Alison's progressing well...

She is at 5cm and they just broke her water. The Doctor said that she is doing well and everything is looking good. :)

IV has started...

Well, after a completely restful night on the super comfortable hospital chair/bed thing the nurse came in around 5am to get Alison ready for the pitocin drip. They are also giving her a lot of fluids in the main IV drip. This should start contractions in probably about an hour and then we will have her water broken around 9am or so.

It's going to be a long day, but I am really excited for what we get in the end :)

Well, we are in the hospital...

Well, we are in the hospital... Alison has an IV in her arm (nothing going in yet) and she had some monitors on her earlier to measure contractions and Emma's heart rate. Pretty much, we are just waiting for the rest of the night. Tomorrow morning we will have an IV drip of Pitocin to start to induce labor and cause the contractions. They have estimated that we will have her around 3 or 4pm tomorrow.

Alison is doing well (just pretty uncomfortable and hungry :( ), she will be getting a sleep aid tonight, so she will be able to rest for the big day tomorrow.

I will post some pictures tomorrow night after we have her.

The release of the Frisbee, the crowning of Queen Elizabeth I, William Hung's birth, the first Mickey Mouse comic and Michael Jordan's retirement...

all happened on the same date that I will most likely become a father... January 13th.

Tomorrow Alison and I are going to the hospital to start the process of having her induced on Tuesday morning (January 13th, 2009). That will be Emma Grace's birthday. I haven't fully come to grasp the fact that it is already here. Right now I am a little scared because I know tomorrow I will essentially be a spectator (with a highly vested interest) in the whole thing. Other than offering my support, doing my best to comfort and a sacrificing a finger or two for Alison to break, I don't have much to do it seems... other than be excited, scared, happy and about 40 other emotions, some that probably don't even have names.

I am going to be a father. It's a little scary that someone is going to be depending on me and looking to me for guidance, direction, support and of course love...(probably an allowance later on too ;)). I do feel very fortunate and blessed to be able to experience this with such a loving, beautiful, wonderful person and the best friend I have ever had... my wife, Alison. We have had our ups and downs during this pregnancy, but I know that there is no one better to go through this with. Alison... I love you. I also want to thank all of our friends and family for being there for us through out all of this, I am sure what we would have done with out you... and just a forewarning, I doubt that we are done needing your help yet. :)

Wow, 39 out of 40 weeks is 98%... OMG we are 98% of the way there!?!

Wow, we are 98% of the way there. How did that happen?! I haven't been very good at posting on here if you haven't noticed. The past month has really flown by at an alarming rate. It wasn't that long ago that I knew that Christmas was a few weeks away and that meant that the baby was going to only be a few weeks after that, but that was 2 'fews'... 2 'fews' is a long time. Well, Christmas came and it was great. We didn't have any house guests this year so we had a pretty quiet Christmas Eve going to Church, eating Pizza, watching "A Christmas Story" and spending time with each other. Christmas day we went over to my brother and sister-in-law's new house and spent some time with them and the girls. The only problem with Christmas is that it got rid of one of the 'fews' so we only had a few weeks left.

New Year's Eve was fun, we were out partying (by "out partying" I mean staying home) late into the night (by "late into the night" I mean 12:30) getting drunk off Champagne and Whiskey (by "Champagne and Whiskey" I really mean Sparkling Apple Cider).

After New Year's we no longer had a few weeks, we were down to a couple. Throw in some work, Dr's appointments, getting some stuff for the house ready and that brings us to today. One week from her due date.

It has been a pretty incredible journey. The really amazing part is that this was just getting to the point of having her, the journey starts all over and gets infinitely more complex after she's born.

(If you look closly at the picture you will be able to see what we are naming her ;). Thanks to Anna and Audrey for the artwork. :) )

Crazy last few weeks

Around the holidays it gets to be a little hectic. Having a baby lurking around the corner doesn't help at all either. We had a very nice Thanksgiving dinner at my brother and sister-in-laws house. I flew Alison's sister, Lauren, up for Thanksgiving as a 'suprise' and it was really nice to have some company for a little while.

This weekend I have Daddy Boot Camp, so that will be interesting. I think it's a 'hands-on' experience so I will be sure to wear some new clothes.

We just ordered a camcorder (Canon HF100) and I am really excited about it. There will be no HD filming of the birth, but shortly after we will have some video that we can show to her future boyfriends on first dates. I think computers make that a lot easier. I won't have to dig through boxes to find old home movies, just open the folder and its good to go.

Christmas is coming up very soon. It will be the first and last (for at least a long while) Christmas with just the two of us. We have made plans to go see "Marley and Me" in the theater on Christmas day. I started to read the book, which was very good, but I stopped once Marley got old, I didn't want to have to think about that since Marley reminds me of our Cody (the good parts of Marley, and some of the bad) :).

Baby in 3D!!!

We had our 3D ultra sound the other day and it is amazing the amount of detail you can see with the images. We have determined that she will have Alison's lips and my nose lol. She wasn't being very cooperative during the procedure, but we were able to get a few pictures that came out pretty good. She seems to like to have her hands in front of her face a lot. Most of the pictures we have she has at least one hand up (sometimes a foot too).

We went on the tour of Wake Med Cary to see the rooms etc. It's a very nice hospital and we hear great things about it from anyone that has given birth there. We actually saw one of our doctors there in scrubs. I was a little surprised to see him there, but I probably shouldn't have been.

We are really looking forward to everything that is coming, even though it is coming very, very, VERY fast. This morning we were talking about it almost being December. Now when we tell people that the baby is due in January they say, "Oh, you have some time." If you say that the baby is due next month it sounds like we should be waiting around the hospital lol.

Baby update

Well, I haven't been very good about posting recently so I will try to have a little summary recap.

I was surprised at work with a baby shower. It was terribly embarrassing having to open and hold up all this little baby stuff, but it was fun none the less and I am very thankful for it. Alison is going to be having her baby shower at work in December.

We graduated our Birth and Labor class, so we are now officially ready to have a baby... whatever that means. It was a pretty good class and we met some nice people and got some good information and mental scars for life from some things that should not been seen on a huge projected screen.

The baby's room is on its way to being done. We have the furniture and we ordered a few things online to finish it out like a glider, curtain rod and curtains, the sheets, bed skirt and blanket, changing pad cover and a french memo board to put some of the pictures that Anna and Audrey (our two nieces) have made for her. Her closet is starting to look like a girl's closet filled with clothes and pink things.

Our appointments have been going well. Both Alison and the baby are doing very well with everything.

I guess that is about it. We are really excited to meet our little girl and I will keep you posted on anything new.

The only thing I need to know about birth, I learned from Dwight Schrute.

At our class on Monday we were talking about Birth Plans. I never really thought about this too much before, but it makes a lot of sense. We didn't realize how many different options there are for giving birth. It's almost like Sonic's 168,000 drink combinations. I think the first thing I am going to put on my own personal Birth Plan is an idea I got from Dwight.

When the baby emerges, mark it secretly in a kind of a mark that only you could recognize and no baby snatcher could ever copy.

The other thing we discussed at class on Monday was packing the bag to go to the hospital. I am still relieved to know that once the water breaks its not a mad dash to get to the hospital before the baby falls out on her own. I think Hollywood puts unnecessary stress on expectant fathers. Every movie you see with a woman going into labor is preceded with someone having to drive down the highway at 120mph in order to get there in time. They should say that you are actually supposed to wait until you have been having contractions 5 minutes apart for an hour before you go to the hospital, and when you get there you will be do that for a while before the baby comes. I guess that wouldn't make a very exciting movie though.

JDRF Walk to Cure Diabetes

This weekend Alison and I are going to walk in the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation’s Walk to Cure Diabetes with the team from her employer (RTI International).

Last year we walked and it was pretty incredible to see the amount of people that came together to support a really good cause.

This year they expect over 500,000 walkers across the country to participate. The goal is to raise $105 million dollars.

If anyone would like support either me or Alison to reach our goal, you can go to http://walk.jdrf.org/ and put one of our names in the “Donate to a Walker” box and donate any amount, no matter how small or large.

Please don’t feel obligated to donate, but it will be greatly appreciated by not only myself, but millions of people around the world that will be that much closer to a cure.

Hands on baby training

Today we have a hands on training for baby care. The Wake Med Cary campus has a Baby Basics class that is just a bunch of stations where you go around and try different things to practice and learn the correct way of doing things. It should be fun.

We had another appointment yesterday with the Dr. and he said that the baby is right on target for growth and he said he would "fall out of his chair" if the baby was really big. I hope he meant that he would be surprised that the baby was big and not that he would actually fall out of his chair trying to support the weight/size of the baby. Might have to ask him about that...

The appointment went well though. Alison got a flu shot which is something I need to do as well. I love that burning, sore feeling once a year.

October is great...

I am going to take a slight detour from writing about the baby (even though that is probably the biggest thing going on right now) to write about something that I realized today at lunch.

Well, two things actually.

First is that I love and miss my wife. Alison is in Nashville for a work conference and she will be back on Tuesday :). Secondly is that I really love this time of year and where we live. I went out for a drive and opened with windows and just took in some of the beautiful autumn scenery and some fresh crisp air. It felt really good to get out of the house and unwind a minute.

Baby School... day 1

We had our first Birthing and Labor class at WakeMed Raleigh yesterday. It was pretty interesting and a little scary. It is much smaller than I was expecting. There are only 3 other couples in the class with us. We got to watch a video that wasn't too graphic (but I am sure we will get some non-PG ones in the upcoming classes). It was showing some women as they were going through their contractions etc. We learned all about what they were and what was going on etc. We had to bring 4 pillows to the first class. We didn't really use them, we only used 2. I think that they just wanted to make us look funny trying to carry 4 pillows (which is not easy). We did use the 2 pillows for a relaxation exercise that about put me to sleep. Well, I guess a pillow and a dark room would put me to sleep, but the exercise seemed to work pretty well.

In the 3rd week there will be a tour of the hospital. We will not be going to that part with our class since we will be giving birth at the WakeMed Cary hospital. We were unable to find a class open at WakeMed Cary, so we ended up going to the Raleigh one. We can sign up for the tour at our hospital which we will be doing in the near future. I am looking forward to seeing it. I hope the cafeteria is good :)

*** I put the picture up after searching for "uterus" on google images and having to close the window real fast and then search for "uterus cartoon" which came back with much better results. Some things can't be unseen. :( lol, jk.

THANK YOU!

I just wanted to say "Thank you" to everyone that showed up at the shower this past weekend. Alison and I are greatly appreciative of all the love and support our friends and family have shown. I wasn't able to be at the shower sniffing the "chocolate" diapers, but after speaking to some of the people that were there... it sounded like everyone had a good time.

Another big thank you goes out to Lauren and Tina for throwing all of this together. I am sure the baby is very thankful as well since she got some good food :)

Thank you all again!

Back to school... back to school to prove to Ali that I'm no fool :)

We signed up for some classes at the hospital the other day. The ones we picked out were Labor and Birth Education, Newborn Basics and I am going to Boot Camp for Dads.

The Labor and Birth Education class is actually a few weeks long. You go once a week and they go over the whole birthing process and what to expect, what you can do etc.

The Newborn Basics class is more of a "lab". They have stations where you go around and you can practice changing, burping, holding, picking up, juggling, dressing and hopefully not dropping the baby (lets just hope they are fake babies). That class is just for a few hours, but it should be fun.

I am looking forward to the Daddy Boot Camp. You get to learn how to make Baby Burritos. Contrary to popular belief, Baby Burritos are not a delicious Mexican treat... it's a baby swaddled in a receiving blanket... I am sure you can make Baby Burritos too though, I may have to start my own class. Jason's Baby Burritos. It's catchy.

Baby shower... wait a minute, that means the baby is coming!

This weekend is our baby shower. Alison's sister and best friend, Tina, are planning it down in Florida and Alison will be flying down there on Friday. She is really excited to see what Lauren and Tina have in store for her. :) I will not be going down since it is a girls only shower... I will be up here knocking a few more things off of my daddy-to-do list. I know Alison is really excited to see her friends and family. I am sure that our little baby isn't going to know what's going on with a whole bunch of people rubbing her momma's belly, but as long as she gets some good food, she will be happy. ;)

I think I have moved past the whole "I can't believe we are having a baby" phase and hit the "Ok, we ARE having a baby, now what?" phase. I knew there was a good reason for it to take 40 weeks grow a baby... its like a 12 step program of emotions. Well its really only a few steps that just go back and forth between panic and excitement. It definitely takes a while to wrap your head around it. The positive pregnancy test, seeing the ultrasounds, hearing her heart beat, feeling her kicks and loving her with all your heart. It's so incredible that you need those 40 weeks to comprehend what is going on and how it is going to turn your world upside down.

Beep... bee boop... Beep... bee boop... "Dad, you're so old!"

When our baby is old enough to play video games (if she wants to) they are going to be so much more advanced than the stuff that I played when I was younger. Last year for my birthday, Alison got me a Wii and I have downloaded a few of the older NES games on it. I recently got MegaMan which was a huge hit for me back in the day. I play it now and it looks horrible... its fun still (although really frustrating), but it looks pretty bad. I am sure that when she is old enough, she will surely ridicule the lack of motion sensing and thought reading controls lacking from the games her 'old man' used to play. Who knows, maybe I will still be up on those things when it comes to that time. I think it's much different now than it was when I was growing up. The parents to my generation didn't have video games growing up so they had no idea what was going on and kind of started in a hole. Maybe when I am 60 I can play some Playstation 9 with my grand kids, I might even let them win once in a while ;)

Have baby, will travel... well at least attempt to...

Our baby was at her second wedding this past weekend. Our good friends Gary and Samantha got married down in Florida and Alison and I were both in the wedding party. It was really great to get down there and visit with everyone for a little while. It will be much harder at first for us to travel after we have our little baby. I have been thinking about traveling after we have the baby and I know it is going to be much harder. Not only will we probably stop every 45 minutes, but we will also be listening to every Disney song imaginable (probably the same one repeating if I am lucky :-\ ). I am thinking that we are going to have to get one of those trailer hitch shelves to pile stuff on when we travel... either that or one of the pods for the top of the Murano {shudder}. I know that our first test in traveling will be trying to get down to Florida shortly after the baby is born to meet everyone that isn't able to come up and visit... should be fun. {crosses fingers} :) As hard as it will be, I am looking forward to being able to travel with my daughter. I remember the countless road trips when I was growing up and I actually had a good time on them. It was always fun to go to new places and get my seating area all set up for the trip, I hope she has some good experiences with the family trips as well. Even though the traveling will be hard, there are two words that make all of the "Are we there yet?" comments, bathroom stops 5 mins after getting gas etc worth while... Disney World.

Nothing spells baby like G-R-A-C-O

We are having a baby. As if the multiple positive pregnancy tests, the first ultra sound, setting up the room, getting the crib, and the first time feeling her kick were not proof enough we got one more slap in the face "You are having a baby" moment today. Alison's Aunt Ginger and Uncle Ron got us the stroller and infant seat for the shower. I opened the box up and put it all together and then I looked at it for a min. There is no turning back now, we are definitely having a baby and now we have a rolling billboard for it :).

Another thing I learned so far this week is that babies produce a lot of garbage... before they are even born. We have a box for the crib and all the packing materials, a box for the dresser, box for the light, box for the stroller... I don't think we had this much cardboard to recycle since we moved.

Everything is coming together now. It's almost kind of surreal. We have spent the last few months thinking of all these things that we had to do before the baby got here (at least I was) and now they are actually getting done. It's a nice "you can do this" kind of confidence boost. I know that confidence boost will go out the window as I am driving Alison to the hospital in the middle of the night with my pants on backwards... but at least it will keep me from staying up all night worrying about it (I hope).

This week on Cribs...

Alison's parents got us the crib for the baby's room and we picked it up the other day. We just got it put together and it looks really nice in the room. It definitely looks like a baby's room now. We also have the dresser that Bobbie and Grandpa Jeff & Eileen got us... it's in the garage for now until I can get some help bringing it upstairs. I will get a picture of that once it's up there.