My wife is all but done in baby preparations.  Of course, if she realizes there is something that needs to be done, it will be done within hours… if not minutes.  She’s a planner in normal life.  Imagine taking the neurosis (and I use that word lovingly) and adding on the natural instinct to prepare a baby’s home before his arrival.  Well, you can imagine what’s happened in my life the past few months.

Junior’s room is ready.  The hospital bags are packed.  The cradle is ready.  Everything on the registries has been purchased (except a couple items that are not necessary on day one of life).  The car set is installed.  The stroller is constructed.  The letters of his name are hung.  I’m telling you people… she’s ready.

Well, the other day, knowing that my cooking can only be performed in large momentous occasions (asking me to cook a simple dinner is like asking Tchaikovsky to write a commercial melody), so I told my wife that she should prepare some food and put it in the freezer.  Therefore, after Junior comes I can take it out of the freezer while she is napping and bake it and handle it myself.  This project required planning on her part and she loved the idea of it. 

Needless to say, it was the next day and she was at the grocery store.  That night, the madness began…

The Ingredients

Preparing the Meats

Halfway Point…. Yes, I said Halfway

Some Midwestern Goodness – The Tater Tot Casserole

The Finished Project

The following meals are now in our freezer ready for me to make:

3 lasagnas
2 manicottis
1 enchilada casserole
2 nights of regular enchiladas
2 nights of green chile chicken enchiladas
3 nights of enchilada casserole
2 nights of shepherd’s pie

Total: 14 meals, people—28 if you count per person.

I thought it was a good idea and it still is a good idea.  I just never thought it would be quite like this…

You read about my sleep graphs.  Take a look at this one:

What you see here is that I slept good from 11 to 1am.   After that things got a little crazy… especially starting at the 3am hour.  Well, I was awake from 3am on because I thought we might be having a baby.

Junior is pretty active, with constant movements and kicks almost continuously now.  However, the other night Molly noticed he wasn’t really moving like he should be.  We did all of the normal stuff we do to wake him up.  We prodded.  We poked.  We shook (lightly, of course).  Instead, he did his best to act like nothing was happening.  I think it was a big game to him. 

Molly called the doctor’s office and got the answering service.  She explained the situation to which the man replied, “Ma’am, I’m just the answering service.  Tell me what you want to do.”  He was rude.  She had the doctor paged.

The doctor called and said, “Well, I’m not going to tell you not to worry about it, so you can come in if you want.”  Wow.  Umm.. Thanks?

Therefore at 4:15am, we headed into the doctor’s office.  Labor and Delivery… here we come.  Just to make things surreal we also grabbed our overnight bag.  When we got to the office, we even signed documents in case they needed to get Junior into the world of the “Not Living In a Sac of Water” right away.  That was surreal. 

Then we went and hooked Stunning up to some monitors and Junior still slumbered away.  His heart rate was strong, but still very little movement.  The nurse frowned.  Then she instructed my wife to get on her side and drink this huge tub of ice water.  Well, apparently he didn’t like being stuck next to a giant bag of ice water, because he woke up immediately and started kicking and pushing and doing the regular things.

The rest of the day it was more of the same.  The due date is March 21 and it looks like he has no plans to leave his little hut before then.  In fact, we even made a routine exam appointment for March 23!  Maybe if he lasts long enough, he can be born on my birthday; March 27.  You know what they… like father like son!  ::cue laugh sign::

They always say the last trimester is the most uncomfortable and I AGREE.  I’m not talking about my wife, I’m talking about me. 

Stunning is not in a good state right now.  She’s got a cold.  She’s got a giant basketball in her stomach:

You try and sleep with that in your stomach.  It moves too!! (Very similar to Alien.)

The trick for the husband is to find a way to manage his own sleep schedule when his wife in the same bed is unable to sleep at all.  Here are a few things that I, as the husband, am dealing with – turning over is a huge deal for her.  At this point, turning over in bed requires a feat of strength similar to those strongman shows where the guys have to move a refrigerator of bricks.  I also have a tough time sleeping if there are rhythmic noises and unfortunately breathing is a bit more difficult when there’s someone in the pushing against every vital organ.  And while stunning will be appalled that I’m writing this, but she does have an occasional “snore”.  Beyond that, there’s the constant urine breaks and the occasional strange dreams (we’ll discuss those in more detail later).  Needless to say, there are some interruptions to my sleep pattern.

The first thing a scientist should do is analyze.  Therefore, I bought a $0.99 iPhone App that measures your sleep cycles.  That’s right… THERE’S AN APP FOR THAT! 

Anyway, here’s a decent night’s sleep:

It’s not the best.  However, here’s a night where there was little rest for the weary:

Not a lot of deep sleep there.

Now some couples separate at this time of the pregnancy in order to sleep. We’ve decided not to do that.  Basically, because we only have one bed in the house and there’s not a good place to sleep otherwise.  I don’t sleep well on couches anyway and she should be in a bed… not a couch in her current condition.

Anyway, to survive this, I’ve noticed a couple things work.  First of all, I sleep with my ears away from her.  It’s sad, but this is not a state conducive to cuddling.  The second tip is a set of ear plugs.  Hate to say it, but this takes care of the breathing and the inevitable grunts as she attempts to roll over.  With these two tiny tips, my sleep ability has improved some. 

This wasn’t the nicest post.  Basically, blaming my wife for all of my woes and giving advice to wear ear plugs so you don’t have to hear your wife… but you know… in the ninth month of a pregnancy, you do what you gotta do.  Anyway, this is all just a little training for a few weeks time, when I won’t be allowed to wear ear plugs and I’ll get woken up by a baby… and not my wife.

I’ll get a good night’s sleep though when all the kids go off to college, so it’s not big deal.

Babies go through some amazing changes in their first couple years of life.  I ran across a friend’s blog the other day and she’s doing something that I think is really cool.  Every day, she’s taking a picture to document her baby, Georgia’s, life.  She started January 1 and will be going all the way through the end of the year.