Second Ultrasound Appt - Week 18

Michael and I met Grandi Candi and G-pa Mike at St. Luke's in The Woodlands for our second ultrasound visit on Wednesday, July 28th. Unfortunately, we found out once we got there that this appointment was going to be just to check Baby Michael's heart. His heart looks great! But we were expecting an appointment like last time. We got ten more photos of our little guy, but he was pretty sleepy. (That may be because he and Mommy were up late the night before at Bunco.) Needless to say, Baby Michael was very still and trying to sleep. Most of the pictures we got were of his back and they don't show much.

Here is one where you can see Baby Michael's nose and his hand. My sweetheart!


Michael and I had on our Astros' gear since we were going to the game that afternoon. Dr. S thought she should make sure Baby Michael was showing his team spirit, so she changed the coloring. Here is Baby Michael, the Astros' fan.


I have another appt with Dr. B, my OB, tomorrow morning. My mom and her sister, Jan, will be coming with me to the appointment. My parents are taking a quick trip to Nebraska this weekend and I'm hoping to go with them if Dr. B says it's okay. I'll try to update after that appt, but I'm not sure there will be much to report. Thanks for following along!

Weeks 18 & 19

-Week 18 (Large Mango): Baby Michael weighs about eight ounces and is about six inches long. His arms and legs are finally in proportion, neurons are now connected between the brain and muscles, and cartilage throughout his body is turning to bone. All of these things combine to give him more control over his limb movements. Baby Michael is also being covered by a cheesy varnish called vernix caseosa. This protective substance is greasy, white, and made up of lanugo, oil from his glands, and dead skin cells. Vernix caseosa protects Baby Michael's sensitive skin from the surrounding amniotic fluid. Without this protection, he would look very wrinkled at birth.

-Week 19 (Small Cantaloupe): Baby Michael is about ten ounces and six and a half inches long. Most women are getting ready to find out what they are having during this week, but we found out during week 16 due to the need to check out his heart every two weeks until week 26. Baby Michael's testicles have begun their descent this week, though they are still located in the abdomen, waiting for the scrotum to finish growing so they'll have a place to drop into in a few weeks.

Week 17 Development & More

I am now 17 weeks pregnant with a sweet baby boy. According to my weekly emails and app, our baby is the size of a sweet potato, weighing 5 ounces and 5.5 inches long. We know that according to our ultrasound appointment from Wednesday that our baby boy is 7 ounces, so our baby boy is a little bigger that the average fetus at this time. {Basically, Michael and I are both tall, so our baby will also be a little bigger than average. I suppose we could start a poll for baby boy's birth weight, but I'll wait until we get further along.} Our baby boy's skill of the week is yawning! We were lucky enough to see this at our ultrasound this past week. Our ultrasound also showed his fetal movements that he has been busy practicing - twists, rolls, kicks and punches. I think I have already begun to feel some of his movements now that I know how active our little guy really is. Most women can feel movements as early as 16 weeks, but it's uncommon for someone with their first pregnancy. {I could be wishfully thinking!} Baby boy's nervous system is maturing rapidly. His nerves, now covered by a substance called myelin (which speeds messages from nerve cell to nerve cell), are forming more complex connections. The nerves in his brain are further specializing into the ones that serve the five senses. Baby boy's hearing is growing more acute, making him more conscious of sounds that come from inside my body. I guess he is bothered by my grumbling tummy just as much as I am now! :)

Michael and I are continuing to have daily conversations about the perfect name for our little guy. We had talks before, but now we know that we can focus on just the boy names. This helps out a lot! Nothing is definite yet, but we have quite a few family names that are really sticking with us. I learned from my mother-in-law to ALWAYS check the initials. When she was pregnant with Michael, my father-in-law tried to name him "Michael Vincent Patterson" or "Michael Victor Patterson," the initials - MVP. Perfect for my father-in-law, the baseball player!

We are preparing for our yearly week-long vacation to the Frio River. This year, it will be just the Pattersons and it will be the last time it is just Michael and I. Next year, our little family will include a 7 month old! What change! I have already begun to wonder what our little boy will look like. What color eyes will he have? Blue like his mommy or brown like his daddy? What color will his hair be? Blond like Mommy when she was little, or brown like Daddy's? Will he have Daddy's wonderful smile or Mommy's cute nose? What foods will he like? Will he want to play sports? Will he want to play a musical instrument? What will he want to be when he grows up? I'm sure these are all questions that every parent asks as they prepare for the birth of their child as well, so we aren't any different.

On a side note: As I have typed this post, Michael and his mom have been working on one of our baby boy's Winnie the Pooh blankets. I love how eager Michael was to just jump into this project while I typed about our little guy's development. He continues to talk about how excited he is and how ready he is to be a father. I know that he will be a fantastic father and that he truly is ready, even though neither one of us will really "be ready." Thanks for following!

It's a...!

Baby Patterson's First Profile Picture. Can you tell if it's a he or she? Neither can we!


As the picture says, Baby Patterson is a BOY! Again, I can't explain how this picture shows me the "boy parts", but I trust Marcia M, our technician. She said that she was almost 100% sure that our Baby is a boy. If he's not, she's going to buy me a Big Mac.


Here is a 4D picture of our Baby Boy's first smile!


Our Baby Boy's feet! How precious!


And here's how I know our Baby Boy is definitely a Patterson. He's sticking his tongue out at us!

Michael was very excited to find out finally what our little Baby was going to be. He is very happy to not be waiting anymore, as am I. I think we are all pleased to finally be able to use a gender-specific pronoun to talk about our little guy instead of constantly saying "the baby" as well. Thank you for your votes, but it seems as though only 9 of you were in the correct group! Oh well. Thanks for helping us pass the time until we finally found out. As I said in the previous post, we have 18 images, so if you would like more pictures to look at, email me. Thanks for checking in! (Time to figure out how to change the background to blue. Wish me luck!)

Our First Ultrasound

Grandma Carol and Great Grandma Pat arrived at our house around 7:15 on the morning of Wednesday, July 14 and we soon piled into my car for the 45 minute drive to Texas Children's Maternal Fetal Specialist in The Woodlands. We arrived a little before our 8:30 appointment, but were quickly called back to the ultrasound room by Technician Marcia M. {I'm giving her last initial because she said that both technicians are named Marcia and we may have either one of them at our future appointments.} Marcia M. got to work right away, squirting the cool tummy goo before moving the wand around to find our little Baby Patterson. I had had a pain near my right leg for about two days that Michael and I had decided was a pulled muscle. Marcia quickly found our Baby hiding in the area where I had been having pain. She was soon focused on her job, which was to take our baby's measurements and all sorts of data. The main reason I was called in at 16 weeks is because my Sjogren's Syndrome can cause heartblock in a fetus, so Marcia was soon snapping image after image of our Baby's heart. It was so fascinating to see the four chambers of our little one's heart working right there in front of us! Grandma Carol, Great Grandma Pat, Daddy Michael and Mommy Laura were busy watching the images of our baby move across the monitor and we were quickly asking "what's that?" many times. Marcia told us she was busy looking at the forest and didn't always see the trees as she worked, so she didn't know what we saw. She asked us if we were interested in finding out what we were having and she soon took a picture and moved the label to the image. We were all excited and speechless as Marcia continued to snap pictures of our baby. Marcia soon finished chasing our baby all over and went to get Dr. S.

Dr. S entered our room very soon after Marcia's departure and she quickly introduced herself and began to explain things. She talked about Sjorgren's and the heartblock that can occur in fetuses. She told us that this occurs in about 2% of pregnancies in women with Sjorgren's and went on to explain all sorts of scenarios that could happen and what we could do to help the baby. Grandma Carol, my mom, finally piped up and asked how our baby's heart was. Dr. S looked shocked for a moment and then said our baby's heart was completely fine! She proceeded to apologize. She thought that she had said that first off before telling us the worst-case scenarios, but I think we had thrown her off with the number of people in the room and all of the introductions and how each were connected to Baby Patterson. We soon moved on to what was going to happen next. I will be going to visit Dr. S every other week for an ultrasound to check on Baby's heart until we reach week 26. Research has shown that heartblock affects the fetus as early as 16 weeks, (which is why she had me come in now), and doesn't do anything after week 26. We were given a CD of 18 images, both the traditional 3D ultrasound as well as the new 4D and we will continue to add images at each appointment, so I guess we will have plenty of pictures of our baby before he or she is even born! :)

Oh, I suppose you were thinking that you would find out what we are having, huh? Guess you'll have to check the next post! :) Don't worry! It will be up in a little while and it will include PICTURES!

P.S. Baby Patterson weighs 7 ounces at this time!

The Daddy Perspective Episode 1

So I've been meaning to post an update sometime here but just haven't quite gathered my thoughts enough to do so. I've traveled a great many emotions since the morning Laura first told me. My immediate reaction was to shut down and try to process. This led to an instant overload and about 4 days of not sleeping. Once I finally settled down and realized it was going to be OK, I've gone from terrified to excited to confused to reassured and any manor of emotion in between. The bottom line is I am as ready as I think a person can be. Friends who have kids have told me there is no such thing as ready. My favorite quote so far is "The difference in thinking your ready and actually having a child is the same as the difference between shooting a bullet and throwing one." I'm sure I have no idea what I'm getting into, but I'm ready to find out. I've been overwhelmed at times and at other times it doesn't seem quite real yet. Two things have changed my mind on this whole process and they're quite different.

Firstly, hearing the heartbeat was one of the most incredible things I have ever experienced. There was nothing extraordinary about it. I was just sitting in a small room with my wife looking as regular as she always does and a doctor with what looks like an over sized game boy with a strange attachment. Life was just life until all of a sudden this strange swooshing sound turned me from some regular guy into a dad. All of a sudden my wife wasn't a girl I met in college, not just a cute girl I'd married, but the mother of my child. It was incredible. It's not often I tear up over things, I don't consider myself an overly emotional person, but I was absolutely overcome by what I was hearing. It was, so far, the most powerful moment of my life.

The second event wasn't quite so profound. The other event that brought me around to being ok with the idea of fatherhood was the World Cup. Stay with me here, I know that seems strange. I was watching the opening rounds of the World Cup and reading an article on the internet about the USA's bid to host the world cup in either 2018 or 2022. Innocuous enough, but a thought crossed my mind. If the States were to host in either of those years, then this child who was barely beginning to be formed would be 8 or 12 years old respectively. The thought of taking my own child hoisted up on my shoulders cheering on the red white and blue here on our own soil was the final nail. I am going to be a dad and it is going to be awesome. Sure there will be tough times. I'm sure there will be ups and downs, but I have such an incredible support system around me and such great examples of amazing parents that I'm about as optimistic as i can be.

I want to thank you all for reading and supporting Laura and I through all of this. It's a strange and scary and amazing ride. I'll update more as time goes on. Love you all.

Week 16 Development

-Week 16 (Turnip): Baby Patterson is now 5 inches long and weighs around 5 ounces. Open your hand and that might give you an idea of Baby P's size. He or she is beginning to form and accumulate baby fat. By the time Baby is born, body fat will make up about two-thirds of his or her weight. Baby P's ears are almost certainly working as any dog barking or doorbell ringing now startles Baby P, but also gets him or her used to these noises. Baby P's eyes are making small side-to-side movements and can even perceive some light, though his or her eyelids are still sealed. Baby P is continuing to practice sucking and swallowing in order to be ready for feeding times after birth. Also, in the next week or so, the pads on Baby P's fingertips and toes will be covered with completely individual swirls and creases, Baby's fingerprints. Wow!

I think that the next time I blog will be about what this little turnip is going to be and I wouldn't have to keep writing "he or she" and the other tenses of those as well. Thank you for continuing to vote. I am surprised to see that we are almost tied in votes. I know we will all be happy just to have a healthy Baby Patterson and I hope that is what Dr. S will be able to tell us, in addition, of course, to the gender. :) Have a great weekend!