Hormones are bad news

Now, I don't want it to sound like my part of this pregnancy is even comparable to my wife's, so remember that as I complain a bit.

Hormones and constant morning sickness do not make a pleasant person. It also is a recipe for drastic changes in mood. It's not too pleasant, mostly for her, but I get some collateral damage as well.

So we're at about the 7th week now. Our fist OB appointment is for this Wednesday where we should know more details. My wife is getting constant nausea, but hasn't thrown up yet. I don't know if that's good or bad, as I'm thinking that vomiting may alleviate some of the nausea. Or it could just be a peak of discomfort and go right back to the nausea she's been having.

So far we've found quite a few useful tools for dealing with the nausea.

• Ginger of all types. She's been eating lots of Ginger Chews and that has helped in a quick response, short term. Also ginger root pills.
  
• Tea has helped quite a bit. She's been drinking Peppermint tea, Ginger Tea, and the Yogi tea for would be mothers
• Lemon sniffing. Sniffing a fresh lemon helps quite a bit. It's another quick fix for sudden nausea.
• Lots of bread types of products. Whole grain toast, whole grain bagels, saltines are all very helpful.
  
• Taking Unisom and B6 vitamins. Unisom is a class A drug, as is B6 so no worries there. Taking a half pill twice a day has helped quite a bit with nausea as well as sleep.
• Massage has helped quite a bit. Anything from hands and feet, to legs, back, and shoulders. Stay away from the front, chances are she's tender/sore and won't like that.
• Sour candy works pretty well. She's mostly been using green apple Jolly Ranchers. They last a while and work fairly well.
• Eating 6-8 times a day in small doses. It's important to keep up nutrition, but not all at once. Having something in the stomach keeps it under control.
• Lemon flavored seltzer water has done pretty good. Some other bubbly drinks include real ginger ale and root beer.
  

We still have plenty of things to try out, and as we find some I'll post them here.

Positive!

So we've got official scientific opinion now, we're pregnant! It's scary and awesome all at once. I really can't wait for that day, which is projected to be near the end of July. It's really hard to put emotions to words right now. It's an awesome mix of emotions that are stirring up.

All quiet on the southern front

So it's been a few days since we had implantation bleeding, or what we think is implantation bleeding. That means in a few days we'll be able to get an accurate reading on a pregnancy test. I'm really quite excited as this means we'll be well on our way.

I really feel that this is it. I think we've been successful in our efforts, and now it's a matter of cultivating that baby into a healthy being.

On another note, there is more news on early detection of autism. Autism is one of the scariest things about having a child for me. Early detection leads to early treatment and a more effective treatment. This is promising, but really finding what causes it has to be a priority.

I've read theories on vaccinations, which has been disproved, on TV, more research needed, pesticides, and about a million other things. What I believe is that it is more of a combination. For instance, hormones or pesticides or some chemical in our food weakens the mind and makes it susceptible to damage done by TV. Not to say that's my exact theory, but it has to be a combination, otherwise it would be easier to figure out.

Potential positive

Another piece of good news, the wife thinks she is positive. She's getting implantation bleeding, or what she thinks is implantation bleeding. I'm super excited and over joyed at the prospect.

Election night

The wife and I sent out and voted Obama today. It's exciting this year, and it is hard for me to tell if I'm really inspired by Obama, or if I'm more inspired by the prospect that this will affect my child.

Obama is a positive leader. He thinks long term, and does not seem to do things on the short term. He is a big thinking, and a thoughtful thinker. We haven't had leadership like this since I've been alive, and I'm really excited at the potential that lies in the future.

This shows that anyone, if they are gifted enough and driven enough can become president. The final frontier is now a woman in the white house, and I hope to live to see that day.

The other thing that has inspired me is watching video of Obama taking his two daughters to the voting. He teaches them the importance of their voice, and that's something I can't wait to teach my children.

Exhausting

So, we've been getting down to business every night for the past week or so. I mean, I'm all for all that goes into conceiving a child and all, but it can be exhausting. I totally understand it when people say that it becomes like work. There's no option to not do it, to go to bed early, to just relax instead. We want a child badly, and by god we're going to get it.

So that's where we are now, the end of the cycle. We're exhausted and waiting now for about a week, and then we start testing. I hope it's positive, not only because I want a child and the sooner the better, but because I want to get the job out of those actions and put them back to love between us.

It's that time again

So we're about at ovulation time again. It's crazy how quickly that comes around. Good news, we try alot. Bad news, we limit it to once a day.

So along with fatherhood comes plenty of additional pressure to provide. Provide sustenance. Provide shelter. Provide care. Provide affection. Provide guidance. Provide stability. Provide leadership. Provide pretty much everything that child will need, especially at the beginning.

Then it evolves into the whole teaching to fish. I need to teach it at first to walk and to use the toilet. Then teach it lifestyle choices like diet and exercise. Influence positively towards education and hard work. It is a difficult balance between teaching discipline and iron fisted rule.

I always get worried about finding that fine line. I think my parents found that line well with me, but missed it with some of my siblings. Did they treat us differently? Probably, but how I could not tell you. It would take many lifetimes for me to study and find for certain that line. Looks like I am going to have to go with my gut, and I don't trust my gut much. I'm all about solid numbers and evidence. Man, who knows if I'm really ready for this?

Digital Rights Media

Okay, first off let me say I'm a big freedom guy. I like my freedoms and all that, and I definitely want to protect my freedoms so I may pass them on to my kids.

So, it should not surprise anyone that I'm anti-DRM. It's always been for my own personal benefit. I have multiple devices on my own that I use the same files on, why should I be restricted to listen to music in my living room but not my office or my ipod? No way am I paying three times for the same content that I use. I don't distribute outside of fair use.

Now that I'm married, it becomes even more of a situation with my wife having devices she wants music and video files on. And now with kids, no way am I paying for 1 file to be used for all my devices, all my wife's devices, and all my kids' devices, as well as any family area devices.

It just seems so frustrating to me that some of the media industries are trying to stop progress. They stand in the way with lawsuits and all that BS, but that kind of confrontation gets them no where. I think really what they're protecting isn't necessarily the old school methods of distribution, but really the giant automation that would happen if they caught up.

Right now, and these are numbers I'm totally making up, the music industry needs 1 part talent, and probably 2 parts bureaucracy, 2 parts marketing, 10 parts distribution. With the technolizing of the process, many of those jobs go away. I hate to say it, but time to adapt or get out of the way and find new work. It happened to the auto industry, and actually still probably is happening. Yes they fought it, but now many of those people are doing higher skilled jobs making more money. I just don't get people's aversion to change, especially positive change.

Change of plans

Stress has caused us to change plans on conception. At least, that's the theory. My wife has been going through some stress, and deliberately trying for a boy has only added to it. Consequently, we think that she hasn't ovulated yet.

Another prospect is that the test strips are not working correctly, or we aren't doing them correctly. And I know what you are thinking, how many ways can you pee on a stick? It's not the technique that is in question, but rather the amount of water my wife has been drinking. Apparently it can be too diluted to detect.

So, where does this leave us? Well, we're going to start trying to time it a few ways, and stop trying to choose a gender. It's not like we want one over another in a major way, we just wanted to pick to pick. We'll probably start predicting the cycle via CM and just general calendar prediction.

So we may have missed it this month, or not. We'll know in about a week or so I guess. At least there's lots of trying going on...

Inheritting a belief system

Something I've been giving thoughts to recently that gives me mixed feelings is will my children believe in the same things I do? There are plenty of things I disagree with my parents on, largely religion and politics.

I guess what's more important is the foundation of those beliefs. I need to learn not to look at just the surface. See, on the surface I don't agree with my parents on some major things, but the underlying beliefs are really what's important.

My parents big theme of raising their children is choice. Give us options. Give us knowledge and guidance, but don't force us into anything. I was given plenty of controlled freedom throughout my childhood. My parents walked a fine line between dictatorship and completely hands off. They let me screw up and learn from my mistakes, but they didn't let me make any game changing mistakes.

So how do I find that line that my parents found that allowed me to discover who I am rather than me being told who I am? I have no idea, and that kind of scares me.

Another aspect of it comes into religion. I grew up going to church, and not liking it. But it did give me a structured belief system, some of that general structure lives on in me today. My wife did not have that religion as a child, and she feels like something was missing. She wants our kids to have religion, and I do not.

I have strong beliefs and I don't like religion. We have yet to come up with a compromise, and I don't know if we will until we have the kid out here in the real world.

Politics as they relate to my kids

With the VP debate last night, and the current huge bailout proposals going on, I thought I'd give some thoughts as to how my politics have changed with the prospect of kids.

See, in the past I've been a long term thinking person in regards to politics and whatnot. And by long term, I mean well into my adulthood. Now, I think long past that, toward future generations. It's a subtle difference, but something that has changed my perceptions quite a bit.

I've also become much more environmentally aware. I was always trying not to be too wasteful, but now I try to conserve and protect. It does matter to me if future generations will have to clean up our mess.

What really scares me is not that I am thinking this way, but rather this is even before conception. What am I going to be when the little guy/gal comes into this world. I hear it's a mind blowing experience, and I'm excited and scared.

Family activities

One of the things I'm not good at but will need to learn to be is coming up with things to do. I've always had to find things for me to do, and then things for me to do with friends, and then to do with a girlfriend, and then with my wife. I'm not good at any of those really, and soon I'll have to do that for my child.

The thing about that that I hopefully will find easier, is that I went through plenty of those things as a child myself. I think the big things will be easy come up with. We all did things in our childhoods that helped build character, and things we know we missed out on that we want our children to do.

The small things will be difficult to come up with. Yesterday we went apple picking, which is what inspired me to do this post. That was a fun activity, and there were tons of kids there. I can see us taking our kids picking apples, or pumpkins, or whatever. But coming up with those on a daily or even weekly basis can be brutal.

Thankfully, I won't have to start thinking of things for quite a while, which brings a scary fact to light for myself... I don't actually know when that will be. Do I start finding these activities at 6 months? 3 months? 9 years? I have no idea. I have a general idea, and I'm sure I'll know it when it gets here. But I'd like to know now so I can prepare and come up with a potential time line.

How my kids will be smarter than your kids

After reading this article, I'm fairly confidant my kids will be smarter and more prepared than your average kid. You see, I'm a techno geek and even if my kids are not, they'll be in an environment where they are comfortable with technology. Tools like the Nintendo DS are extremely powerful and will be in my children's hands.

There are other learning games around like Brain Age and whatnot that don't help with specific skills, but help overall cognitive thinking. That, to me, is much more crucial than knowing your multiplication tables or how to spell specific words.

Even though my generation is still much more open to technology than any previous generation, I still don't see lots of my peers allowing their kids to play the right kind of games to push the development of their minds, even when the kids don't know that's that is happening. So I will expect my kids to be 50% above the average, and anything else is a big let down :)

Drought before the storm

So, the theory goes that before you conceive, you need somewhat of a male build up. That's great in theory and all, but when you're of child rearing age that becomes a bit difficult. So our drought has begun.

The reasons behind it is that you get not only more, but higher quality sperm all stored up. See, I'm making sacrifices for my kids already and they aren't even conceived! And when they're older and reading this, I'm sure they'll love reading that about their parents.

So other really annoying things I'm doing in prep for the big night include but are not limited to:

• Colder showers: I'm a scolding hot shower kind of guy, but heat kills those bad boys so I'm taking cooler showers than is comfortable with me.
• Exercising: Sure I've written about that, but a fit person is betting at bringing life into this world.
• Chugging Mountain Dew about a half hour before the act: Oddly enough they think a quick burst of caffeine makes the boys a bit faster for a little bit of time. Of course long term use causes them to die...
• Relaxing: See, my wife thinks I'm being lazy but I'm really trying to stay relax, stress is a sperm killer
• Keeping the laptop off my "lap": Heat kills, as I've said before, so the laptop, which gets especially hot when gaming, has been either on a tabletop or on my knees. Not too comfortable, and difficult to read in the morning without my contacts, but I'll do anything for those kids.

Beliefs

So, I'm not a big believer in religion. I think there is a god or higher power out there, but how should I raise a child? I was raised in a pretty god centric environment, and my wife was not. This sort of puts us at odds on this decision, but not how you'd think.

She feels something was missing in her childhood without any sort of spiritual guidance. She does not want our children to grow up the same way. She wants them to feel purpose that she did not feel, and to understand a belief structure.

Me, on the other hand, was raised in a religious household, being forced to go to church every Sunday and even doing youth activities that I did not want to do. I saw people not practicing what they preached and it made me sick. I saw a man made philosophy that was largely broken and often not fully followed. I saw plenty of people showing up to be seen, and having priorities all mixed up.

Now, this is not to say that I agree with the religion, but at least I understood it. I don't think most churchies know what they believe. They pick and choose what to follow and what not to follow. And then they only do that in the presence of other churchies. It drives me crazy, but yet I don't see it as all bad.

Is my wife right in that we need to raise our kids with some sort of religion? Should we teach them about various belief structures and let them decide on their own? I think the right call is somewhere in the middle, but finding that happy medium will not be easy.

My child's sports heritage

So, I'm a big Bears fan, originally being from the Chicago area. And with them losing once again today, it really makes me wonder if my kids will want to be like their daddy and follow my teams, or if they'll want to be different and pick teams that aren't mine.

So I figure it can be broken down into a few possibilities.

1. They want to be like their father and will follow the Bears and Bulls with affection. Sports will become a bonding experience between us and we will rejoice and suffer at the same time.
2. They will be like their father in that they are a rebel and pick teams like the Packers and Pistons, and cheer when my teams fail. We will not experience joy or sadness at the same time.
3. They will be influenced by their friends before I can sink my claws into them and enjoy whatever team is popular at the time. I'm sort of indifferent as far as this tactic goes.
4. They won't care for sports, taking after their mother. I guess I could live with this too, as long as they don't wear green and gold on Sundays.

Really scary stuff

My wife is a big Oprah fan, like many women, and the other day was this story on child predators. That stuff scares me to death as a future father, and current uncle.

Now I'm generally a trusting person, giving people the opportunity to prove me wrong. I don't know if I can take that perspective with my kids. I'm pretty sure I'll have to do some recon at the homes, and possibly some spying on my neighbors internet activity to ease my fears.

It just blows me away that people are out there like that. I can imagine myself doing some pretty horrible stuff, stuff I never would actually do but I can still see some outrageous circumstances to bring them about. This, this I cannot understand at all. I get that there are plenty of sexual freaks out there, into things I'll never understand, but I can respect that fact. One man's garbage is another man's fetish. But really, how? How can that possibly be something that someone is into?

Anyway, it's one of my greater fears for my children. I expect my wife and I to do more than what we really should be doing to investigate our kids' friends' parents, but without being able to read minds we'll never really know. that lack of control or information is really scary to me, mostly because the consequences for not knowing are so severe.

Anyway, I plan on doing some research into that law that Oprah is discussing to see what it actually does. Hopefully it's as good as she advertises, or at least a positive step in the right direction without stepping on our rights as citizens. It's a fine line, one that isn't very often walked, but one I highly respect. If I find anything substantive, I'll make sure to post it.

Doubts creeping in

So my wife just comes up to me and asks how I'd feel if we didn't try this month to get pregnant. I told her I don't see why we wouldn't, and would be pretty frustrated.

This caused her to bring up her actual argument, she's doubting whether we should just try for a boy, and not just try. She would be really frustrated and wants to just try. I still like holding some sort of power and control over the situation and would like to try for a boy.

See, she's starting to worry we won't get pregnant this month. It's about a 25% try for it in general, so we had to address her expectations. I don't know if she is very good at playing numbers games and odds, but the odds are we won't get pregnant this first try. Odds are decent it will happen in 2 tries, but really nothing is a guarantee.

See, this is the kind of thing that drives me crazy. It's a waiting game, where persistence pays off. My dad wasn't even supposed to have kids his sperm count was so low, but he fathered 5 (all with my mother, btw, he was no NBA star). It will happen, as long as we keep doing the things that physiologically need to be done.

Dreams

Ok, I'm not a big dreamer in general. Either I don't remember them, or I don't have them, it's hard to tell. Last night, however, I had a dream that we had a son sleeping between my wife and I. He was so small and fragile, I wasn't able to sleep (yeah, can't sleep in my dream) and so I just picked him up and held him all night. It wasn't an eventful dream, but it did pull up feelings of love and anticipation I knew were there, but weren't really prevalent.

It's weird the way we've been preparing for parenthood that it's become very real, and we haven't even concieved yet. I feel like my child is alive and well and someone I'm actively taking care of. Anticipation can be great and all, but I'm pretty sure it's going to try my patience. But I know I'll get nervous once the moment finally arrives.

What has changed since deciding to have a child

New running item; What has changed since having a child


1. I exercise more, not for vanity or even my own self interest, but in order to stay around longer for the child.

2. I've already started re-arranging the priorities for my purchases, and I want things more for my child than I do myself. What an odd feeling.

3. I always have an easy motivator when I'm in a rough spot.

More to come on this as I'm sure I'll continually think of new things that have changed in my life because of children. Some good, some not so good. We'll see.

To summarize

So to sum up where I'm at currently, we're set to start trying for real in about 10 days or so. We've plotted and planned this out quite a bit, my wife more so than me, and we're pretty much ready.

So we've got names planned, loosely at least. Things are still open for change on that front. We've determined that we are trying for a boy. My reasons are I like the fact that we can and it's easier to get a boy. It's my mini version of intelligent design, but it's actually based on fact and science!

We're planning on the hardware we will be buying to support this child. We have not completely agreed on all of those as of yet, but plenty of those are financial based. It's amazing to me just how expensive some of the simple designs are, and really how excruciatingly expensive some of the top of the line stuff is. I'm an elitist, and I want the best, but how can I justify spending $1400 on a stroller? It's a big pill to swallow, and already indicitve of the sacrifices I will be making for my child. At this point, I'm okay with it, but it's still not an easy thing to do.

We haven't decided on a birthing method either. I think we both prefer a natural, possibly water method. I'm just not so sure the wife can handle it. And on top of that, I don't know if I can handle seeing her struggle to handle it. I love my wife so much, seeing her in pain isn't easy. It will be hard enough seeing her nauseated for a couple of months.

I guess to sum it up, we're planning and I'm nervous and a bit scared. But we're still going forward with it, at least with the practicing the conception part.

And there was light!

Ok, so I've briefly discussed this with my wife, but I'm starting without her. She likes having editorial control over these things, but I think she'll like it all when she sees it.

So, a rundown of what my blog will be. My wife and I are about to start trying to have a baby and I want to document that process, and then possibly continue it on to what it's like being a father. This is for me, for my wife, and for my future kid(s). If anyone else reads and enjoys, well, that is just gravy.