An exciting week indeed! Not only did it begin with a fabulous camping trip, but our friends Noel and Elissa brought new life into this world with Zeke, future friend of Short Stranger. But this week was important in other ways as well, because I had my 24 week appointment on Wednesday--the last of the 2nd trimester!
Needless to say, all went well at the Dr.'s office. The little guy is measuring just right for his age, though he seems to be developing an attitude. He gave the doc a kick when she was taking his heartbeat. The doc chuckled and said, "even I felt that one."
What makes this week especially important, though, is that the Short Stranger has reached the stage of "viability." Which basically means that if he decided to come out today, they'd try to save him because for the first time, there's a chance he'd survive. Momentous but terrifying at the same time! We've told him he needs to stay put until autumn.
The Short Stranger is now the length of a cob of corn, which happens to be what we're having for dinner (seriously). And he weighs a bit more than a pound. Just to give you some perspective on this, the shouldn't-be-famous Octo-Mom's smallest child weighed 1.5 pounds when it was born. Luckily, I'm not carrying 7 other peeps in there with the Short Stranger, so he should keep on growing just fine.
And here's the weekly babycenter.com post:
Your baby's growing steadily, having gained about 4 ounces since last week. That puts him at just over a pound. Since he's almost a foot long (picture an ear of corn), he cuts a pretty lean figure at this point, but his body is filling out proportionally and he'll soon start to plump up. His brain is also growing quickly now, and his taste buds are continuing to develop. His lungs are developing "branches" of the respiratory "tree" as well as cells that produce surfactant, a substance that will help his air sacs inflate once he hits the outside world. His skin is still thin and translucent, but that will start to change soon.
By the way, my uterus is apparently the size of a soccer ball.
We've now decided that Saturdays will be dedicated for Holden to spend some time with dad (also allowing Bryna to run errands, get work done, and have some time to herself). Today was the first official "Saturday with Dad," and it was very chill-axin' (chill + relaxin'). Holden and I spent some time taking a nap, watching the end of a movie on DVD, singing songs and dancing (most of today's songs related to the crackers that I ate with lunch called "Vegetable Entertainers" ... that provided a lot of material for some pretty inventive songs that I plan never to repeat; NEVER).
The boy is now one month old (yay!), and we celebrated this milestone with the my co-workers in the Education Division at the Saint Louis Art Museum (and they even had a cake, mmmmmm). And, we also took an outing to Noel and Elissa's yesterday evening, where Holden could celebrate and say hi to Zeke (who is in preparations for the baby derby, which WILL occur once both the boys can crawl ... date TBD).
