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Tuesday, March 1, 2011

Fish are probably the least of your problems...

So last night was our 3rd prenatal class at the hospital! I tell you what, I'm super excited that we only have one more because after 15 minutes of sitting there the old back started to ache again, and I sat there twisting and turning and bending in my chair trying to get comfortable for the next 2 hours and 15 minutes.

But this class really has been so informational and so helpful! This time, we went over the cost of having a baby (yuck, they don't tell you this before you decided to get pregnant. Probably because then no one would want to get pregnant...) and then we had a lady from the Welcome Baby program that's done through United Way come by and tell us about their services. They offer home visits after the baby is born and they basically just go over a few things with you, and offer you a list of resources like where you can get free eye exams for the baby and play groups, so I signed up for that.

Then they had a pediatrician from an office that was down the street and he gave us a quiz with questions like "at how many months should a baby start walking, how many until 50% of their language should be understandable, how big is their stomach after they are a week old..." That kind of stuff. Bryant and I did pretty well, but it was tough because I was going off of my nieces, and two cousins milestones and they all have developed differently, so it's hard to pin point an exact time frame.

Then he let us ask questions we had, and surprisingly, it was mainly the husbands that were doing the asking. My favorite question though, was is it safe to have animals around? It's a totally legit question and a good one for us since we have Ace, but one girl (the same one who asked the "what does labor smell like" question if you will recall...) asked "is it ok if we have fish?" the Pediatrician said "oh yeah it's totally fine to have fish." and she said "but is there any risk the baby could get salmonella from them?" and the Pediatrician got a funny look on his face and said "well, possibly if your baby somehow got into the tank, pulled out the fish and were to play with them. But fish generally don't have salmonella and I don't think your baby is going to get into the tank..."

This girl cracks me up every class because she is so overly worried about everything. Her other two questions were if it was necessary to burp your baby if you were breastfeeding (uh, yes, they are still eating and still get air in their tummies) if you could breastfeed exclusively until they were 18 months old (hey, this is your personal preference, but you have to remember that they will have teeth by then... Plus, just personally, that seems a little old to still be breastfeeding). And if it was ok not to get their immunizations in case it causes autism (well, personally, I'd rather have a kid with autism then a severely sick or dying kid... just saying. And didn't she hear that the doctor who published that research came out and said it was totally bogus and that he made it all up?)

Anyways, after the pediatrician visit, the nurse showed us basic child care, like how to bath them, swaddle them and change their diapers. I was surprised how many people in there have never changed a diaper in their life. How did they all get away with it?! Lucky ducks... I was elbow deep in diapers between several babysitting gigs, two brothers and a sister...

All in all, a good class! Only one more to go and it's a breastfeeding class.

As for Baby Stokes:

I had another appointment today. We are officially down to once a week visits! Once again, everything looked great! She's still low and basically in the same position as she was 2 weeks ago. We discussed Group B Strep again because in the prenatal class they said that 80% of womens water won't break on it's own and that the baby was safe from group B strep if you were given antibiotics before the water broke. Then, of course i've been dreaming almost every night that my water breaks (usually at work) and I get panicky. The Doc said that if it does happen to break, they give me the antibiotics like normal and she should be fine. He said that without treatment, the chances of her being infected were 1 in 100,000. And even if she were to get infected, they just giver her the antibiotics right after she's born and it's all good.

I also set up an induction date just in case she's stubborn and won't come on her own. They try to shy away from inductions so the soonest they would do it was a week after her due date. But lets all cross our fingers she's not a late baby! I want her to come before my in-laws have to go back and seriously, my back can't take this anymore, let alone 5 1/2 more weeks...

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