Dominica and I have been holding out for the last several months from publicly announcing on SGL that we are pregnant but have decided that, since today is our major halfway ultrasound appointment, to go ahead and to let everyone know! The quick version is that we are due on November 21st and no, we do not know if the baby is going to be a girl or a boy and we are trying not to find out.
We found out that we were pregnant in April on the weekend when we went to Dominica’s parents’ house and my father drove out to visit with us. We found out the in the morning before driving up there so it was rather an excitable weekend although we hadn’t seen a doctor yet so we did not announce it to our families just yet – although Francesca knew right away.
Today is our third ultrasound appointment although the two previous were just early screenings. Today is the “big” ultrasound where they do all of the careful measurements and everything and when the doctor knows what the sex is of the baby. We were, of course, rather nervous about the appointment today even though the previous screenings went well.
Everything went really well today and all indicators point to the baby being completely healthy. We were successful at not finding out what the sex of the baby is as well. So we are probably going to be able to be surprised in late November.
We had a bit of a scare about two months ago when an early blood test informed us that Dominica is a carrier of cystic fibrosis. CF is a common disease among people of European decent and extremely common among those with Celtic backgrounds. As Dominica is part Irish and I am part Scottish this caused some concern. CF cannot manifest itself unless both parents are carriers but when they are the chance of it manifesting is 25% which is extremely high. That is why I had to have blood work done recently. Fortunately, I am not a carrier of CF so there is only a 25% chance that the baby will be a carrier and an immeasurably nominal chance of CF manifesting – requiring a failure of the known laws of genetics.
For those who follow SGL regularly you may have already realized that we are house hunting with the intent of moving somewhere by November 1st when our current least at Eleven80 in Newark is up. Our decision to move back to New York State and to move up the Hudson Valley towards better schools, more open space and lower travel time to our parents’ homes are mostly based on the fact that the baby is coming at that same time. It is causing a bit of a panic, however, that we will need to move “somewhere” just twenty days before the due date!
Our emergency backup plan, should we not manage to buy a house before our time runs out, is to leave Newark and to move in with my dad near Rochester so that we will have a stable home right when the baby comes. We will stop house hunting for a month or two and then start looking again as soon as we feel that we can handle moving if we were to find something. My job is alread prepped for the possibility of my needing so physical location flexibility and everyone is on board. We are hoping that we can find a house before them, though, and be moved in in late October, but buying a house is a long and complicated process so we are trying to be realistic.
Yes, we do have names picked out for the baby whether it is a boy or a girl but no, we are not announcing them. We do have ultrasound pictures to show but no scanner in New Jersey so we will post them to the Flickr feed as soon as we are able to get them scanned – most likely this weekend if we go to my dad’s house for the weekend.
I got up early, around seven, and started working from home right away so that I would have some time in and all of my work “caught up” before needing to leave for a while to go with Dominica to the doctor’s appointment that she had this morning. I worked for a little over two hours before we left just after nine thirty. The doctor is right next door to an IHOP and her office – literally all on the same block – which makes going there extremely simple.
After the appointment we ate a late breakfast at IHOP and then I dropped her off at work. We are very thankful that my job gives us the flexibility for me to deliver her to and from the office when we need to do so rather than making her run me back to Newark and then to drive herself back to Totowa. She would never have been able to get to work or else I could not have gone to the doctor’s with her.
I worked the rest of the afternoon and then had to run back to Totowa to pick Dominica up from work as I had the car for the day. Oreo appreciated getting to spend the day with us either in the car or at home with me in the afternoon. He had a nice long weekend. He is only going to be at daycare for two days this week, Tuesday and Wednesday, as Dominica and I both have Friday off from work as it is the Fourth of July.
Dominica and I got back to Eleven80 and I worked for another couple hours since I had had so many long interruptions today. We got dinner from Blimpie down the street and relaxed most of the evening.
And, of course, please remember to vote for Andy’s OrbTrak contest entry in the Dice Tech Challenge.