Ten
‘Tis a beautiful day in West Philadelphia and as I write I’m sitting on the porch soaking in it. I’m most definitely a warm-weather person; if Pennsylvania could be like this all year ’round I’d be a happy feller.
Not that I’m the only one enjoying a good soak. Check out the fun slide set up by our neighbors Christy and John last weekend.
Next time I want to run an extension off our porch roof. For the adult time, of course.
Pregnant chica isn’t taking any dives off of roofs for the time being. But she can still entertain the young’uns, this time with the adventures of dem ducks, you know the ones I mean, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack.
Returning to the subject of happy fellers for a moment, as far as we can tell the little guy is still squirming away in there. We had what we think will be our last doctor’s appointment yesterday. If everything goes according to plan (please take a moment now to indulge a good belly laugh about the likelihood of that), the next time we see our good doctor will be early in the morning of July 21st. The appointment yesterday went well, with Dr. Johannson assuring Ana Lisa that the C-section procedure wouldn’t be “too heinous.” That earned him a good-natured verbal spanking from the wife, especially on the heels of our previous appointment in which he’d helpfully (cough) explained that this second C-section would involve a “slightly more complicated dissection.”
Recall, if you will, that this is a woman whose sole criteria for satisfaction with any assignment turned in to her (pass-fail) grad school program was at least one “excellent” and you can predict the reaction.
“And now!” said Aslan in a much louder voice with just a hint of roar in it, while his tail lashed his flanks, “And now, where is this little Dwarf, this famous swordsman and archer, who doesn’t believe in lions? Come here, son of Earth, come HERE!”–and the last word was no longer the hint of a roar but almost the real thing.
“Wraiths and wreckage!” gasped Trumpkin….
Aslan pounced. Have you ever seen a very young kitten being carried in the mother cat’s mouth? It was like that. The Dwarf, hunched up in a little, miserable ball, hung from Aslan’s mouth. The Lion gave him one shake and all his armor rattled like a tinker’s pack and then - hey - presto - the Dwarf flew up in the air. He was as safe as if he had been in bed, though he did not feel so. As he came down the huge velvety paws caught him as gently as a mother’s arms and set him (right way up, too) on the ground.
“Son of Earth, shall we be friends?” asked Aslan.
“Ye-he-he-hes,” panted the Dwarf, for it had not yet got its breath back.
Strap a bowling ball around the midriff and weights to the ankles of the lion, and you have a spot-on recreation of that scene from C.S. Lewis’ Prince Caspian. So after AL grabbed him by the scruff of his neck and tossed him around a little bit for making her sound like a frog in high school biology class, our doctor assured us with an utterly unrepentant grin that the workshop on how to talk to patients was scheduled imminently. We do enjoy Dr. J.
After the appointment we walked over to another office for Ana Lisa to get her final “non-stress test.” I think it would be a nice idea, by the way, to put the word “non-stress” in front of a whole bunch of life’s other activities. Don’t you?
This was the fourth time she’d had a non-stress test, which essentially involves her sitting in a little room with a fetal heart monitor strapped to her belly. The first time she had the test they came to take her back and only then informed us, without explanation, that I wasn’t allowed to come in with her. After 20 minutes of monitoring they told her one of the markers they were looking for hadn’t occurred and sent her out to wait with me in the lobby for an hour before letting us back in for an impromptu ultrasound. Turned out everything was fine and apparently standard procedure, but we had to laugh at this being considered non-stress.
Yesterday’s test included an ultrasound as well, not because of any problems with the other test but because the doctor there wanted to do a growth scan. With many disclaimers that all measurements are simply estimates, they put his current weight at 5 lb. 12 oz., or a little more than 6 times Javid’s birth weight.
From what we understand, these are the weeks when the fetus starts packing on the pudge. If we believe what the ultrasound technician told us, he’s currently head down and curled up with his right side facing AL’s front. Apparently it’s starting to get a little crowded in there, so it’s not as likely that he will do any further major shifts of position.
Here are two of the ultrasound pictures, which may need a little explaining. The first is sort of a profile of the right side of his face, as if he were laying on his back with his head turned to the left facing us. They kept trying to get a shot of his whole face, but apparently most of the time he had his left hand kind of jammed into the left eye, covering that whole side.
This next one isn’t normally taken as part of a growth scan, but the tech seemed very pleased with herself for capturing it. If you click on it to see it larger, you’ll notice that she (not me) added a “thumbs up” label. Apparently (and again we’re taking her word on this) that fuzzy thing below the label is the kid doing a Fonzie impression. I wonder if when he grows up he’ll be able to whack the jukebox and make it start playing without having to pay. Aaaayhh, could come in handy.
Yesterday was also 36 weeks. Every week from here on gets a belly shot…
This photo-of-the-belly thing has been going on long enough that it’s ingrained a near-Pavlovian response in the belly’s host. Every week when I say, “Hey, we have to take a picture!” her eyes immediately roll upwards and she lets out a huuuge sigh. :-)
The thing I’ve noticed is that my canvas has been growing. Of course, this is nothing compared to the slate about to spring forth, on which we unabashedly plan to stamp all of our hopes and aspirations. And neither have we felt the need to wait until he emerges to begin the indoctrination. In honor of such inspirational role models as the father from Calvin and Hobbes and the granddad from The Boondocks, I’ve already begun a nightly practice of telling him at least one blatant untruth. That way he can hopefully hit the ground running.
So much of our thinking has been focused on the pregnancy, it’s only now that we’re starting to imagine what it might be like to actually have a little kid in our house. That’s another thing I’ve been working on in our nightly chats through the belly wall, beginning to instill appropriate expectations. For example, I think it’s quite reasonable to expect him to quickly elevate his game in the sleep-through-the-night and poop-on-schedule categories.
This I do know, we’re not going to tolerate another freeloader in the house. Not like our deadbeat cats.
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