Hiking near your due date

Always medically safe to hike around 7,500ft while you are days off your due date. Here are some videos of us at Poas. Live volcano here outside San Jose.

Baby preparations

Baby preparations take 1. As you can see this is a serious event. Renee actually refers to our car here as a one door as well.

Nuffin Noffins final womb appearance

Final ultrasound complete. Pre-Registation at hospital, check. Come to papa Nuffer.

Walks

We started trying to take more walks as per Uva's advice. The baby as she says is sitting a little too high still. The term used to describe the belly dropping in the final stages of labor is called lightening. Carrie has already had lightning and this is highly coveted by Renee. We have started getting up at 6 am to start our walks to that the baby will drop. Its a great time and very beautiful up here in the mountains. This time also affords me with 200 options to make false alarms on lightening.

Thanksgiving

We had a great thanksgiving with some friends Brian and Carrie and Uva "the grape" This photo of the bellies was talked about with Renee for months prior. That is a 14 lb turkey, 2 bellies, 2 babies. Isabella Taylor Bratton (7 lb 11 oz) and the baby soon to be formerly known as the Nuffin Noffin (8 lbs 7 oz). As suspected the cooking and preparations took place 48 hrs in advance. My grandma Jean told me that I should get used to not having Renee cook and that this thanksgiving was going to be very different. It was during this exact time that I was called in to help empty the turkey brine that had marinated for a full 12 hours. I told my grandma that actually it was quite opposite and a quote from Matt Waters came to mind. "That girl loves to eat" -MW.

Regulators- Mount up

These crazy videos can only be explained by the fact that in all the madness of packing I somehow had believed that the baby was coming the next day. So I guess this video shows what you need to do to prepare for a birth/pack combo.

Couvade syndrome

Of the 4 pictures above Renee floating on a raft is pretty self explanatory. However the other ones are something that fall under the couvade category.

Wikipedia defines couvade syndrome as - is a psychosomatic condition in which an individual close to an expectant mother, commonly her partner, experiences some of the same symptoms and behavior as the mother near the time of labor.

Guilty as charged.

When we first found out that we were pregnant, I was actually the reason for us going to the hospital. There was a brief stretch where I would walk out of my office and lie down and had begun to nap because I was feeling nauseous and tired. I kept telling her that something was wrong and strangely she was feeling the same. We deduced that it was a bad watermelon that was used for Gazpacho and we had mild food poisoning. While we were around San Jose I told Renee that I should have my stomach checked because something was feeling weird down there. As we were making our appointment Renee was making the Spanish jokes about me being pregnant. Someone was pregnant, it just wasn't me.

Thank god that I did not have one of those pot bellies that men get. My couvade was limited to slight morning sickness and heartburn. But it did allow me to run around the house and sing My my my my couvaddddddddaa. Like my sharona.

The funniest of the photos above is the ultrasound pictures above. The funny thing is that they are mine. Renee had gone back to the states last May I was here and still could not figure out what the stomach issue was. The doctor suggested that they check the abdomen. And 20 bucks for who can guess what that means. Well, its a guy getting an ultrasound (yes weird goo on the belly an all). I had my ultrasound about 2 months after Renee had her first. I can say that I was almost peeing in my pants with laughter when I found out they wanted to do one on me. I also wanted to pee in my pants because the doctors need to measure the bladder full and empty and then proceed to mash on your stomach.

When Renee returned home she saw the ultrasound pics on her desk and assumed that they were hers. However after closer examination I had to come clean about what had happened and realized that my couvade had reached an all time high.