Well This Is Better Than An Olive!

If you're curious about the size of your baby, here's another site that can clue you in, week by week.

As discussed last Sunday, according to What To Expect, my week nine baby is about the size of a medium green olive. Medium green olives are, as you might know, my least favorite of the green vegetables and/or fruits.

Fortunately, I've got American Baby on my side. And they've got their own system of baby size classification. They start around week four, with the poppy seed, and rapidly progress through sesame seed, sunflower seed, blueberry, and raspberry until arriving at week 9: grape. The green grape is one of my favorite green vegetables and/or fruits.

This system works pretty well, but eventually, they run out of fruit, and suddenly you discover that you're carrying an i-pod shuffle, or an iron in there!

I just hope the baby's not premature, because if it comes in week 36, according to these guys, Proud Mommy will be giving birth to a tennis racket:

Awwww! Isn't it the cutest baby ever?

Fun Ultrasound Facts

You knew that they do an ultrasound by taking that sensor device and rubbing it over Mom's tummy. You've seen it in a million sitcoms and movies in which someone is pregnant. What you didn't know is that there is another way.

Your very first ultrasound, when the baby is still a wee little thing, may require a little extra. If it's early enough, and the baby is small enough, and the kid is hiding off in some corner of the uterus, the regular abdominal ultrasound might not detect it.

If this is the case, you may very well get a vaginal ultrasound. The sensor is inserted, aimed the right way, and presto! You've got lub-dub heartbeats and a little smudge of a baby, right there onscreen. And you just know it's going to be the cutest smudge ever!

Seen Any Good Movies Lately?

Well, I never would have imagined it and it never would have occurred to me to ask, but it turns out that when you go for the ultrasound, you may be able to get more than just a printout of that hazy radar looking sort of picture.

Depending on your facility, you may be able to get a recording that you can play on your own computer. Be sure to check ahead of time, because some places use VHS, while others can make you a copy onto a DVD-R disc. In a couple more weeks, you might see a white blobby smudge right here on this very website.

Have You Caressed Your Groin Baby Today?

The other day, Proud Mommy talked me into doing this prenatal yoga video (aka watching wrestling) with her. She's done it a few times already, and I had no idea what was going on.

There are all sorts of poses and positions. You bend this way or that way. You stretch your leg or your arm. You squat or lean. All these poses have names you might expect originated from very elaborate origami figures.

I'll admit, I was struggling to keep up at times. Proud Mommy outstretched me left and right. Apparently, Proud Mommy outlistened me as well. Especially when it came to the groin baby.

Yoga instructor Shiva would occasionally mention that we should be caressing our groin babies. And I thought I was! But Proud Mommy kept wondering what I was doing.

Well, I was caressing my groin baby, of course! What do I know? Sure, I never called it my groin baby, but with all this yoga zen chakra wheelbarrow inverted crane technique lingo being tossed around left and right, I was just thankful that I at least recognized two words in a row. Granted, Shiva and the other yoga women were more focused on rubbing their bellies, but I thought they were just doing that to keep the video family friendly. I knew where my groin was, and if Shiva tells me to caress it, who am I to tell her different? There was a definite sense of pride in my one small area of yogic success. Who knew I had been doing yoga all these years?

Unfortunately, my pride in my groin baby technique was short lived. Once the video was over, further discussion with Proud Mommy revealed that what Shiva had been saying all that time was to caress my growing baby. Like the quirk of dialect that has some people pronounce ringer so it rhymes with finger, Shiva's growing rhymes with groin. Not carrying a baby inside me, I think I can be forgiven for the mistake.

I should have known it wasn't really yoga. I mean, who ever heard of yoga making you go blind?

Week Nine, Or, Good-bye Embryo, Hello Fetus

Here's an update from one of our favorite sites, What To Expect When You're Expecting. That's right, the people who brought you the book have a website too.

We've passed the embryo stage now, and the future baby is officially a fetus! The kid is cute too. No longer a lizard/alien hybrid, it's now about the size of a medium green olive. I'm not sure that's an improvement. I mean, why does it have to be the yucky olive? What, at week fourteen, is it going to resemble a road apple or something?

I guess the baby must have stopped off at Will Smith's house at some point, because it turns out it's ears are "much more prominent." On the organ side of things, the gallbladder, liver, and spleen are all beginning to grow.

The arm and leg buds are doing some sort of jerky movements. The baby probably picked up on the hand jive from when we watched Grease: You're the One That I Want. Unlike Proud Daddy, Proud Mommy is not quite old enough to remember the movie.

Here's an artist conception (snicker!) of what the baby might look like:



Page the OB-GYN, stat! My baby's growing inside a kidney!

No, no. It's just the uterus. I kid.

Hey moms: if you're feeling tired, it's just pregnancy fatigue. Be strong, and remember, you'll have plenty of time to rest once the baby is born. You've only got thirty-one weeks to go!