I Should Have A New Baby, But...

The setting: an average townhouse in the suburbs of Washington, DC.  Alison, an Air Force officer, wife, and mother of 1, talks on the phone to her clinic:

Clinic: So, just call Fort Belvoir's labor and delivery department at 5:30am on Tuesday, September 4th, tell them you need to come in for inversion and a possible C-section.  We'll send your records to them via fax and you'll be good to go!

Tuesday, September 4th, 5:35am:

Alison: Hi there, I need to come in for inversion and a possible C-section.
Nurse: Ok, do you have your medical records?
Alison: They were already faxed in.
Nurse: And your clinic told you to call us this morning?
Alison: Yes, they wanted to ensure you didn't have a ton of women in labor and that you had room for me.
Nurse: (giggles) That's funny!  We have room.  In fact, we have a C-section going on today.
*author's note: neither the nurse nor Alison realize the C-section is hers because the nurse doesn't ask Alison who she is*
Nurse (continues): So just come on in.
Alison: What time should I be there.
Nurse: Whenever!  See you soon!

Alison hangs up phone and translates the conversation to Jon.  Jon and Alison agree to get another hour of sleep.  They sleep, wake up, get everything ready to go.

7:15am, phone rings:
Alison: Hello?
Nurse #2: Is this Captain Beach?
Alison: Yes, it is.
Nurse #2: THE DOCTOR DOING YOUR PROCEDURE IS POST-CALL AND WAITING AROUND FOR YOU. WHERE ARE YOU?
Alison: Umm...I'm sorry, the nurse this morning said to come in whenever.
Nurse #2: WHO TOLD YOU THAT?!
Alison: Whoever answered your phone at 5:30 - I'm sorry, I didn't realize anyone was waiting.  We are leaving in about 20 minutes and we're right here in Springfield.
Nurse #2: THE DOCTOR IS WAITING!!
Alison: Ok, I'm sorry, we're on the way.

7:45am, Alison and Jon are on the front porch.  Phone rings:
Alison: Hello?
Nurse #3: Is this Captain Beach?
Alison: Yes, we're on the way.
Nurse #3: Well, the doctor left.  We can't schedule you to come back until Thursday.
Alison:......Thursday?
*author's note: Alison was really really sure she was having a baby today, and has just found out that that is actually not the case*
Alison: I'm so sorry - we were up at 5:30, but the nurse said to come in whenever.  We're almost in the car ready to go.
Nurse #3: Well, the doctor's gone and no one can do the procedure.
Alison: You don't have other doctors in the hospital?
Nurse #3: No.  And now we need you to come in and redo all of your labs tomorrow morning.  Then call us Thursday morning at 5am and be here no later than 6.
Alison: I just don't understand - the nurse said to come in whenever.
Nurse #3: Well....no.

El fin.


And THAT is why Cassidy was not born yesterday.  Fort Belvoir's hospital told me to come in "whenever" and I obviously failed to realize that "whenever" actually means immediately otherwise you will miss the doctor and we have no other doctors and you can't have your baby until Thursday.  How stupid of me.  It is unbelievable emotionally draining to think that in 2 hours you'll be holding your daughter, but instead you find that in 2 hours, you'll be holding your computer mouse in your office while all of your co-workers ask you why you aren't in the hospital.  It also is sad that I didn't even get a fake "so sorry you misunderstood" apology from the hospital.  Nope, the answer is I was wrong to believe the person who answered the phone.

What's in a name?

Apparently a lot, because girl names are hard to come by!  So, here's what we are doing:  We put this up on the calendar in our house and when we think of a name, we write it down, so we can remember it/consider it/repeat it when we walk by.

The list

If we don't like something, we cross it off so we can always see it if when change our mind.

Do you have a suggestion for a baby name?  Please please please send it our way.  YOU COULD NAME THE BABY!  But, don't be offended if it's not our cup of tea.  You can always get a goldfish and name it your name.  The only rules (as you might be able to see from the photo) is that we don't want an "A" name or a "B" name.  All other letters of the alphabet are up for grabs!!

Suggest your name in the comments!

Still pregnant. Still hate being pregnant.

Look at the baby, not my cartoon genitals, please.

Hey, it's been a while since I mentioned that I'm pregnant.  Just like everyone said, it won't be as "OH MY GOSH!!" the second time around, and I don't have the time to be blown away by every little thing when I'm working full time and chasing around after a toddler.  But, I'm still pregnant - 24 weeks, and according to the Googles, our little girl has a whole face developed now. I hope it's cute!

This pregnancy has been really tough for me, I won't lie.  Note that I'm writing this at 1am because I'm sick.  Again.  Since I've gotten pregnant, I've taken 3 days of work off, and will probably take tomorrow off as well, which I just flat out can't afford to do with our busy tempo.  First trimester was a lot more nausea than last go-around, and I had to get on meds to help me cope with that so I don't vomit in my neighbor's yard while walking the dog.  Again.  (Good thing we do walks at 5:30 in the morning and no one was around to see me!)

This trimester has brought on the heartburn a little earlier than I had hoped, and the sciatica is BRUTAL.  I sit down to do some work at the dining room table, and when I stand up, I can't put any weight on my left side because of the shooting pain down my back, butt, and leg.  Kinda like when you're at a bar taking shots and you feel totally sober until you stand up.  Just like that.  Except I'm not drinking, so it's not fun.

I guess last time I was post-bar-exam and pre-Air-Force, so I had nothing to do but sit around and relax and enjoy being pregnant.  I would walk Dash in the ocean every day, get the nursery ready, and really enjoy my free time.  Now, I'm cramming myself into a uniform, trying to prepare for a court-martial, remembering what Avery needs at day-care, working to close on our new house, and trying to spend a bit of quality time that that guy who got me into this situation to begin with.  It's tough!

But, you have to thank God for your blessings.  Other than pregnancy-related illnesses, we are all healthy.  many people try and try to get pregnant and can't, so I'm lucky that we haven't had trouble doing so when we want to.  I have a well-paying job and a toddler who is ridiculously adorable and sleeps through the night.  I also like my hair. 

So, that's all for my 1am post of ranting/trying to be thankful.  I'm off to lay around, not sleep, and wait until 5:30 to call in sick to work, but then email everyone and demand that work be sent to my house.

Baby Cakes

Since I'm not a big mushy baby shower person, but I did want to do SOMETHING cute to tell people what I'm having, I opted to make gender cupcakes for my office!

Step 1 - Make a cupcake from a box mix.  Just like nature intended.

Step 2 - Cut a little cone out of each cupcake

Step 3 - Use pre-made icing (yay!) in a convenient spray-cheese-kinda can to fill up that cone with pink icing for a baby girl!

Step 4 - Cone gets cut down and place back on top

Step 5 - Ice away!  Fool the masses by including both pink AND blue sprinkles on the cupcake as well as a yellow baby bottle/pacifier topper.

That's all!  No one knows what you're having until they bite into that delicious pink icing inside!  Thanks SOOOO much to my mom who did everything from ice cupcakes to wrangle Avery away from the oven when it was time to open it.  Yay!  Learned during this process: substitute 1/2 a pureed banana when you are short an egg!  Just a fun fact from me to you.

We're having a......

Went for the big ultrasound to find out that we are having a.....





Keep reading!






Don't stop now!






You almost know!







It's a...........








GIRL!

Well, the tech was"almost positive" it was a girl, so we may have a change in announcement at some point.  However, the little girl was laying on her spine and they couldn't get a great photo of it, so we're headed back for another ultrasound in four weeks to check the spine (docs) and recheck gender (me).  But, we are rolling forward with girl until we know different!

Boy or Girl???

So the big gender reveal is next week.  My ultrasound is on Tuesday and I'm announcing the gender of the baby on Wednesday (bringing pink/blue cupcakes to work on Wednesday and don't want to ruin the surprise).  But, I thought it would be fun to try some old wives tales and home predictors to see how accurate they were.  Here's what they came up with:

#1: Chinese Calendar:  According to this, you take your age at time of conception (32) and the month of conception (December....I think) and they give you a gender.  Survey says....BOY!

#2: Heartrate:  The rules are if the baby's heart rate is over 140, it's a girl.  Below, it's a boy.  Baby Beach #2 was bopping along at around 156.  Survey says....GIRL!

#3: Where it sits:  If your belly is high, it's a girl.  If it's low, it's a boy.  I think my belly looks like it did with Avery, and people say I'm "low".  Survey says....BOY!

#4: The necklace test:  Swinging a pendant over your pregnant belly, look to see if it goes in a circle (girl) or swings back and forth in a line (boy).  Jon did this earlier this week while Avery looked on baffled.  Survey says...GIRL!

#5: Husband a fatty?:  If the hubby gains weight during a pregnancy, it's a girl.  If he doesn't, it's a boy.  Granted, Jon's been working out a lot in preparation for his death trip vacation to Mexico to go cave hunting, so maybe it's because of the exercise, but no weight gain.  Survey says....BOY!

Yikes, go figure, they all say something different.  Guess we'll find out soon which ones held true!!

Last pregnancy post?

This could be the last post about being pregnant with Avery!  YAY!

So, it's week 39 for me, and a normal pregnancy is 40 weeks, so it's really any-time-now to have the baby.  For most of my pregnancy, I would think of things or events that had to happen BEFORE the baby was born.  Like, I have to take the bar exam before the baby is born, I have to get my results, I have to fly to California for Gabi's wedding, I have to go to the opening of Willy Wonka, etc, etc.  Well, I'm out of events!

I'm seeing the doctor once a week, who assures me that Avery's doing great.  I'm wicked uncomfortable, which I'm told is a good sign, albeit horrible for sleeping.  We either received from others or picked up all the things we feel like we need immediately for Avery, the house is (fairly) clean, bags are packed, lists are made, we've got someone to watch Dash.  Now it's just a waiting game!  Today, I have to finish one little nursery project, and then the rest of my day consists of sitting around and watching TV, just because I have nothing else to do.  Pretty awesome.

I had a contraction on the way to Willy Wonka the other day, so I had to have a little talk with Avery about staying in through opening night (he did!).  Yesterday morning I had stomach cramps which turned out to NOT be pregnancy related, but made me go through a moment of panic "Is this it? Is this it?".  So the waiting game kinda sucks, but as anxious as I am, I'm starting to get a bit nervous (epidural on standby, please!)

Hopefully the next baby post will include pictures of our little guy!!

Month 9!

I'm 36 weeks pregnant now, and here's the last picture I'm posting.  From here on out, I'll only get bigger and more miserable, and no one wants to see that.  I'll probably cover all the mirrors in my house.

Only one more week until I'm locking in the baby pool, so make your best bets here: Beach Baby Pool

House Design - part 3

Well it's more NURSERY design than keeping with our Beachy house theme, but I'm excited to finally show off what I've been working on!  Avery's room has a jungle theme, and I wanted to create something that was personal from me to him.  Scouring the internet for ideas for his room, I found these posters on allposters.com by Yuko Lau.  They are super cute.  I love the peekaboo animals, but the price was kinda much.  Here is the actual giraffe poster, and you can find the other animals here: Other Animal Posters

The posters are gorgeous, but a fairly simple concept, and I used to be great in high school art, so I thought I would give painting the same picture myself a whirl and see how they turned out.  For $20 I got 5 canvasses, picked out 5 of the animals, and used some of Jon's old acrylic paint from when he was doing some art projects in Germany and got to work.

It started with a pencil sketch:

And then I added in all the color, one color at a time:

Until all the colors were filled in:

Next, each painting got some outlining to make everything pop, and voila, I was done!

 
They aren't perfect, but they are cute and created by me.  I've got the giraffe and the tiger done (OOPS I just noticed I forgot to put the whiskers on the tiger!!), but have to finish outlining the rest.  And the best thing is that they were very inexpensive, gave me something fun to do, and they are super portable so Avery can use them until he decides he's too grownup for a jungle animal room!

Childbirth Class and Corn Maze

I'll let you guess which was one was more fun.

So, Jon and I paid a lot of money to go to this 2-day childbirth class at Beverly Hospital where I'll be popping out baby Avery in a few weeks.  I was most looking forward to learning infant CPR.  Instead, the entire day was focused on "look what's happening to your body" and how to breathe during stages of labor.  Enh...not completely unhelpful, but watching a woman who is not pregnant pretend to have contractions and squeeze out a baby was weird.  Also watching her make the baby chase her boob around almost made Jon and I completely lose it.  And I was the only pregnant lady drinking coffee.  Tee hee.  Anyway, we have to go back tomorrow, and we get to watch the childbirth video.  Although I won't be watching a baby actually come out of a person.  I saw it in junior high, and it was gross, and I bet it's still gross.

But, we quickly moved on to Connor Farms which was nearby.  I found this place when I googled "apple picking".  They don't have apple picking anymore, cause they are out of season now, but they advertised this bitchin' corn maze.  That's right, it's Clint Eastwood!

And no worries if you get lost during the maze.  This is 2010 after all:

But, never fear, we made it out.

We also managed to pick some raspberries and bought some monkey bread which will serve as a sweet breakfast for tomorrow.  Something to look forward to vomiting up while I watch some 1970s childbirth video.  Yippee!!

Month 8

Month 7 photo

Getting bigger by the day!

Place your bets!

Get it? It's a baby pool.

Anyway...

I started a baby pool! Place your best guesses as to gender (hint: it's a boy), height, weight, date, time and the winner gets a prize. The prize might be a baby. Or a cat.

Enter here!! Ali and Jon's Baby Pool!

Some pregnancy stuff

So I haven't blogged a lot about pregnancy because a lot of the folks that read this blog are dudes who couldn't care less or women who've already been through it and I don't want a lot of "Oh, you just wait until XYZ happens!" comments. But, there are definitely some interesting things that happen during pregnancy. I'm about to enter my 3rd trimester, so I thought I'd actually blog about it.

The best has to be people giving up their seats on the subway. Now that I don't go into the city very much, I don't take the subway too much, but it was nice to be able to sit down when I needed to.

The weirdest thing is that when I sit and slouch, I get a numb tingle stretching over the top of my belly. I guess slouching puts pressure on a blood vessel or something that numbs that part of my belly. It's weird and not too pleasant.

A lot of standard things haven't happened at all, or yet. I got morning sickness, but not very much, I got fatigue, but nothing I couldn't handle. I hope I didn't get "pregnancy brain" because I took the bar exam. Nothing's swollen, other than my belly, and that's the only indication that I'm pregnant at all. I did have a weird reaction to the smell of garbage, which, of course is never a great smell, but it made me wicked sick to my stomach to the point where Jon had to be in charge of taking out the trash every week because I couldn't handle it.

I've loved getting baby stuff, mostly from my mom, a few from friends, and a great gift from a couple of guys in my study group - totally unexpected. We had a good time registering, until it got overwhelming, but because I'm not having a baby shower, it really just helped us focus on what we want to get.

I still get weirded out at the sight of my belly. I'm not a fan of the black and white artsy belly pictures that I know a lot of people get. Not judging anyone, but it's just not for me. I always feel like a voyeur when I see other people's pictures like that. I'm still amazed that I'm as big as I am, and there's three more months left!

With a name picked out (Avery Liffick Beach), and things registered for, the next big project is to fix up the nursery. I've got some cute ideas, but I'm not going too overboard because we are moving in May, and, let's face it, Avery doesn't care what his room looks like. It's really for the mom :-) The only thing I REALLY insist is this awesome rocker we registered for that is ridiculously expensive, but Jon promised that we could buy if nobody gets it for us. Yay!

I also discovered that H&M has a maternity line, albeit small, that helped me out getting a dress for my friend's wedding this past weekend, and some tops that actually fit over my belly so I don't have to keep tugging my shirt down as to not scare the children.

The plan is for my folks and my aunt to come up to Boston about a week after the baby is born, when Jon goes back to work, to help me out/visit. We aren't going to go anywhere for Christmas this year, so we get a nice New England Christmas with our little guy here on the North Shore.

And that's how it's going thus far.

You must be having a boy

So, here's my 6 month picture, which I don't love, cause it's a bathing suit picture, but it's all we got that week! This was taken in Atlantic City on the beach. I've made my peace with being fair-skinned. Some girls aren't meant to be tan!

Anyway, three times in the past 2 days, people have said "You must be having a boy, because you're all belly/all in front." And...they are right!

5 months pregnant!

Complete lack of style

Oh to be young, thin, have days filled with nothing to do, and stylish. Instead, I'm in my 30s, 5 months pregnant and continuing to expand, and studying for the bar exam day in and day out. And my "style" is now limited to sundresses, flip flops, and all of my hair pulled into a knot.

My hair is what pisses me off the most. It's coarse, greying, curly, and thick. I can't straighten on my own, even though the Instyler infomercial almost had me. It's too hot and humid to wear down. My forehead is big, so I need bangs, that must be straightened. I'm not supposed to color it because I'm pregnant. So, I get up early to wash and condition it only to pull it up in a bun which I could have done WITHOUT washing it, saving me precious minutes of sleep. And so far, every stylist I've been do does the same thing to it, and I hate it all. I can't cut it short, look weird with it long, so it hangs out in halfway town bugging the hell out of me.

As for pregnancy fashion in a Boston heat wave. Ha. First off, pregnancy clothes are too expensive because the stores know you need them, so they overcharge. Luckily, I picked up some baggy sundresses in the regular section that suffice. Granted, everyone's wearing them, so I don't feel out of place, but I long for the days where I used to actually think about my clothes instead of saying "which of my 5 dresses haven't I worn yet this week?"

Here's hoping Avery (the baby) turns out to be an uber-stylish gay man, a la Kurt from Glee who can fix his mom!

Baby Boy Beach or Baby Girl Beach?

Well, we got our ultrasound a few days early....so if you want to know what we're having, keep reading.


Stop reading now if you don't want to know.



Ok, you asked for it.




We are having a..........






Baby Boy!

He was more than happy to show us his goods today, and after seeing them, we considered changing his name to Thor :-) But, I think we'll keep it to what we have talked about, so stayed tuned for pictures of Avery Liffick Beach!!

Belly Progression

I've been trying to take pics of my belly each month of my pregnancy, so here's what I have so far!

Month 1: Well, I didn't know I was pregnant at the month 1 checkpoint, so here's a normal picture of me. In Iceland. In a bikini. Those were the days.


Month 2: Not a belly to speak of yet, but it was coming soon.

Month 3: Finally a bit of baby to show!


Month 4: Ok, I look hugely fat in this picture, but the dress is really really baggy (you can see the curve of my back, which shows that I'm not as wide as the dress flows). So, I'm not huge, I promise. I'll probably replace this picture soon.

There's an alien in my belly

Jon and I went to Texas last weekend for a wedding (Congrats to Cynthia and Pat!) and it turns out that everything is bigger in Texas. Or at least they have more 3-way mirrors, because our first night there, I checked out my reflection in the side mirror of the hotel, and there was a belly staring back at me. While I had possibly admitted I had a baby bump before, this was a baby mountain staring back at me. My normal non-pregnant self is pretty tall and scrawny. It still is now....except for the bump. I look like I swallowed a giant egg whole, like some weird boa constrictor. Rest assured that when I put on my pajama pants and tank top, I was back to looking cute-pregnant instead of weird-pregnant. I guess that when you're wearing clothes, you can pretend you've just slid a pillow under your shirt or something.

Jon immediately did the right thing and assured me that "It's beautiful! It's our baby!" Meanwhile, I remain slightly grossed out. Don't get me wrong, I'm so stoked we are having a baby, but seeing it form and get bigger, and eventually (gulp) kick around, is just plain weird, and nothing can prepare you for that.

And it's only month three....