Bump Endorses Obama

Although not a super delegate, or able to vote officially, we wanted everyone to know that The Bump officially announced her endorsement of Obama via 2 kicks to Rhea's belly this morning.

Obama and Clinton both lobbied for The Bumps endorsement, but following Obama's speech last Tuesday, The Bump was quoted as saying that Obama "can bring us the change we so desperately need by bringing us together."

As they say, every little bit counts.

Congratulations on another important win Barack.

Ok, we've kind of sucked at keeping the blog updated recently....

But hey, cut us some slack. We're having a baby, remember?

So, why so long without a post to the blog? Well, for starters, we're nesting. And snuggling. And talking about baby things. Like how much she's going to weigh when she's born. Or how old she should be when she gets her ears pierced. Or whether she'll be one of those babies that giggles when she has a bath. Important stuff, everyone.

And then there's poor Rhea. Who has started to waddle when she walks. Which is incredibly cute, but takes alot of time out of each day.

Anyway, here's the news:

This is our new Doctor. He rocks. Kind of makes our last guy look like a first year resident. His name is Dr. Jacques Moritz and he's affiliated with St. Luke's Roosevelt hospital which is where we plan to have the baby. He's also a medical correspondent on ABC news.


















At out last appointment Rhea had to have a glucose tolerance test which checks for gestational diabetes -- a high blood sugar condition that some women get during pregnancy.

Poor girl had to drink a sugar solution that contained 50 grams of glucose and get it all down in five minutes.





























We've started to do a little clothes shopping. I'm a bit concerned this could turn into a problem. Yesterday I went to get 2 bagels from the bagel place a block away and somehow came back with 2 new outfits for the little peanut. Here's one of the dresses we picked up recently.





























For all of you who are worried about how Rhea is doing, don't worry. I'm making sure she gets all of the love, attention, and endless pampering she deserves. And believe me, it's hard work everyone...

Bump Pop Art: 24 weeks

What's saved on the DVR at the Beck household?

I know. It's sad. Very very sad.

The "man police" should kick my door down and smack me over the head with the remote.

I remember being so excited the day we got our first DVR a few years back. It was the perfect invention. Pausing live TV. Fast forwarding through commercials. Timeshifting. And, of course, never - ever - having to watch TLC's What Not To Wear again.

The DVR was one of those rare devices that profoundly impacted the way we lived our lives. And we found it hard to imagine how we ever lived without it. I loved my DVR. And it loved me.

How then, did the perfect man-gadget get reduced to the timeshifting equivalent of "What to expect when you're expecting?" (Guys, sorry, that's the 1,000 page book that takes you week by glorious week through the different stages of your wife's pregnancy. She will love this book. And she will want you to love it too. Love the book! Diet, medication, flu shots, cat ownership, false labor, vitamin supplements, cramps, poopy diapers, ultrasound, breastfeeding...it's all in there. And it's completely unavoidable.)

Anyway, over the years I had become an expert at monitoring "the list." I never let it fall below the 75% threshold of man-appropriate shows. Sure, every now and again a few episodes of “Grey’s Anatomy” (or "Grey's" as we sometimes call it) would start to stack up....but I would quickly recalibrate (delete) as necessary. And if Rhea ever asked, "What happened to last Thursday's episode of Grey's Anatomy?" I would simply look confused and say, "Honey, I'm pretty sure you watched that one the other night. You remember, the doctors were wearing scrubs..... and Dr. McDreamy looked cute.... and then he did some stuff that upset Meredith....and then she started to whine about her life.... Remember sweetie? You must have deleted it. "

The point is, that, by and large, there were significantly more shows about motorcycles, surviving in the wilderness, and sports than there were about weddings, makeovers, or babies. And it was good.

But somewhere along the way I took my eye off the ball. Maybe it was the purple haze of pending fatherhood bearing down on me. Or perhaps it was the Irish Car Bombs with the guys after work. I don't know. But before I knew it, our entire list was made up of shows about baby showers, birthing centers, and pre-natal yoga. And the worst part about it is that I didn't even know this was happening. And now I'm worried that my wife is spiraling out of control. She's addicted. She's binging on baby shows. And I'm not sure how to stop it...

A Public Body

Yesterday, I was at my desk in the middle of an important phone call with one of our company's long term consultants. I was hunkered down in front of my computer, with the work scowl (you know the one) plastered all over my face.

Our company accountant walked in and signaled that he needed to talk to me, so of course I put the caller on hold and gave him my attention. " You know," he said gravely, "you're not supposed to be eating canned tuna."

HUH?!

Last week, I visited one of my mom's work friends. As soon as I walked in the door, she began to unzip my winter coat and move aside my scarf. "What's going on?" I asked, confused and a tiny bit alarmed.

" I want to see your belly!" she demanded, not stopping the strange striptease.

I am assured that this behavior is only likely to get worse.

We live in a culture that worships the ideal of personal space. Scot and I, I must admit, are among its chief proponents. We observe the unspoken rules about distance between customers at the ATM. We'd rather stand than squeeze into the last seat on the train. We sit as close to the aisle as we can in movie theaters, never next to people if we can avoid it. We let restaurant patrons dine in peace rather than rubbing elbows at the last available, badly placed table. Most importantly, we are actively, fiercely disdainful of those who fail to observe the rules.

Ever since I became belly-icious, the rules don't apply anymore. It turns out that when a woman is pregnant, whatever her personal disposition, she should happily consent to be poked and prodded by those who don't know her well enough to know how much she hates it. She should smile as mere acquaintances rub her belly and touch her face while remarking at her "glow". They fail to see that in my case at least, this isn't glowing, it's glowering.

I do not belong to myself anymore. My very body now belongs in the public sphere. I am progenitor, rub me for luck. I can no longer be trusted to make good food choices, a 54 year old childless part time accountant must oversee what I eat.

Friends counsel patience. But I worry that I will snap.

After all, I think she can hear me and I don't want her to think that mommy is a loose cannon.

Except... it ain't all bad. Scot and I were at the Clinique counter the other day, and the saleswoman was, typically, very interested in my belly. I smiled till it hurt. Then, on the way out of the store, I opened my shopping bag and realized she had slipped me at least $50 worth of free stuff. Good stuff, including my favorite, expensive lipstick- full size tube at that. I showed off my bounty, pleased as punch.

"See", Scot laughed, "that's what you get for being nice."

Bump in 3D!

We had our second ultrasound a little over a week ago.

This one was the anatomy scan where they measure everything. Heart, kidneys, bladder, stomach, brain, spine, and sex organs.

Everything's looking really good.

They did a quick 3D scan for us. It's actually way too soon to get a real look at the bump....but you can see her little hands and some of the face. The doctor had a hard time getting a clear shot of the face because she was pretty active in there.

For those of you who have been keeping track of the trials and tribulations with our Doctor, Yoda, he's been fired. More to come on that in the next day or two.

Scot vs the Snoogle

Now, it's important to mention how much I adore my husband. Even though we'd been dating for more than five years before we tied the knot, I still think he's the bee's knees. When I see him dressed up, or down for that matter, I still say to myself- "Damn, girl"

This is a man who makes me dinner almost every night and all I have to do is set the table. Yes, ladies.

He fills his pockets with ginger candy because he knows how much I like them. Uh huh.

On the weekend, he says things like " Why don't you take a nap while I clean up?"

Let the church say Amen!

I would say more about what runs through my mind when I think about him, but my parents and my in-laws are going to be reading this, so I'll just make my point by saying how happy my husband makes me.

Scot is a good man.

Then, my tummy started growing. I woke up with sore muscles from my back being misaligned during sleep and I spent nights tossing, turning and waking up even more cranky than usual. I began making noises about getting a pregnancy pillow; he looked skpetical and darkly remarked that it would be like having a third person in the bed. (Again for the sake of the parents, I'll omit the obvious aside.)

In the end I was sad and because he is primordially programmed to fix any displeasure of mine, we found ourselves late one Friday night at the Babies R Us. We brought home a five pound ivory bundle of joy and I eagerly laid it out on the bed, under the covers. I got in and snoogled up against it, sighing with pleasure as it worked its magic on my neck, back, knees and ankles.
The next morning, cooing with delight, I suddenly realized Scot had been right.

The Snoogle was a bad idea.

Frankly, there's no way he can compete. The Snoogle is on demand bed-time cuddle. It never gets too hot in the middle of the night, or needs to change positions, or has to worry because it needs a drink of water and doesn't want to risk waking a tired pregnant woman by easing out of the cuddle. No! The Snoogle is all cuddle all the time. It is perfection, and that creates a powerful, insurgent thought- That there could be something, in some capacity, better than Scot; he is not infallible.

This was a mutinous thought, and I had to keep it at bay. But I couldn't help it. Every night I literally enfold myself around the Snoogle, pull the blankets over my chin, shiver with pleasure gasp!, turn my back to my husband. Very slippery slope, indeed. I felt powerless to stop it, torn between the two. How was I to choose? I couldn't imagine ever going back to the plain rectangular pillow, after the discovery of this treasure, and my wonderful soul mate had the inconvenient habit of occasionally needing to move during the night. Perhaps I could have them both.

Last week as I embarked on my night-time ritual with glee. Scot looked over at me, and said unblinkingly, with an eye to all at stake- " Just so you know, I'm throwing that thing out the window the day you have this baby." And with his own smile and sigh of pleasure closed his eyes and went to sleep.

Change is good...

Ah, Friday night in the big city. What guy doesn't love it.

Champagne. Stretch limos. The velvet rope. A model on each arm. Simply the best.

But with a baby on the way, lately I've been thinking I may need to start preparing myself for the fact that some things will change. I may need to "tweak" my lifestyle a bit so it's more suitable for a husband and "Daddy-to-be." And cut back on a few things. Like the limos, for example. (Which I'm actually ok with. Seriously, with all the talk about GREEN living and the environment, it really is irresponsible to be carting your models around from club to club in a gas guzzler like that...)

Anyway, all I'm saying is that a man's got to ease into change. It can't just hit him over the head like a ton of bricks. Or in this case, a Bugaboo FROG Stroller with flowing suspension, a 3-position tilting seat, and swivel wheel suspension for easy maneuverabilty.

Or can it?

Case in point: December 28th. The Friday after Christmas. Baby's 'R Us.

I'm not really sure how it happened that at 7:30 PM on a Friday night I was on a subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan to Baby's 'R Us with my pregant wife...but before I knew it I was traveling up the escalator in search of a "Snoogle."

The nice thing about Baby's 'R Us is that like the clubs in New York, it does have different floors with different themes.

But unlike the clubs in New York, all the women were pregnant. And most of the guys looked tired. Dead tired. And, of course, there was no bartender.

Anyway, you get the point. I snapped a few photos of the trip.

Guys, close your eyes. Ladies, enjoy Baby's 'R Us in all it's glory on a Friday night in The Big Apple...




This little gem is a "Top Pick." It's a breast feeding system. And it scares the hell out of me!




Not a BMW or Audi in the bunch...




















Rhea taking a test drive



















I love how they market all of the products at Baby's 'R Us. Such cute names. Like "Teeny Towels. " And "Bundle Me Khaki." This one's my favorite. It's called "My brest friend." Without the "a."






Me, chillin' out in the VIP lounge...














One Snoogle.

Mission accomplished.

Seriously, after seeing how happy Rhea was after we got this thing home, there was no denying it. This was one of the best Friday nights out in NYC I ever had.

Change is good...

In the blink of an eye

This morning as I climbed out of the subway, a man approached me and said "What a pretty baby." Now, maybe it's because second trimesters are renowned for making smart women feel like they got stuck with Paris Hilton's intellect, but I looked at him and scowled- "How do you know?" Was this guy prescient? Some kind of baby whisperer?

I stood there staring down at my belly. A few seconds later, it dawned on me that under my heavy winter coat, no one can see my bump just yet. He wasn't actually talking about my baby- he was talking about me!

Now, living in this crazy city, a woman can bear a strong resemblance to a cyclops and still get hit on incessantly, so it's no boast to say that I get my fair share of come- ons. In the last few months, though, whenever I'm approached on the street, I'm shocked. To myself I haughtily think, "Can't they tell that I am above such tawdry approaches? I'm building a a human life here, a placenta and an assortment of a trillion cells that makes one person, unlike any who came before or after. Is he really trying to hit a sister up for the digits?! "

No telling how puffed up I would be if I were carrying multiples.

But then my progressive feminism tapped me on the shoulder and asked- "And why can't you be pregnant and super sexy? Don't fall into the trap of being a breeder. You better put some lipstick on and stop acting like fertility is all you're good for!"

So I dutifully dredged around in my hideously overcrowded purse (only yours truly walks around with a 600 page novel and a copy of Us weekly in a shoulder bag) but all I could come up with is some chapstick I got for free at the dentist's office.

With an ironic smile, I looked at my sensible two inch heels and my brand x chapstick and thought- " How things do change in the blink of an eye."

Bump's First Christmas Tree...

"Size matters not. Impatient you are."

Let me begin by saying, we're educated people. And we did do our homework. We googled, read some articles, checked qualifications, education, board certifications, hospital affiliations. We even had a one-on-one interview.

So by the time we had selected a doctor to guide us through one of the most important stages of our lives, we were feeling pretty good.

Part of having a good pregnancy and childbirth is working with an obstetrician you can talk freely with and with whom you feel safe and relaxed. The other, probably more important part, is having an obstetrician who can count. Sorry, that was mean. (Just kidding doc...)

Anyway, on our first visit to "our guy" (did I mentioned he's the Vice Chair of Obstetrics at a prominent NY hospital) he quite confidently told us after the exam that we were only 5 weeks pregnant. We both looked at him a bit cross-eyed, since Rhea had done a few calculations of her own and had determined rather unscientifically, that she was about 10 weeks pregnant. When he asked her why she thought that, she said, "well, my belly's pretty big and I can't button my pants."

To which he responded like Yoda explaining the intricacies of "the force" to a young Jedi, "Size matters not. Impatient you are." (Actually, what he said was that the size of the belly varies significantly depending on the woman, and that the size of Rhea's bump was due to hormones.)

At our last visit he told us we were around 10 weeks. So going into our sonogram yesterday, we were under the assumption that we were somewhere around 12-13 weeks. When the image of our baby flashed onto the screen, I said, "wow, that thing looks pretty big for 12 weeks!" At which point our periontologist arched one Russian eyebrow, and said, "12 weeks? This baby 17 weeks." She did a few measurements and confirmed her suspicion.


Now, I'm not saying our Doctor doesn't know what he's doing. But what I am saying is that when your doctor predicts how far along you are in your pregnancy, he or she should probably fall within a certain margin of error. Like 1 or 2%. Or in pregnancy-land, 1 or 2 weeks.

Our guy was off by almost 6 weeks!

That's like Gallup reporting that Hillary or Barack have the nomination sewn up, and waking up the next morning and finding out that Chris Dodd won.

Anyway, the good news is that everything was looking perfect. On Monday we'll be calling Yoda for an explanation.

To see the baby, click on the video below. The thing coming down toward the baby is the sonogram device that the periontologist presses into the belly. If you watch carefully at the beginning, you can see it come down and then the baby's arm reaches up to push it away.