Holy Shit!

I googled "Holy Shit!" expecting to find a link to the Against Me! song of the same name. Imagine my surprise when I instead see a picture of Keith about to chow down on a soft pretzel. More surprising is that it's on Sara's flickr stream. Way more creepy is that google offered it as from my "social circle." 

I've spent the last week trying to decide whether or not I want to drop this habit.  A lot of my posts were personal in nature and it read more like a journal than I liked. I wasn't sure where I was going with it and if I was going to have enough time to keep up with it. I thought about just cutting my losses. I decided instead to refocus . . . and change the name.  Fans of the "Let's Go" travel series will know where I'm coming from.  I'm going to be posting a lot more about planning & transportation - but maybe with a more Philadelphia focus.

I'll still have personal anecdotes and the occasional rant about the Phillies. 

So, here we are. Well, here I am again after having my cursor on the delete button a few days ago and here I go with another 'journal' post. In all likelihood you're reading this blog in reverse chronological order.  I'll give you the short-short.  We visited a midwife, two birth centers and a Pennsylvania Hospital based OB. We're going the midwife route. Or, in the words of Talib Kweli - "we went the hospital route, we know what they all about."  

We were at the midwife's office last week and she busted out the little doppler fetal monitor and boom. there it was. for a split second. the heartbeat. holy shit! Having never heard it before and having never seen one of those doppler devices before I still recognized the sound right away.  The midwife kept moving the doppler around trying to pick up the sound again and occasionally you could hear the echo of Beth's heart as a pretty slow and steady - psshew . . . psshew . . . psshew. Then there it was again. El Niño. It almost sounded like our dishwasher on the rinse cycle. It was really fast and strong and loud and kinda awesome. Our dishwasher is not awesome. It is fast, powerful and incredibly loud.  Before that moment it was all kind of abstract. The baby - not the dishwasher. Hearing the heartbeat was the "oh shit, there really is something in there and in a few months it's gonna want to come out."  The only thing close to that feeling is like getting a call back after an interview. "I got the job! I start on Monday! Oh shit. I start on monday!? I now have 48 hours to master Illustrator, Sketch-Up and ArcGIS." 

Speaking of really being in there, there was a little confusion as to the due date. The usual signs and symptoms didn't support a September 3rd due date. Oh, it's showing, y'all just haven't noticed yet or were too polite to ask.  It turns out that August 11th is more like it. That would make today the end of week 14. According to one baby book that would make the little nugget about the size of a lime.  Come back in 2 weeks and we'll have an avocado.  

Sorry, I can't really let the term "baby book" enter any part of my brain without immediately thinking of that scene from 'Knocked Up'  and, unfortunately, the best video I can find is an amateur reenactment. It's a good thing I own the DVD.