Normally I wouldn’t complain about summer, but I’m starting to feel the effects of pregnancy, so I’m concerned I won’t enjoy it as much as I could. I currently have my feet propped up on a pillow because they’ve been swelling. Bummer. Fortunately, I have a wonderful husband who installed an air conditioner in our downstairs and will install the other one today in our study, so our house won’t be 95 degrees, even if the outside is.

In good news however, I’m starting to get a belly! Fun! I am slowly running out of clothes to wear, so we’ll see how long I last without a shopping trip (why am I putting off shopping, you ask? Because of the recent expense of air conditioners. Ouch!). So you can look forward to belly pictures within the next few months.

Have you ever noticed how every pregnant couple handles the information trade differently?  Some people want to know as little as possible about their child-to-be.  They only want to know that the child is healthy, but nothing more.  They want the gender of the baby to be a total surprise.  There are others (myself included) who can’t imagine waiting until the delivery room to discover the sex of the baby.

And then there’s a similar spectrum when it comes to naming the child.  Should we come up with a name beforehand, or should we wait and see what the baby looks like?  Again, I favor the former.  If we always waited to name children based on appearance, don’t you think we’d end up with a bunch of Ebenezers and Brunhildas?  How can you look at something tiny and wrinkled and jaundiced and screaming and covered in goo, turn to your spouse and say “See?  I told you’d he’d be a David.”

Now, beyond what the happy couple decides about their own access to information about the child, they also have to make a decision about how much information they are going to share with others.  Again, some will share nothing at all.  You may not even know she’s pregnant until the kid’s third birthday.  Others will share too much.  You didn'’t really want to know anything about her placenta to begin with, did you?  And others still will simply provide information as it becomes available.  Step one: we’re having a baby!  Step two: it’s going to be a girl! I think we’ll name her Clarice.  Step three: she’s here!

Now, I’ve always felt like pregnancy was kind of like keeping a really good secret.  So I’ve often wondered where I’ll fall on the spectrum of sharing information.  Some friends of ours from DC came up with an interesting compromise.  They find out the sex of the baby and they tell their friends, but they keep the name a secret until delivery day.  This seems to maintain a nice balance between obsessive behavior and normalcy.  So I think you can all expect to find out whether babylyman is a boy or a girl, but you’ll have to wait until that due date countdown reaches zero to learn babylyman’s real name.  And no, we don’t have one picked out yet.

Well, we had our first ultrasound appointment today, and it confirmed that Meg’s due date is December 30th. It was really cool, we got to see and hear the baby’s heartbeat. That was totally amazing. Anyway, for purposes of orientation, the large black shape that you see is the amniotic sac, and the whitish peanut-shaped part is the baby! The circular shape you see to the right is the yolk, which will disappear in the next few weeks.

Taking note of how underappreciated my genes are, according to my husband, I have been looking up eye color on the internet.  I am gratified to find out that our children are more likely to have green eyes (like me) than blue eyes (like him).  Ha ha!  I do concede that my skin is something that should dissapear into the depths of history….

For those of you wondering, I have been feeling well.  I have mostly been very tired and hungry, but not sick.  If I don’t eat enough, though, watch out!  Definately keep crackers on hand if I visit you, especially if dinner is late.

As Brian said, I'’m looking forward to the ultrasound tomorrow.

I have a confession to make. The fact that the “Due Date Countdown” clock is two hours off really bothers me. And what’s really killing me is that I can’t figure out how to change it! You see, it’s now 10:30 PM, but the clock is currently saying that there are three and a half hours left in the day. There’s got to be some sort of UTC setting I can change in the script in order to get it right, but I can’t find it. It’s killing me.

So do you figure I’ll pass on all of my neurotic/perfectionist/anal-retentive qualities to my child, or will Meg’s “who cares, no one’s going to notice anyway” attitude manage to squeeze in for some genetic real estate of her own? If I were a normal, well-adjusted parent, I’d probably say something like “well, let’s hope they get a little bit of both.”

The truth is… I find myself secretly hoping for a child who would be bothered by a countdown clock that’s running two hours late.

Well, I can hardly believe it, but Meg is actually pregnant! We went to the OB-GYN for the first time yesterday, and he confirmed that she is pregnant, and a little over 7 weeks along at this point.

I know it’s totally cliche, but I think Meg must have gotten pregnant about a day after we had decided to stop actively trying to get pregnant. I guess that’s how it goes, but we’re completely thrilled. Right now, our due date is set at December 30th, but we'’re going to have a sonogram on Friday in order to confirm that due date. I’m hoping we can get a video copy of the sonogram. If we do, we’ll post it here as soon as we get home!