shopping spree... err.. i mean nesting

so it's been a while since i did a blog post. part of it was because i was in prison (ICU month) and part of it was because we were busy figuring out what we'll need before mini-me arrives. what most call "nesting" is what i'd like to call reading-a-ton-of-consumer-reports-and-going-on-a-spending-spree-to-prepare-a-room-better-than-my-own-bedroom phase.

from cribs to strollers to gliders to baby monitors, we found ourselves reading reviews after reviews and watching youtube mom channels after channels. parental n00bs. i had no idea there were so many baby products out there! i'm pretty sure i only had a cloth diaper on me while i spent my day eating, pooping, peeing, sleeping then rewind. now they've got transforming strollers and mamaroos. insane.

anyway, we have about 100 days before D-Day (see what i did there?) and the nursery is coming along. i initially wanted a sports theme (read: michael jordan) but that was vetoed. eagles theme - vetoed. panda theme (read: AZN) - vetoed partly because it's hard to find cute panda bedding stuff. finally was jurassic park theme, which i conceded to cute dino theme. regardless, i'm buying this kid his first pair of J's fairly soon.

preggo myths and gender reveal reactions

https://www.anmum.com.ph

before the gender reveal this past weekend, crystal and i were treated to a slew of funny filipino pregnancy gender myths. for those of you who are reading this that are not of filipino-descent, please do not think of the philippines as a backwards-nation but rather one whose citizens revere their culture and roots. so without further ado, here are some of my favorites that i heard from my mom and grandma:


#1: if the baby bump is sharp/pointy, then it's a boy
#2: arm pits and neck darkening in skin color? boy!
#3: feeling extra glowy/prettier? pink it is :)
#4: mama's nose starting to look like yosemite sam? girl!
#5: baby bump is ridin' low, then it's a bouncin' baby boy
#6: craving sweets = girl; craving oily & salty = boy

let us know in the comments section of some of your favorite pregnancy myths that you've come across


so i'm half chinese and half filipino, and another funny thing is this deal with the chinese gender chart. apparently the legend says that this lunar calendar-based chart was found in an ancient chinese tomb and can determine with 100% accuracy (say whaaaa??) if your baby is a boy or girl. as soon as we told my parents we were pregnant (back in december), my dad apparently went straight for his chart and has been prophecizing the arrival of a baby boy! as if this 100% accuracy claim wasn't enough, he tells us that all first-borns in his family have all been males (him and his brothers went 6 for 6). although if you watch the video below, he exclaims "99 percent!!!" i guess despite his 2 100% arsenals, he was saving 1% for the girl.


not to be outdone is mama kane, who also had a prediction. she told us that she had not one but TWO dreams about baby d. she said on the first dream she saw a baby in a crib that was peeing. the pee apparently had a nice arching flow to it, which i guess would be hard to do if it was a baby girl. in her second dream, she saw a little asian boy running around that looked exactly like me. so if you watch the video below, you will hear her saying "dreams do come true" and "i saw this little boy and he is beautiful." i'd have to agree with her, a little me does sound beautiful...

it's a...

BOY!!!

wow! it. just. got. real. somehow knowing the gender of our baby makes everything seem for real now (as if it was just for funsies before). as many of you know from my wife's facebook posts, we had our anatomy ultrasound this past week. btdubs, just as terrifying as before.

initially, the tech told us that the baby was shy and didn't want to show us the good stuff. but after a lot of jiggling and moving around, we finally got to see him in all his glory.

Braeden Jaxon. we cannot wait until August!

 

 ...and the embarrassing photos of this child begins

proud grandparents!

the new lolo and lola sporting the onesie

great gramma!

guest post from my baby mama

since she doesn't update her blog often i don't think people are aware of it. so here's an entry i took from her blog:

In just 3 days we will know what baby bubsie is (fingers cross it'll show us its goodies). This is a huge milestone for us because we then get to start planning everything! As of right now, all we have ever envisioned is a little bubsie in yellow. Not that i plan on converting to the pink only or blue only stereotypes, but it would at least be nice to be able to envision the future of this bundle of joy.

People usually say that the mother can "sense" what the baby will be, but i don't know if my hunch is right. It is certainly not what everyone else is predicting. haha. All i know is that i will be happy with either. I just want a healthy baby.

Most people do not know that this pregnancy has been a very scary one for us. At the beginning, i was so nervous that something would go wrong that i tried not to become too attached to the idea of having a baby.  Once i finally got over this fear and stupid notion, and became excited about our new addition,  something actually did go wrong, and it made it that much scarier.

Shortly after the clock struck midnight on Christmas morning in our tiny little apartment, Dan came rushing to the bathroom where i sat sobbing holding the blood-soaked toilet paper. I could not even talk as i just sat their sobbing while he tried to calm me down. We drove the half-mile to the emergency room and waited to see the fate of this baby i had become so attached to. This was the first time i got to see our baby bubsie, just merely a blob on the ultrasound. Baby was still alive and the bleeding subsided but they did find a subchorionic hemorrhage and told me this could happen again as it is unpredictable.  This was a very scary time for us. We knew bubsie was still alive inside, but the thought that this bleeding could happen again was terrifying. We went home relived and happy to celebrate our first married Christmas.

I know that bleeding is fairly common in pregnancies but unless this happens to you, you have no idea how scary it is. I'm sure some of you mommas reading this understand what I'm am talking about. We just kept praying for bubsie because there is really nothing else you can do. I had two additional scares with bleeding episodes but thank goodness bubsie was ok and we got to have some extra appointments just for reassurance.

Another scary situation that has been happening is concerning my blood work, more specifically my antibodies. One of my initial blood tests was flagged as abnormal and this instantly caused lots of questions, not just for dan and i, but also for our doctors. The antibodies that were appearing in my blood were not common and no one really knew what it all meant. I think by far that is the most frustrating part, especially when they have to tell you the worst case scenario. I am still being monitored frequently and have repeat blood work done every 3-4 weeks just to check. Hopefully at the ultrasound this week they will be able to give us more information on the antibody issue and check to see if it is affecting the babie's blood at all.

But there is really nothing you can do but wait and pray that baby bubsie will be healthy.

3 days! Time is flying by and we could not be more excited.

what's in a name?

so how does billy s. put it? "that which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet." unfortunately a lot of things go into choosing a name, something crystal and i found out when deciding on what we wanted to call our baby avocado.

do we go with classic/traditional names or go with a modern/unique twist? do we use a middle name or go with the filipino-inspired 4 names (first, middle, mom's maiden, and surname)? of course we have to be careful and check the dictionary to ensure the chosen name doesn't mean something negative in celtic or latin or whathaveyou origin. then double-check the recent trends so that your kid won't be one of 8 "jacobs" or "sophias" in his/her class growing up. 

then there's the inevitable shortening of names that one must worry about. you may like "nicholas," for example, but hate "nick;" or may have fallen in-love with "abigail" but despise "abby." so you have to love the full name and the soon-to-be nicknames that lazy people may conjure up. another thing that came up (one that i think only the ladies think about) is how would the initials look, in case you inadvertently spelled "B.A.D." or "L.S.D."

needless to say, the process of choosing names for baby d took a while. for some reason, deciding on a girl's name took significantly less time than choosing a boy's name. i don't know what it was but a lot of my choices were vetoed, including: Bruce Kal-el, Chalupa Batman, Michael Jordan, Tyrannosaurus, Optimus, Maximus, or anything remotely gladiator-esque. and of course, i vetoed some of crystal's suggestions for a girl's name that just sounded "hot." no. we can't have any of that.

so in 3 long weeks we find out if this kid's a "blue" or a "pink." though if crystal would let me dress the kid, even a boy would be pullin' off pink.

"ready for my close-up"

sweaty and nervous. well, sweaty is nothing new to me because of my hyperhidrosis, but nervous? who knew waiting to have a little sneak peak of your baby could be so nerve-racking?! but there i was in that dark room staring up at a monitor, hoping the little one's got "ARM 1" and "ARM 2" as well as "LEG 1" and "LEG 2."

of course tiny dancer didn't make it any easier on the tech. it took a while for the label "ARM 2" to come on-screen and by that time my palms were literally dripping! paging dr. drysol, you are needed in OB Rm 3...

so what if i left that visit a little dehydrated, it was worth it. baby d is a groover. plus i see crystal's nose made an appearance, which admittedly is way cuter than mine.

cat's out the bag

i guess our families are trustworthy people. no one spilled the beans. crystal's coming up on her 12th week in a couple of days and i guess now's as good a time as any to let the book of face know... 

but how do we break the news? so many people do this nowadays and i've seen my fair share of creative ones. but i'm coming off a 24hr shift at the hospital and the last thing i wanted to do was try to "top" other people's baby announcement. we figured a simple throwback to our save-the-date would do, except this time, hit you over the head with hints about the arrival of baby d

as you can probably tell from the side by side, i've been doing my best to have sympathy weight gain (i believe they call this couvade syndrome) hahaha.

shhh... it's a secret

so we're pregnant. i gathered my buddies on g+ hangout just last week to share the news. but before then, crystal and i were still wondering who should know and when's the right time.

first things first - family. since crystal and i found out just before Christmas, we thought what better way to tell them than during Christmas time (plus, it saves us from buying "big" gifts for our parents since we're counting the news as a "present" huzzah!). however, we wanted to be careful since we certainly didn't want to dominate the whole Christmas scene with our baby bomb.

up first was the dometita family. we bought a card for my parents that read: you've been promoted to lolo and lola status. lolo and lola in filipino means grandpa and grandma. at the same time, we gave my grandma some bibs just so the hint sinks in quicker. mama d and gramma d were both elated. i think my dad was either in shock or just didn't get the hint quick enough, hahaa. men...

then we travelled to NC just before our honeymoon and got to share the excellent news with the kane family. we waited until everyone received their gifts and saved ours for last. we wrote a little poem in the card and gave them a baby's hug-a-bible, something the new grandparents can read to the baby while babysitting.

after family, we kept it on the dl for a while. i guess crystal's baby books suggested to wait until around week 12 (when the baby is the size of a plum.. yes they have weird fetal size to food charts) to share the news. though i don't think plums have anything to do with it, it's just that the rates of miscarriages tend to drop significantly after the first trimester.

so for now.. only family, my best men, and crystal's bestie. well, them and this blog, which for now is still set to private

how i found out

2013 has been one hell of a year. i survived intern year, married my one and only, and found out i'm about to be a dad... just before the turn of the new year. i will likely never forget the moment when crystal sat me down to tell me she was pregnant.

she had just gotten home after driving for hours, coming back from her lab course in maryland. usually after not seeing each other for a couple of days, she can't stop talking about her day and asking me about mine. but this time, she was extremely quiet. too quiet. then she started bawling as she handed me 2 pee sticks bearing the news. i guffawed (yes, i believe that would be a good description of my reaction). poor crystal, she knew she was pregnant all day but had to sit on it the entire day. to make matters worse, she was afraid i would be upset about the news as we weren't necessarily trying for a baby. but as i recall telling my best man, we're not not trying either. and boy was crystal worried about nothing, i couldn't be happier.

of note, she ended up buying 2 more pee sticks of different brands for confirmation... as if the first 2 plastic messengers were incompetent. fortunately, results confirmed.