We are at Baby Alert Level At The Damn Hospital.

We’ve already been admitted and we’re bored with the waiting.
It turns out they have a dvd player, so I came home to pickup a few movies.

Be prepared to congratulate us soon!

Spoilers: Everyone’s okay.

Brie got into a little fender bender today. She’s absolutely fine and so is the baby, but we had a bit of a scare.

By the time I got there it had been awhile since she felt Baby2.0 move, so the doctors told us to go to the hospital’s maternity ward.
We went and they hooked her up to some machines that measure contractions and baby heart rate. Preliminary tests looked good but they held her for another two hours to make sure.

Baby got bored about halfway through and started kicking and dancing plenty to let us know that he was alright.

Then we all went home and got pizza. The End.
I’m sure I could make this more entertaining, but it’s been a long day and I’m tired.

In short:

• A little scary, but not frightening.
• Hayden was slightly confused why mommy was at the hospital and the baby wasn’t here.
• There was no ambulance or emergency room involved, which is a step up (though one more punch in my card and the next visit is free!)
• This basically cements the whole “just 2 kids” thing. I know our sample is low, but we’re 2 for 2 on babies and car accidents.
• The car isn’t in bad shape, though the frame might be bent and then we get to have to get rid of it.
• I bet I can get our insurance rate lowered if one of us gets fixed.

We have less than one month to go to delivery and Brie is experiencing occasional contractions among other symptoms that as I guy I am physically unable to say.

This puts us at Baby Alert Level 1.

For those of you not familiar with the Baby Alert System (that I made up yesterday) it goes as follows:

• Level 1 - 4 to 5 weeks until due date. Some contractions experienced. Pack hospital bag. Make lists of things to do. Make sure any support friends/family know what favors they’re going to be doing us.
  
• Level 2 - 3 to 4 weeks until due date. Assemble any required furniture. Frequency of awkward conversation regarding my wife’s privates with people I don’t know goes from moderately to highly uncomfortable.
  
• Level 3 - 2 to 3 weeks until due date. Hospital bag now lives in my trunk. Don’t let cell phone battery or gas tank get below half. Distract Brie from the fact that I did this to her.
  
• Level 4 - 1 to 2 weeks until due date or water breaks. Get anything baby related that we put in storage in order to sell the house back out and put it all back together while cursing myself for putting it in storage in the first place.
  
• Level 5 - 0 to 1 weeks until due date or several days after water breakage. Labor likely imminent. Cell phone stays open constantly on my desk at work so I can stare at it throughout the day.
  
• Level Midnight - Reserved for the unlikely situation that Brie goes into labor with an expected labor time of less than one hour. There’s a lot of running and frantic calls involved. Oh God, we haven’t picked a name yet have we?
  

According to Hayden anyway.

Hayden has declared that Baby2.0 will be named “Bloo-Bloop”.

He was going to go with “Gur-Gurk”, but I guess he thought the baby just wasn’t going to look like a “Gur-Gurk”.

Yesterday we got to see the baby again.

What’s that you say? It’s unusual to have two ultrasounds in a row? Yes, you’re right!

That’s because at the last ultrasound the tech said that she might have seen that Baby2.0 has a clubfoot. Granted, in all but the most extreme cases clubfoot is easily corrected and afterwards has zero or damn near close to zero chance of affective the life of the child whatsoever.

You’d think it would be easy to openly discuss it here about the slight possibility that our child might have clubfoot instead of focusing on the huge drama that we would very likely not have to face. Ha! You were wrong. We decided it would be more fun and wallow in the mostly imaginary melodrama.

Okay, I’m exagerating a little bit, but we were a little shocked and didn’t want to talk about a medical condition we weren’t even sure Baby2.0 had.

Well yesterday the ultrasound tech said she saw no indication of clubfoot, much to our relief.

We should still keep an eye on it just in case, but we feel a lot better.

Baby2.0 is healthy and still scheduled to arrive on time.

As promised, here’s “Cuddle Cuddle Baby” as performed by Brie and Hayden.

I didn’t get the camera out fast enough, so you only get the last half of the song. I am sure you can figure out how the beginning goes.

Last night we finally told Hayden about Baby(boy)2.0.

All along we’ve talked about babies and gently broached the topic of brotherhood, but we hadn’t officially told him that he’s going to be a big brother yet.

We figured with the toddler concept of time it would be a little hard to explain how long it takes babies to grow.

Hayden wanted to watch Dora with Baby, so he’s laying with mommy and telling Baby what’s happening

We figured that now that Brie is 6 months along and officially showing we should probably break the news, so we picked up a few books:

• I’m a Big Brother - Does a good job of explaining what it’s like to be a big brother and points out all the fun things big kids do that babies can’t, like eat pizza and ice cream.
• Waiting for Baby - Details the process of waiting for a new baby and how long it takes and looking forward to the new baby.
• Will there be a Lap for Me? - Emphasizes how things may change but the special bond with a parent will not be broken by a new baby.

We also talked more indepth about where babies come from and how everyone used to be a baby. Hayden took to it very well and is excited about the new baby, though we did need to correct him when he said there was a baby growing inside him. Hopefully we can keep the positive energy going.

Hayden is very good at being helpful, so we think he’ll take well to helping with baby tasks like getting bottles and things like that.

For now he is the official baby song singer. Brie says that last night they made up a song for the baby called “Cuddle Cuddle Baby”. I didn’t get a chance to hear, but I’m sure it’s adorable. I’ll get some video up soon.

Hayden talking to Baby

Now that Hayden knows we no longer have to announce to anyone that we’re pregnant, which is great for me, because I still haven’t figured out how to make announcements like that and it always comes out awkwardly. Hayden, on the other hand, is great at just putting it out there.

For example, Hayden’s entire daycare now knows we’re pregnant less than 24 hours after we told him.

Well, he’ll be a boy at any rate. There’s no guarantee on the masculinity, he is my son after all.

Yesterday we had our very first ultrasound for Baby 2.0. I would have posted sooner, but it appears that our internets are out at home. I had to scan in the images, put them on the iPod and take it to work (where I totally am not writing this from if you’re reading this Nan/Laura)

The new little man wasn’t quite as cooperative as Hayden at displaying his gender (We have a picture from Hayden’s ultrasound with an arrow labeled “boy” pointing to the unmistakeable relevant parts), but the tech did confirm it for us.

I’m a little amazed at the difference in quality of the ultrasound for this baby compared to the ultrasound for Hayden. I don’t remember being able to clearly see Hayden waving his arms around and kicking his little feet, like we saw our new little man doing.

The pictures they print out still seem to be fuzzier than on the screen.
Clicky for large version.

Staring at the camera:       Profile scratching his ear:

We’re having another baby! The expected date of delivery is October 6th.

I realize many of you already know this as you’ve been told in person or via phone. I haven’t put up an official electronic announcement here as I wasn’t putting any work into the old site.

Hopefully we’ll find out the gender on the next checkup on May 9th.

We haven’t decided on any names yet, though we’re kicking around the name Logan for a boy. If we go that route, feel free to call him ‘Wolverine’.