( The picture of Chase doesn’t make sense until the end. Sorry) Today I met with the last of three pediatricians that I had interviews with. I have met with two male doctors, one young and new to the practice and one older with lots of experience. I really liked the older doctor I met most recently and was thinking about going with him until I me Dr. Hurwitz today. Wow, the fact that she is a woman made such a difference. She was less about the facts and more personal, I really liked her personality and she has birthed and breast fed 4 children of her own. Big advantage over the men. Anyway, I’m done going to those appointments which is nice.  Now we just need to make a decision. The “D” word is big around here, we feel like there are so many things to decided on, one after another. Some of the most recent ones are which air condition company should we hire for a new a/c unit, should we buy new window for the baby’s room, which stroller will work best for the long run, when can we go get our taxes done, which video camera should we get, who should we have re-upholster the glider,  WHAT SHOULD WE NAME THE BABY IF IT IS A BOY. And the list goes on and on. The problem with decisions is that we are REALLY bad at making them, other than picking each other to marry, moving to the keys, moving to Sarasota, buying our dog, picking a church, and picking careers, we are HORRIBLE at decisions. For example, we decided to buy the cheapest tile we could to retile the house after a small flood from the wash machine thinking it didn’t matter since we would be selling the house and moving into something bigger within a year. Well,  here we are 2 years later with WHITE tile that is impossible to keep clean and drives me nuts.  Oh another another great example is after researching dogs for months and buying our  weimaraner, Chase, it took us TWO WEEKS to name him. He thought his name was buddy. So…this season of decision making is no fun for us. We over analyze everything and usually end up wishing we  had done something different. At least we are still both ecstatic we decided to start a family, no regrets there

Ok, so we are really excited about our new camera, it’s pretty fancy and in an attempt to learn how to use it before little Dub comes we wanted to try it out. We have a lot of learning to d, but here are a few that turned out cute. 

 We finally have some new pictures from our new camera of the growing bump. 

I had my “7 month/28 week” doctors appointment yesterday and it went really well. The baby’s heart beat is still strong, all of my lab work came back negative, and my weight/size is right on track.  The doctor confirmed that the sharp pain I’ve been feeling in my hip region just this last week is probably the sciatic nerve being pressured. I’m not a fan of this nerve so far, though I do prefer it over the stretching abdominal pain that has seemed to lessen in the last week. 

We met with our second pediatriation today and we really liked him. He has been practicing for over 20 years and seems very confident while still having a gentle demeanor.  I liked that they had separate waiting rooms for sick and contagious kids. (The baby is kicking like crazy as I’m typing this, it is hard to concentrate because it kind of tickles.)

I have been having  crazy dreams lately. Last week I dreamed that I could feel the babies foot through my stomach and decided to somehow open the side of my stomach and pull out its little foot. I proceeded to pull the second leg out so I could play with both of the babies tiny feet. It was great, I was walking around with two little legs dangling from the side of my stomach and thought nothing of it. Then two nights ago I dreamed that after a long lonely hike in some mountains I was confronted by an old man who reminded me that I was alone because Andy had died. I started crying and the old man held me for a while.  I finally woke up when I realized that I was really crying. My face was soaked and I was sleep crying. When I told Andy about it in the morning I actual started to cry again. Hopefully I can get an uneventful night’s sleep tonight, I know there won’t be many in the days to come.

Andy and I just had dinner with my parents at O’Leary’s Tikii bar on the Sarasota bay.  The sunset was perfect by the way, I love living in Sarasota. Anyway, a conversation came up about the diaper bag I just bought and how I want in embroidered with a “W.” My Dad asked why not “Wells” and Andy replied that we wanted “W” for little Dub. My Mom and Dad started laughing because they NEVER knew that “DUB” derived from  the word “Double-U.” They just thought it was some strange little inside term of endearment that we made up out of thin air. So perhaps we were naive in thinking that the connection from Wells, to W, to Dub was obvious. I hope this clears things up for anyone who may have been wondering where our little nick name for the baby came from.

Andy and I had a great Christmas with our families. We spent Christmas eve with the Wells family, Christmas day with the Botts, and went up to the cabin with my family for the long weekend. Andy and I agree that one of the highlights was playing with DJ & Derek’s nerf guns at Aunt Sues house. It was great, the kids and the “young adults,” like us, were running around the house shooting each other with nerf bullets. We may have caused a little chaos, but that’s Christmas. We also received a new camera from my Aunt, it is a pretty fancy one that will be great for taking pictures of little dub. Andy even got a chance to catch a few bass on a canoe trip up at the cabin. 

In Little Dub news, the baby moves a lot now! Andy felt some solid punches a few nights after Christmas and broke out in laughter he couldn’t believe how strong it was. The baby moves for longer periods of time now and when it moves it has more strength. It is a little uncomfortable at times, but I love it! I keep calling it different names to see if any are a fit, but we still haven’t decided on the right one. As far as my ripping abdominal muscles, they are still ripping from what I can tell. Now I feel the same pain on the left side too. It seems more active at night which is better than the sneak attacks I was getting before. My Dad bought me a “wedge” pillow to make up the difference between my rounded belly and the mattress for Christmas. The timing couldn’t have been better because I can’t lay on my side without a really uncomfortable pull from the weight in my stomach. 

We interviewed out first pediatrician last Tuesday. We both really liked him. He wasn’t in a rush and answered all of our questions with good explanation. I really like that they always have a doctor on call that you can reach outside of business hours for questions and concerns. I also like that the office is only about 5 miles from the house and I can get there pretty fast if I need to. The staff was also really friendly and helpful. We have two more that we are meeting with over the next month, we’ll see how we like them. 

Thursday is our orientation at Lakewood Ranch Medical center. We are getting a tour of the delivery area and meeting some staff. We are also singing up for our parenting classes, weird because we will be the “parents.” I can’t believe how fast it is all going.