July 2004 Archives

Alecia should be posting this instead of me. She has a better memory for terminology and details, and she's probably just sitting around doing nothing right now, so she has the time. But since she's neglecting her duties, I suppose I'll step in and update everyone. (Oh yeah, that should put me on the couch for a week.)

We had our second ultrasound yesterday. (Or was it a sonogram? Are they the same thing? I get confused.) The purpose of this one was to find out how far we are in the pregnancy. We went to the Glenlake Radiology Center and got to see the baby on one of their high-tech machines. Not that the one our doctor uses is bad, but the machines at Glenlake are much better.

I expected to see another featureless blob, like we did in our early ultrasounds with Maddie. Heck, we only saw a featureless blob on our later ultrasound with Maddie. But yesterday, we saw Jelly Bean in amazing detail. He/she was doing exercises, apparently, and was jumping around the womb like an acrobat. We could clearly see his/her arms and legs, and we watched with joy as he/she would reach out and spaz around. It was like watching TV, only better than any show I've ever seen. :) It just seemed really strange, though, since we never saw Maddie with that much clarity, or being that active. The good thing is that we'll also have our 20-week appointment at this same place, so we should be able to see with the same level of detail. I'm already excited about it.

Jelly Bean was looking good yesterday--very healthy from what little we could guess--and looked huge on the monitor. We asked the technician how big the baby was. It looked like he/she might be 6-8 inches already! The technician reached into a drawer and pulled out a little plastic doll...that was about two inches long. "Your baby is probably a little smaller than this," she said. It's so strange to think of something that small having arms and legs and dancing around inside my wife. It looked so fragile...and hyper. It made me worried for its safety, while at the same time excited to meet the new McLochlin.

Anyway, we got snapshots of the ultrasound, and we'll scan them as soon as we can. I don't know if you'll be able to see much--and we didn't think to bring a videotape for this early view. But trust us that Jelly Bean is already outgrowing his/her nickname, and is breathtakingly beautiful.

Oh, and we couldn't tell whether or not he/she had a willie, so we'll have to keep using gender-neutral pronouns for at least a while longer. (For the whole pregnancy, if I have my way.)
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A belated Happy Birthday to Aunt Julie and Alison Frazier, both of whom celebrated birthdays on Monday. Hope you both had great ones!
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So Bill and I took Maddie to her pediatric cardiology appointment today. You see, at her regular doctor's appointment last week, the nurse discovered a heart murmur. She wanted us to get it checked out just to make sure.

Now I'm relatively intelligent and know that tons of adults and kids live with heart murmurs and that they're usually not that big of a deal. Heck, even Bill mentioned that he had one as a child. But in this case you have understand two very important things:

1) Maddie was scheduled to see a cardiologist at Scottish Rite Children's Hospital, one of the largest children's hospitals in the region. This is a location I used to visit often because...

2) I used to work at Make-A-Wish Foundation. Yeah, remember that place?

I never understood an inkling of what the wish parents felt until today. My heart was in my stomach as we pulled into the parking lot. I wasn't there to train volunteers or visit some of our wish children with a little gift. No, I was there with my own daughter, my first born baby, who needed to be seen by a specialist.

In the end, everything turned out fine and Maddie's murmur was deemed "innocent" and nothing to worry about. In fact, her heart murmur is apparently quite "musical". Our nurse even called in another nurse to hear the little musical beat in Maddie's chest.

I'm very thankful tonight that everything is fine with Maddie and I know that Bill and I consider ourselves very lucky (for so many reasons we can't even begin to count) but I have a newfound respect for those parents who help their children brave illnesses and physical battles on a daily basis.

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In case you didn't figure it out, that last post (and the site overhaul) is Alecia's handiwork. She used my computer to make the changes, so it says my name at the bottom of the post. But it's her all the way. :)

Oh, and the goofy new title is my fault. I told her we needed something new that fit the guy's expression. That's all we came up with on the fly. It really doesn't mean anything.
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So, I had a little extra time on my hands this evening when Maddie went to bed...

As you can see, I changed the design of the website a little. Please keep in mind that I am a HUGE novice at this whole thing and had to figure it out on my own because Bill had a soccer game and I didn't want to wait until he got home to ask him. So forgive the random little errors.

In other news, there's much to report on the home front:

-Maddie now has not one, but TWO teeth. Adorable, and painful as well.
-Maddie can now cruise along all the furniture in the house using only one hand to hold on. Oh, and she dances. She's like a dancing queen, that little one. Just play some music or sing a really bad rendition of a Bee Gees song and the girl can't be stopped. The best part is the huge smile on her face.
-Maddie's little sibling --affectionately known for now as "Jelly Bean"-- is doing well. We got to see him/her last week at our first ultrasound (hence the name). The doc did a quick u/s to determine how far along we are (long story to be told at another time). Looks like I'm about 9 weeks so far. Estimated due date is February 6, 2003. We have another u/s scheduled next week, wherein there will be a real u/s technician with an even more powerful machine who can tell us an even more accurate date. We'll keep you posted.

That's about it for now. I KNOW I have more to write, but I just can't seem to remember it right now (pregnancy forgetfulness setting in early, I'm afraid). Be sure to check out the new pictures we posted from this weekend.

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