive in twelve days! I have six more shifts remaining at work. Starting at 7:00am on January 13, I’m off for almost a month so I can stay home with Jenny and the boys. Our preparations are almost complete. Today we plan to visit IKEA to buy some shelving for the boys’ rooms and finish decorating Jonathan’s room. Arrangements for Brenden’s care while we’re at the hospital are pretty much complete. Jenny’s parents painted Jonathan’s room a nice green color. I’ll try to post some pictures after we hang the curtains and shelving. Jonathan weighs about 6.5 pounds now, and his movements have shrunk in scale as his home runs short on available space. It’s almost time to move out! We are super excited and can’t wait to meet him. Jenny built teddy bears at the mall for the boys to give to each other when Jonathan arrives. Jenny is doing OK but very uncomfortable and ready to be done.

Dec 23, 2009
This is the face of our new son, Jonathan. Imagine he’s looking toward your left shoulder. The bright white spot in the middle is his nose. His right eye is just above the nose. His mouth is down and left of his nose. Less than four weeks! When I first saw this picture, I couldn’t really discern anything, just like those obnoxious Magic Eye pictures from a few years back. But once I figured out where he was facing, I thought it was an amazing picture. To me he looks like Brenden, just like I expected.

The sonographer estimated his weight at 5.75 pounds and said he has a huge noggin. =) Everything looks good. Jenny had to boost her insulin a bit but isn’t scheduled to go back to the diabetes specialist until April, when she’ll take a glucose test to see whether her pancreas has recovered sufficiently.

Dec 15, 2009 Jenny’s pancreas and placenta kept fighting and misbehaving, so her diabetes doctor put her on a couple of small doses of insulin in the evenings. So far the insulin is doing a good job of keeping her blood sugar and ketones in check, making Jenny’s life a bit less stressful. However, because of the insulin, her ob/gyn wants to move Jonathan’s delivery date to January 18, just after we hit 38 weeks. He’s already about 5.5 pounds and should be fully developed by then. We’re excited to meet him sooner than expected, but now we need to get our butts in gear and get everything ready!

Dec 1, 2009 Today was our 31-week appointment with the ob/gyn, and Jonathan and Jenny are both doing great! They had a lengthy sonogram session that revealed normal development and a weight of about 4lb3oz, just above average. We got to see the chambers of his beating heart, femur, stomach, bladder, lungs, head, knees, and probably some other stuff we didn’t recognize because they are all a bunch of black and white blobs. We didn’t get any good sonogram printouts this time, sorry! Jenny is still managing her gestational diabetes well and probably won’t need insulin. She’s actually losing a bit of weight from the new diet and all the Brenden chasing.

We tentatively scheduled our c-section for January 25, but that could change depending on what other spots open up. My last day at work is January 13, so I hope to be home well before Jonathan arrives. We’re talking about an overnight getaway for our anniversary on the 15th if he isn’t here by then. It’s all becoming very real and even more exciting.

Nov 29, 2009 Less than two months remain until we can meet our little boy! Except for painting his room green, his room is pretty much ready. Jenny found a cheap glider at a garage sale, which will be nice for nighttime feedings and cuddling. He’s around 17 inches long and 2-3 pounds, so he mainly needs to fatten up and develop his lungs a bit more. Jenny’s baby bump is large and cute, making it difficult to sleep or to stay seated for long periods of time. I have felt him move a few times, discerning his foot or butt if I’m lucky.

The main problem we’ve run into is gestational diabetes for Jenny. So far she’s been able to control it via diet alone. If she succeeds, she should be able to avoid pumping Jonathan up to the 10-14 pound range that GD babies sometimes reach. We’re so excited to meet Jonathan and introduce him to his big brother!

Oct 5, 2009 After much deliberation, we have chosen a name for our new son: Jonathan Andrew Box. We will call him Jonathan. As most of you know, Andrew is my middle name, and we liked the idea of passing the name on somehow but wanted a different first name. Jonathan sounds good with Box and Brenden, is neither overused nor obscure, and is the name of a great man from the Bible (King David’s loyal friend). Now we just need to get into the habit of calling him by his real name instead of Newbie.

Jenny is sporting a cute baby bump and starting to have trouble getting comfortable for sleeping. On our camping trip over the weekend, we learned that air mattresses and pregnant women do not produce good sleep AT ALL. Jonathan has added some kicks to the rolls he’s been doing the last few weeks. I might have almost sorta felt him move once, but it was very faint.

Sept 19, 2009 This week we went to IKEA and bought Newbie’s furniture! Wanting a different look from Brenden’s room, we chose all white. Right now it’s obviously plain, but once we find the right material / artwork, we want to decorate his room with an airplane theme. Here are some pictures, arranged in counterclockwise order so you can see most of the room:

Sept 8, 2009 This was the big sonogram where they take a bunch of measurements and determine the baby’s gender. Newbie is a boy! No name yet, but we’re only at 19 weeks, so we have some time. It might take a while. The sono tech said everything looked great. HIS heartbeat (I need to get used to saying HIS now) is steady at 140bpm. Jenny feels him move every day now. It feels like he is swimming or flipping around rather than kicking, perhaps because he still has some room in there. He’s about 6 inches long from head to rump and weighs about half a pound. Don’t forget to check his progress each week by clicking the rotating baby at the top of this page.

Here are some sono pics. First is the one that supposedly shows his boy parts, although I have to take the technician’s word for it. He was very certain, and his track record is outstanding.

Next is a profile view of his face. You can make out his head on the right, face at the top of the head, skull and spine at the bottom of the picture, and either one or possibly two arms on the left side. As always, click the picture for a larger version.

This is a cool view that has labels for some of his internal organs. It still amazes me that a trained eye can see so much detail in these blobby images.

July 23, 2009 Today was our second sonogram, and everything still looks good! Newbie is 6.5cm long, roughly the size of a lime. This “photo shoot” was more exciting in a way than the first one because we could see Newbie swimming, flipping, and wiggling around. Here are a couple of pics. The first is a profile view, which should be self-explanatory. Head on the right, legs on the left.

This shot is from the back.

It still amazes me that technicians can use sound waves to produce a recognizable picture of our baby’s tiny body.

Jenny is now in the 2nd trimester, and the nausea is getting better. To combat some back and hip pain, she’s been seeing a chiropractor and seeing some results. She might have felt some movement but isn’t quite sure yet. Our next appointment with the ob/gyn is in 4 weeks. We hope to find out Newbie’s gender then so I can quit avoiding gender-specific pronouns, but it depends on whether Newbie cooperates.

June 25, 2009 On Thursday we had our first sonogram for Newbie. The sono tech says Newbie is 2cm long (maybe 3/4?), our due date is still around January 30, and we are having Newbie (1) instead of Newbies (2+). Twins would have been exciting, but we’re very relieved only to have one!

Here’s the first sonogram picture. The hollow blob at the far left of the uterus is a yolk sac or placenta. The solid blob just to the right is Newbie’s head. A stubby arm is sticking straight up just to the right of the head. The right end is Newbie’s stubby legs and torso. He/she looks like a gummy bear and is about the same size. Amazing, eh?

June 19, 2009 – Everyone knows now. We told the families by putting Brenden in a giant (size 4T) shirt that says “BIG BROTHER” and waiting for them to figure it out. It took some time and gentle prodding before it clicked. Jenny is much more nauseated this time, almost constantly, but we hope it will pass in a few more weeks once she reaches the second trimester. Her first sono is scheduled for Thursday, June 25. Then we should find out how many Newbies there are. We assume there’s only one, but you never know. We have a girl name picked out (Anna Catherine) but not a boy name yet. We’re so excited!

May 24, 2009 – We found out that we are pregnant again! Immediately the debate started regarding how to tell everyone.