Question 5 & 6?: Are you hoping for a boy or girl? & What names are you thinking about?

Are you hoping for a boy or a girl?
Not to be a smug pregnant woman, but we really didn't care whether baby is a boy or a girl. We just want a healthy baby. Everything else is secondary. That said, we had a hunch that the baby was a boy. Since we we had those genetic tests done, they were easily able to see baby's gender. Baby Hanks is a boy!

What names have you picked out?

We're strongly leaning towards naming him Xavier, but we're still taking bids from anyone who would like to give him his middle name. Currently, the highest bid is from Kenneth's brother with $100 for Ezekiel. Other bids have been Ruprecht (at $50) and Manuel (at $0) ... get it, X-man? Any other ideas for Baby X's middle name?

Question 3 & 4: How far along are you? When is baby due?

How far along are you?
By standard measurements, we're 13 weeks as of today. That's the short, standard answer. The more accurate answer is somewhere at the end of the 1st trimester or early in the 2nd trimester. (My friend Dana explains why figuring out the whole weeks/months of pregnancy is confusing here. Basically, pregnancy isn't 10 months, or even 9 months, but should actually be calculated as somewhere in between.)

In the end, I think development milestones and due dates are ballparks. Baby will develop at the pace baby is supposed to develop at. Baby will come out when baby is ready, which will hopefully be sometime at the end of October or early November.

(12 wks shot again... because I'm writing this while resting Saturday (STILL!). And come Monday when this post goes up, I'm probably going to be too busy to have uploaded and edited my 13 wk picture from this morning, let alone replaced this filler shot with it.)

When are you due?

"Ok," you say, "that's all well and good, but I like concrete facts. All this talk of 'ballparks' and subtleties of calculating due dates is too much for me. I'm asking you how far along you are because I want to know when you're going to be HUGE and when baby is likely to arrive."

Alright then. Due date is officially Halloween 2011. Here's hoping baby actually comes then, because I think Halloween would be an AMAZING day for a birthday. The kid will have the most incredible birthday parties!

Imagine...

 

Question 2: Why didn't you tell me sooner?!

We kept it a secret for a long time because we wanted to know baby was going to stick around before we announced. I have a genetic condition that doesn't affect me, but basically makes me a carrier for a very serious genetic condition that usually results in miscarriages in the 1st trimester. (This condition isn't something minor like Down's Syndrome or Cystic Fibrosis). We wanted to be sure baby was ok before we announced.

We had genetic testing done last Wednesday. The test (called CVS if you're curious) was pretty brutal, painful, and uncomfortable, and they had to do it twice... I could go into details, but let's just say it was a lot like what I imagine birth to be like, except I know birth will probably be 10x worse. I was put on bed rest for 24 hours, and then had to stay off my feet as much as possible for another 3 days. And when they say stay off your feet, they mean it. (I got a little talking-to by a nurse when she found out that around hour 50 post-CVS I took the dog for a .5 mile walk around our apartment complex and made dinner.)  

 Anyway, we got results 24 hrs after the test was done. As for results:

What we were hoping for/great results: 46 chromosomes

What we would be happy with/good results: 45 chromosomes 

What we were afraid of /very bad, scary results: 47 chromosomes

They called Thursday after the test with the results... these aren't them, but they look like this. 46 perfect chromosomes.  Yay!

You may be asking...

Or, as Michelle called it, Baby FAQs.

But since some questions are more complicated than others, I'm going to break this up into a few smaller posts. Maybe as more people find out we'll get some more questions I can throw out there. 

Question 1:

"Wait!? You're pregnant!? When did you find out?" (Also known as "How long have you been keeping this a secret from me/us?" and sometimes accompanied with "Are you sure you're pregnant?"): We were shocked when we had our first sign that I might be pregnant February 18, when baby was just a wee little thing at 3 wks 4 days. I took a test a couple of days later to confirm, and even that early the tests were positive. So, we have been keeping this a secret for about 9.5 wks. As for the "Are you sure you're pregnant?" question-- Between having every symptom in the book (to varying degrees, mostly not too bad) and 3 ultrasounds at 9 wks, 10.5, and 12.5 wks, yeah, we're pretty sure there's a baby in there.

Anyway, here is Juniper helping me tell her dad that she's going to be a big sister, and he's going to be a dad (to a human child, not a furry one.... we hope.):

So, the rumors are true...

Good news travels fast it seems. We "went public" with the exciting news just yesterday, so we haven't had a chance to tell everyone yet, and mom kind of "scooped" us on facebook (fair enough though, we told her it's not a giant secret now).  So here's confirmation... the rumors are true.

February 20, 2011

April 18, 2011

"Pshaw," you might say. "Brianna's just getting thicker around the middle. I develop food babies all the time and you don't see me posting pictures on my blog" 

Well, here's some month-old proof that that isn't just a food belly I've been developing:

(As this child's mother, I'd like to mention again that this is a month old picture. We saw evidence on Wednesday that baby has, since the time this picture was taken, developed long arms and legs, a bladder, lips, a nose, and according to the doctor, a very impressive diaphragm that was visible across the room.) 

More details later... 

(I can't come up with a good title for this...)

My grandpa passed away on Sunday...

He was in the last stage of Parkinson's disease. He had been declining steadily over the last year, and in January, he started a hospice program. I started making plans to visit him the 2nd weekend of the month... it seemed like there would be enough time to put my trip off that long.

Last Tuesday (my birthday), my dad called to say that I should change my travel plans, and come to California to see him as soon as possible. His pain from severe muscle cramping (PD related) had become very bad, and the medication he was starting to take would cause him to be mostly unconscious. On top of that, he had started showing signs of dementia. Later that week, his pain worsened, his breathing became more labored, his kidneys started to shut down. He was moved from home to a hospice facility to better manage his pain. Calls went out that the end was coming faster than expected, and the family gathered at the hospice facility late Friday night/early Saturday morning as they arrived from southern California. He was somewhat alert then, when his pain medication wore off. He'd talk (as much as someone with stage 5 PD can; it's hard to form words at that point, so my aunt, his caregiver, interpreted)... but after 10-15 minutes, he'd say his pain was worse and ask for more medication. The medication would make him sleep again.

Saturday morning, he asked who was there, who was coming, and when they would be there. We held his hands, rubbed his feet to warm them, talked to him. 

He had barely eaten in days, and hadn't had anything to drink either... he hadn't wanted it and no one forced him to. His body wasn't processing oxygen as well, and he ran a low fever. When you asked him how he was doing, he always responded with his usual "pretty good." But, not long after, he would say he was ready to go. It made sense. During the last year, he had promised to come to my wedding, go to my cousin's wedding, celebrate his 60th wedding anniversary, and move to a new house so that my grandma would be in a safer neighborhood when he was gone and she was by herself. And he did all that. At his age, and with the suffering he was going through, there wasn't much reason to keep fighting. 

Most of the family was able to spend Saturday at the hospice facility with him. Groups of 5 or 6 family members rotated in and out of his room. At 6pm, some had to leave to go home, and as they made their goodbyes, he woke up, and started asking for certain family members. This started a process where each person had a moment or 2 alone with him, and he used what energy he had to hug each person one last time. At Grandma's turn, he said thank you for being such a good wife to him, and she thanked him for being a good husband. It was painful to watch him say goodbye to my cousins, aunts, uncles... and it was hard to give him what I knew would be the last hug I'd ever give him... but it was beautiful. Not everyone gets the chance to say goodbye like that, and I'm so grateful that grandpa was able to have that time to say goodbye to each of us. 

We thought... hoped, prayed even... that he might pass Saturday night. We had all said goodbye, and there was closure. But, he hung on through Sunday... his soul was willing to leave, but the body was too strong, I guess. 

My flight back to Seattle was scheduled for 9:00pm Sunday night, and most of the family left throughout the day. By noon, the only ones left were my dad, 3 aunts, my uncle, and my grandma. (One of my cousins came and went, too.)  I spent hours holding his hand and talking to him. He was alert for 5 minutes or so on Sunday morning, and my dad was able to put a phone to his ear so one of my cousins was able to say goodbye. He was able to speak a little (again, with my aunt translating his mumbling). That was the last time you could clearly see he was alert and he was visibly in pain again. That afternoon, there would be periods of 2 minutes or so where he would respond to noise-- a flickering of his eyes at someone's voice, or a little jerk of hand when someone coughed. I spent hours holding his hand Sunday, and when I wasn't, my aunt or my dad held his hand. Hopefully, he knew someone who loved him was there until the end; hopefully that gave him some comfort.

Thinking he could still hang on for 48 hours or more, and that I'd already made my goodbyes, I kept my plans to come home that night. I kissed his forehead one more time, and (not knowing what else to say), said I loved him.  An hour and a half after I left to the airport, dad called to say that his breathing had changed. The doctor said it was the type that usually started an hour or two before death, so the end was finally near. 25 minutes later, he called to say grandpa had passed. When grandpa died, my dad and my aunt held his hand. Another aunt cheered him on and said "You did it! You did what you wanted to do!" What she meant was that he'd been ready for hours, and his body had finally given in to what he was so ready for. His suffering was over. 

****** (This is probably more detail than most would share, but writing it out was cathartic to me, and it was also a beautiful, but incredibly difficult experience. Death is hard, but beautiful, and I don't think I understood how beautiful an experience it can be until this weekend, even when it comes with so much pain. The blog is about our life as a family, and reality isn't always sunshine and rainbows.  Bad times make the good that much more precious.  And yes, I'm ok... I got my appetite back tonight, so hooray for eating again.) 

This turtle's gone to heaven...

Tom plays hide and seek this summer

Kenneth and I had a running joke about how Tom the turtle was going to be left to our children in our will. You see, box turtles of his variety tend to live 40-60 years in captivity. Some even live 80 years. That's a long, long time for a family pet. Particularly for one who never really bonded with his people.

Kenneth picked out Tom the turtle when he was 7 years old. When you're 7, turtles are really cool. (There's a lesson here: Never let your children pick out a pet until you have researched their lifespans.)   Since turtles are often sold back to pet stores by their owners, and Tom was full grown when Kenneth got him, it's not entirely clear how old he was. Or even if he was indeed, a "he." Anyway, Tom had a happy, uneventful 22 years with Kenneth's family and with us. He was always afraid of people, and when he was taken to get some sun and Vitamin D (it's supposed to be good for turtle shells and skin), he would seek places to hide (like under a bush in the picture above). He was not, what you would call, a social creature.

In October, Tom started eating less and less, until he barely ate anything in a week. Then it got to the point that he didn't eat at all. He seemed to be hibernating, but he had never done that before, and his tank was still being heated to at least 65 degrees every day (which should have prevented any hibernating). Still, he became less and less active. We checked on him on Saturday, and he didn't seem to be doing well. His eyes were sinking and he was lethargic. He barely tried to hide in his shell when he was picked up. We gave him a bath, he drank some water (as usual for bath time) and we gave him some food. He didn't keep anything down, and we talked about taking him to the vet the next day. (At the time, we were getting ready to attend a funeral for one of Kenneth's co-workers.) The next morning, his eyes were sunk in, and he was unresponsive. He could have been mistaken for hibernating, but his eyes were too sunk in and he didn't wake up in water (as he would have if he had been hibernating). It was clear that he had gone to the big forest in the sky.

We buried him in Kenneth's parents' backyard Sunday. Kenneth briefly eulogized on how he "never made it to the Galapagos like he always wanted..."  I felt like Auld Lang Syne should be in playing faintly in the background, but I wasn't about to sing.  Thinking Tom needed something, I placed some fallen pine branches on his grave.  Juniper, oblivious to the solemnity of the occasion, watched the whole thing with a clueless grin. After a moment of silence, we went walked back into the house. It was a simple, fitting end to a humble, perpetually frightened turtle.

Rest in peace, Tom "T-Dizzle" Turtleman. 1989?-2011