Dad's Diary
Archived Journal
Week 26

The Health Update

The second trimester is over or just about over depending on whose definition you use.  Erika is still suffering from her persistent cough but is much improved over last week.  I, on the other hand, caught Erika's cough and have been sick all week with a head cold.  I sound like I'm missing my two front teeth and I get the feeling that no one has understood me all week--but that might be more common than I think.  Anyway, as Erika said, "pregnancy is all about sacrifice", so I guess it was about time I had to make some sacrifices.

Fetal movements
Erika is doing some reading on pregnancy and this week ran across a
statement in "What to Expect When You're Expecting" that a pregnant
woman should count her baby's movement's.  If they don't move 10 times in 4
hours (or something like that), you should call your doctor because something
might be wrong.  Now, Erika is constantly feeling the baby move. 
Actually, it's kind of cool, you can even see it now, a small part of her stomach
will start moving up and down.  But, Erika says that during the day, at
work and while out and about, she doesn't notice the baby moving.  She
knows it does, but she doesn't think about it when there's other stuff
going on.  I think this makes sense and must be pretty common.  So, I
think this is just an unreasonable request.  I mean, who can count every time
the baby moves for 4 hours?  Therefore, I've decided this is the author's
way of encouraging women to stay home and is an affront to working women. 
But, maybe I'm overreacting.

Beautiful Boy
From what I hear, John Lennon had a great relationship with his son
Sean.  He even took 5 years off from music to stay home with him in the
late 70's, I think.  Well, while surfing the internet at babiesrus.com
we ran across some crib sheets and bedding titled the John Lennon
collection.  It looked really nice, had some cute designs, matched the
colors of our baby room, and was affordable.  And, it was related to
the Beatles, and what better musical influence for a kid than the Beatles,
right?  It wasn't until after we hit the "confirm purchase" button that
I began to feel some guilt.  I began to think about why John Lennon's
name was begin used to sell crib sheets.  I figured Yoko Ono was trying to
get some extra dough.  When the stuff arrived, sure enough, it had a little
notation, "licensed by Yoko Ono Lennon" on it along with a nice
paragraph stating that John had designed these sheets for Sean.  So, I feel a
little bad that I bought into this attempt to commercialize John Lennon's
legacy.  However, I certainly hope Yoko had legitimate reasons for
doing this.  Anyway, we got some really cute sheets so I can't be too
upset.  Now, if I found out they were made by sweatshop laborers in
Malaysia, then...

Next week:  A day at the hospital
A birth story

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