My Sweetie Pie

I have to blog about my wonderful husband really quick. Earlier today I was talking about how wonderful he’s been during the pregnancy and I said, “I don’t know what I’d do without him.” My co-worker said something funny about how without him I wouldn’t be in this mess anyway. True, but I was thinking about that. I can’t get too sentimental in explaining my pondering or I’ll start to cry. Jeremy needs just a few hours to work on school stuff and all will be lost if he hears me sniffling away in the living room, even if it is just over blogging. But I have the best husband in the world--for me. I am continually amazed at how well he knows me, and how he ALWAYS knows the right thing to say (not that he ALWAYS says the right thing, but when he doesn’t, he knows what he should have said). I know that there are so many things about me that he thinks are so weird, but he just goes with it. He has been so sweet and so thoughtful. He bought me a nesting present. Significant for a few reasons. He got me a cordless screwdriver (it’s a girl one though) so that I can indulge in my decorating because his drill is a little heavy for me, and really hard to access with a pregnant belly. When we first got married we had a “discussion” about hanging pictures and why a wife is completely capable of doing it herself. True. So I do a lot of the “decorative” things that only require a hole or a few screws to hold it together. But now when I get into nesting (Not quite there yet) I can just go to town.

I’ve done a horrible job of explaining how wonderful he is. I’m just excited to be married to him. I’m touched by how thrilled he is about every little kick and bump the baby throws his way, and how anxious he is to snuggle his little daughter. It’s seriously killing him to have to wait weeks to see her. He’s so clam and confident that we can handle parenthood, and so supportive and positive that I can handle getting her into this world…it just puts me completely at ease to know that he’ll be with me. I’m so glad that he’s mine, and that I get to be his.

Well we’ve almost recovered from Spring Break. Vacation was wonderful. On the way to Oregon we stopped at Pampa Pond so Jeremy could fish for a little while. He caught two trout, and we took them with us to my parents house where we grilled them--he ate them. It was nice to spend some time outside, and I was truly convinced that Spring was here until we woke up this morning to discover that it was snowing outside. I’ve had just about enough of this winter. I used the phrase “March comes in like a Lion and out like a Lamb” today, and no one had ever heard of it before. Is that an Oregon thing? There isn’t any lambing going on here in the Palouse, that’s for sure.

The Baby shower was so fun and Sheila did a great job of putting things together; she’s for sure one of my favorite sister-in-laws…in the top 6 anyway. I was amazed at how many people came, and it was so wonderful to get to see so many of my buddies. I wish I could have visited more with everyone individually, but we would have been there for days. Maeli made quite a haul, and I seriously don’t think we could have put one more thing in the car. She is pretty much set. I know that babies are one of those things that women go crazy over, but I truly feel blessed to have such a strong support base. I was thinking about it during the shower (okay, actually it was afterwards while I was helping to “clean out” the chocolate fountain) how wonderful it is to have literally dozens of women that I could call at anytime for any reason and not feel at all strange. I don’t know how anyone would make it through life without friends and family. Anyway, I feel a lot more prepared for our little chicky to arrive. We could get her home from the hospital, and survive for at least a few days with what we have in the house, now if I could only find where to put it all. But it’s kind of a load off to know we could handle at least that part of parenthood. On the flip side, our childbirth class has me a little less anxious for the blessed event. We just watched the movies of the births, which didn’t really bother me too much. But now I’m realizing that it’s really time to decide about drugs and all that…I guess I’m realizing that it’s getting close. Give me a few weeks and it won’t be close enough, but right now I’ve just kind of settled into my comfort zone with being pregnant. I pretty much have it figured out, and I’d be fine to hang out like this for a while, except the rotten kid keeps growing and we’re quickly running out of places for her to go. So I know she’ll have to come out…then it’s a whole new ball game.

And speaking of being comfortable with being pregnant, my sweetie pie bought me a rocking chair for my birthday, so now I’m officially ready to be a mom. Well, I think I’m officially ready to have people visit me and rock my baby to sleep, but the chair is really comfy. Un-officially, I look at pictures like this and can’t believe how huge I am with 8 ½ weeks to go.

The Name Game

So far, choosing a name has definitely been the hardest part of parenting (although, we really haven’t had to do too much). Before we ever got pregnant, we were talking about baby names and Jeremy said that he liked the Chinese name pronounced “may-lee” which means “beautiful”. I thought it was pretty cute, so we kind of left it the back of our minds. When we found at that we were having a baby, we decided to go with it, but spelling was the hard part. The Chinese way is totally unpronounceable in English (in my opinion) so we chose the “Mae” because it’s a common middle name on Jeremy’s side of the family (his mom and his sister) and the “li” because it looks cute. The Opal is after my Great-Grandma Opal (Aunt Opie can have some credit too, but only what doesn’t make Mavis upset) who is our oldest living relative, and therefore deserves some recognition.

Unless little chicky comes out looking like someone else, that’s the name we’re going with. We’re already calling her Maeli, and it seems to fit her. She’s a wiggly thing and seems to really like to dance to country music. She also likes riding in her Daddy’s old truck, and doing summersaults at bed time. She does not like how squished she is getting in my belly and has been trying to escape out my belly button for the past few weeks. I think she plans on just kicking her way out, which is sounding more and more like a better alternative from the stories I’ve been hearing about labor and delivery.

Maeli Opal McLain

Baby Story

So on Monday we had our Doctor's appointment. I drank the orange glucose stuff (it wasn't nearly as bad as I thought it would be, I've had cough syrup that tastes a lot worse) and off we went. Normal stuff, check the heart beat (150) and Dr. Hall asked if we were concerned about anything. We had decided that I would be the one to plead for another ultrasound because it’s harder to resist a pregnant lady. So I said that if there was ANYWAY for us to find out if its a boy or girl that we'd really love to know as we're going to Oregon for a baby shower and it would make life so much easier for the Grandmas and Aunts and everyone. So the Doctor has me lay down and measures my belly. He says something along the lines of how even though everything looks good, we'll say I'm 32 and that's too big for my dates, so we better do another ultrasound. So I have my blood drawn for the glucose test (which turned out totally normal) and we made the appointment for the Ultrasound. They were able to get us in Tuesday morning at 8:00.

So we go home on Monday, we decide not to tell anyone that we're having another ultrasound since last time we had everyone all excited and ended up with no answer. So Monday night, I made a deal with Baby that if it would cooperate and show us its goods, I promised not to post any pictures or its privates on-line. Tuesday we get up, I start filling my bladder as requested (and someone told me that if you drink caffeine before an ultrasound the baby moves a lot more and its easier to see everything, so I had a Dr. Pepper with my toast) and we head to the hospital. The tech starts and asks what the purpose is and we tell her the story. She said, "Well its pretty obvious, but I have to see it 6 times before I tell you what it is." She's going along and freezing pictures for us to take home, we see our baby being all cute and then she types on the screen, "ITS A GIRL!!!!"

She looks really good, but she's already 3 pounds 5 ounces, which measures her due on May 17th. But the Doctor hasn't changed my date or anything. The tech only looked at the heart and the fluid, and both of those look good. Jeremy's already pretty smitten with his little daughter. I've caught him gazing at the ultrasound pictures more than once, and he's been singing a lot since we found out. He didn't even flinch when I made a joke about never getting away from a house full of women. We very excited to know that it’s a girl, and that she seems totally healthy. And it looks like she'll probably be built like a Brame...nice and "sturdy."

Jeremy has had a crazy week. He finally took a break from school/work and went fishing on Friday. We caught 7 trout, with 4 keepers. Doesn’t he look cute in my apron? We cooked them for lunch on Saturday and they were so delicious. He said he felt like a man—caught it, cleaned it, cooked it.

He was quoted in an article about the work that’s going on at Schweitzer, and the project that his Senior Design team is working on for them. Jeremy is kind of on both sides of it since he works at Schweitzer and is also working on the project for school. But its pretty cool that he was quoted, you can read it here.

His Chinese Club at Uof I had their first meeting. He had eight people show up, all with different Chinese ability and interest, but all excited to participate in the new club. I swear my husband cannot stand it if he’s not busy every second of every day. Which is taking its toll on his body. Being a massage therapist, I hate to admit it, but my husband has had a sore neck for almost a week. I did give in and rub it last night, but he’s in pretty bad shape. I had to ground him from his computer for a few hours and he almost went crazy.

Welcome to Texas

Today marks day one of the Third Trimester. We celebrated by having some friends over after church for dinner and games. Three months still seems like a long time, but its nice to have little benchmarks along the way. All is well with the baby. We have a Doctor's appointment tomorrow, which will include the dreaded glucose test. We going to try again to convince Dr. Hall that we NEED to know what kind of baby we're having, but we're not holding our breath. We started our "Childbirth education" class last week (Thursdays at 7:00). I think Jeremy is going to be a great coach. We felt retarded doing the breathing exercises, but he was very good at following my lead and making me breathe. Hope it works at crunch time. We got to see the actual size of the baby, no wonder I can't breathe. We also got to see the actual size of a 10-centimeter opening. Sheesh. They really ought to teach this class to people BEFORE you get pregnant. What good does it do to know that (1) its going to be REALLY physically painful (2) Emotionally more than you've ever had to deal with and (3) Its too late to do anything about it. Its just mean.