An Annotated Guide to a 17-Week Baby

Today marks the 17-week, uh, mark of Baby Yasko's Great Escape. What's happening there, baby?

The skeleton is changing from soft cartilage to bone. He/She weighs as much as a turnip. He/She is starting to develop sweat glands (which, if he/she is like his/her daddy, the sweat glands will never stop working. Hell, I'm sweating now.)

BabyCenter says to buckle up - and it's guano crazy to think that people don't automatically just put their seat belts on.

BabyCenter also warns the preggo that their dreams may start to get nuts. This is information of which I possessed a working knowledge. Every morning that we've been married, we have told each other what we dreamed the night before. My dreams are heart-breakingly simple. I was looking for an orange tie, found it, and woke up. I got on stage with Jay-Z and rapped with him, and you know what else? Security not only did not stop me, but I BLEW THE ROOF OFF THE SUCKA.

Not so with Kami. She dreams things that would keep Stephen King awake. Severed torsos (torsoes?). Tornadoes that have faces and scream fire. Cruise ships that get out of the water, hike up their skirt, and run across the ocean. Bonkers. I'm glad she's the one who's pregnant.

Among the dreams that BabyCenter says are common are baby animal dreams, "sexy encounter with old flame" dreams, and dream-cheater dreams. Sweet wife, if you have the second type of dream, please just keep that to yourself. I've been an unrepentant dream-cheater for years - apparently in Kami's subconscious, I'm the guy from American Psycho.

An Annotated Guide to a 14-week Old Baby

Momma still lookin' good.

What's new this week, BabyCenter?

Your baby can now squint, frown, grimace, pee, and possibly suck his thumb! Thanks to brain impulses, his facial muscles are getting a workout as his tiny features form one expression after another.

I'm guessing that Scrimp's facial impressions involve going from Magnum to Le Tigre to Blue Steel to Ferrari. Let's get an Ultrasound, stat, and check this out. By the by, next time we go see The Good Doctor (a week from tomorrow), that should be happening.

The biggest news is that we're now out of the first trimester. According to some random Geocities webpage I saw, the risk of miscarriage after the first trimester is about 3%. As a baseball fan, I'll take the odds of pitching to an .030 hitter. So it's all very exciting.

Scrimp is about "the size of a lemon" so, good on you BabyCenter for coming up with easily identifiable size comparisons. You've come so far since saying that a baby is approximately the size of an otter's bicuspid. Also, I'm pleased to report that the baby's head is now somewhat proportional. A story:

When we first got Angus, our Scottie, he was about eight weeks old. And his head is exactly the same size - at seven years old - as it was at eight weeks. He'd drag his big old donkey noggin around the place, and when he got snipped, he had to wear the Elizabethan collar to keep him from itchin' the stitchin'. He actually looked like he jumped through the Victrola in the RCA logo. Ultimately, he grew into it. But not after our vet said that he was either retarded (not kidding), or just young. The way he hides rawhide bones from Gunther - I'm going with young.

I love that dog like my son, but if Scrimp comes out looking like Angus...well, there's a lot of things to unpack in those few words, but let's just hope it doesn't happen.

Mommy Question Time!

(This section has been edited. I was going to make fun of a lady who seemingly had a hard time with simple math. But Kami explained it's not that simple, and implied that I would be a jerkface if I included it.)

what'd you eat today??

Not kidding. This is an actual question. And all of the responses are other people talking about what they ate.

Breakfast: scrambled eggs, 1.5 pieces of bacon, fried potatoes
Lunch: salad with ranch and a BBQ brisket baked potato that made me very nauseated
Snack: 2 string cheese
Dinner: eating at my fav pizza place, steak and Gorgonzola pizza that is to die for
Drink: sprite, lotsa water, tea half/half :)
Maybe a snack later of jello or a fudge bar haha whichever calls me first ;)

Bullcrap. No one eats half a piece of bacon. I'll eat a package and a half of bacon before I eat a slice and a half. And, oh how you close with a wink. Sultry minx.

breakfast: an orange and water
lunch: a green apple, milk, garlic bread with strawberry cream cheese and then ice cream- LOL (embarrassing)
haven't had din din yet, still at work ;)

This is preposterous. Also, no one eats garlic bread with strawberry cream cheese. Typical preggo, eating things that don't go together. Also, save your LOL Embarrassing talk about ice cream - you have had perhaps 250 calories to that point - do you care about your baby, but at all? Also, get back to work. Stop your winking.

So far...
Breakfast 1: bagel and cream cheese and a banana
Breakfast attempt 2: French bread with olive oil and balsamic vinegar
Snack: honey nut Cheerios
Lunch: Homemade pulled pork on a hoagie roll
Snack 2: small can of mixed veggies.
Drink: coffee, water, and limeade, need to get more water and milk in before bed. Haven't had dinner yet, waiting on DH to get home from work.

One would assume that Breakfast 1 came up, so Breakfast Attempt 2 was actually an effort to eat something that would stay down. And she went with olive oil and balsamic vinegar. Unbelievable.

So I asked Kami what she ate today:
Breakfast: Egg whites with green peppers, tomatoes, and Spinach.
Snack: Greek yogurt w/handful of granola
Lunch: Fruit Cup w/overwhelming peach:fruit ratio
Snack: Handful of Froot Loops
Dinner: Three-cheese tortellini with homemade pesto, broccoli, peas, and green beans.

I'll take her menu over Strawberry Cream Cheese Garlic Bread Vomit Lady.

By the by, I started working out yesterday, running and then lifting weights. And today I could barely wash my hair, I was so sore. So I ate some Honey Nut Cheerios for breakfast. And still had milk left, so I had some more Honey Nut Cheerios. And ran out of milk with the Honey Nut Cheerios still in the bowl. So I added more milk. And still had milk left when I ran out of Honey Nut Cheerios. It wasn't until they got to the Top 10 Plays on SportsCenter before I realized that I had eaten half a box of Cheerios. I'm a child.

An annotated guide to a 12-week old baby

First of all, momma lookin' good.

Second - WE HAVE EYELID(S)! And Ears! This means that I can start preparing the first songs that Babby can hear. A short list (please do not read any meaning into the songs, these are just my favorites at the moment):

Du Hast Where the Streets Have No Name - U2
Water Ban - Pernice Brothers
Don't Carry It All - Decemberists
Magazine - Joshua James

Anyhow, the big development of Week 12 is that of reflexes. Eyes open and close, fingers and toes clench and de-clench. I am currently 1,660 weeks old, and I have trouble with this from time to time. So let's figuratively pour one out for Babby's reflexes already being more developed than Daddy's.

In fact, if you prod your abdomen, your baby will squirm in response...

Oh, Kami's abdomen is going to get prodded - just to see what happens.

although you won't be able to feel it

Well, nevermind.

From crown to rump, your baby-to-be is just over 2 inches long (about the size of a lime) and weighs half an ounce.

Props to BabyCenter for coming up with a decent comparison of length. But I'm confused by this "crown to rump" measurement. From crown to rump I'm about three feet tall, so let's take a step back on the measurement guide.

Word Of The Week: Fundus

Fundus! The fundus is the top of the uterus. The Workdus is the bottom of the uterus. (Not true).

And now, a note from "Tracy":
"Instead of your morning coffee, try a cup of steamed milk with a shot of flavored syrup. Delicious — and good for you and your baby!"

Now, I realize this is not for me, but this is - quite frankly - preposterous. Steamed milk and a shot of flavored syrup sounds absolutely disgusting. And the only thing I will drink "instead of my morning coffee" is four cans of Red Bull. And then I will run through a brick wall. The latter I would rather do than drink a steaming cup of orange-syrupped milk.

New Favorite Pastime:
Mommy Comments! The July 2012 Birth Club is an active, opinionated, occasionally hostile group of women, which is awesome. This week, they're talking about drinking while pregnant. The conversation starts with:

Am I the only person that thinks this is so wrong? I see so many comments about how it will be ok to have a couple. Has anyone stopped to think about what this does to your baby? To me, not having a drink while pregnant is easy - I'm protecting my baby.

Vent over ;)

The winky-face is a historically clear indication that the initial SHOTS FIRED comment is over, and then nuclear war begins.

On first glance, it seems as though Baby.Raks is trying to say, "It's okay to have a drink, right? RIGHT!? RIGHT, DAMN YOU ALL?" But wait, there's a second act, one in which there is self-realized resolution. Here's the thought process:

1. I'm interested in women who drink while pregnant, I'll ask the Mommy Mafia.
2. I'm curious if anyone else has noticed the women who say it's okay to have a couple of drinks.
3. Aren't they stupid?
4. I'm not stupid.
5. Right?
6. Oh, I don't drink.

This sounds like the same "Gays are wrong! Right? I'm not gay, but I have gay friends" argument.

The comments (271 of them at last check) run the gamut, with well over 90% of them being of the "HOW DARE YOU" variety. And to have a contrary opinion in a group of pregnant women, while ill-advised at the best of times, is flat-out high-risk behavior in hot-button (overly-hyphenated) topics, like Drinking While Preggo.

My favorites, so far:
5. Lol ^

Wonderful insight. The world is a better place knowing that you laughed out loud at...something.

4. Can you be more specific? Drinking as in having A drink or drinking as in having a FEW. Cause one is perfectly ok and the other isn't.

You can imagine the shaking hands, and the secretive Google Image Search for "Mai-Tai" and "Wine Cooler." Then the internet history gets deleted.

3. I 100% agree!!! I could never drink while I am pregant! The only think I have to think about is, what you put in your body also goes to that baby. Alcohol is poison, that is why it gives us that buzz. One drink or 10 drinks it is wrong to drink while pregnant!!

There are six exclamation points in five sentences, giving us a 1.200 Exclamation Rate.

2. BUT! biggg giant BUT here!!!!!! if you care enough to come here and make an "its so wrong" post, you better not be eating lunch meat, hot dogs, soft cheeses, better not have even missed a prenatal or taken anything other than tylenol, better not be tippin back that morning cup o' joe... ect ect you get my point. alcohol is NOT the only evil no-no of pregnancy...but as a PP said, it seems to be what everyone gets stuck on

Once you wade through the grammar, punctuation, and capitalization errors ("ect ect" as it was so aptly put), this is actually a pretty good point. Drinking = Hot Dogs.

1. It's not a black and white issue. Having a drink doesn't equal getting drunk. And drinking on occasion doesn't equal being an alcoholic. We all have our own doctors, opinions, experiences and fears for a reason- so that we can make our own choices. What I actually find ridiculous is that alcohol is the holy grail of pregnancy 'sins'. Just yesterday someone posted about struggling with smoking. All the comments were so supportive, all saying relax just cut back til you quit. Don't get me wrong, I don't think smoking is the end of the world and I was pleased to see that nobody was telling her how awful she was....and yet these were the SAME women who basically tore some poor lady apart over wine on Christmas. It's just so disproportional!

This is the comment equivalent to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, which started World War I. It is shocking, because it is violent and came out of nowhere - the comment board's kick to the shins. The responses approach Phariseean levels of self-righteousness, lambasting the one-woman-wolf-pack for her reckless opinions. Mommy Commenters = Vultures.

Is drinking okay? For me, yes.