Practice Run

Posted on by Jordan

What did we do this weekend?

As always, that is the easiest question to spin into a blog topic. Had the weekend gone as planned, there wouldn’t have been a lot to say, other than that our friends from church had a nice baby shower for Heather, and that we don’t really have anything else on the calendar until the baby gets here.

As it happened, Heather wasn’t feeling great Saturday morning, but figured she could power through a little discomfort if she just laid down for a few minutes. An hour later, she threw up, and we thought maybe that was going to be the turning point to her feeling better, so she composed herself and headed to the shower.

When she got home several hours later, I learned that she had thrown up three or four more times, and was feeling much worse. Given that every day of pregnancy is uncharted for us, and she didn’t seem to be getting better, I contacted our doctor. Her advice was to take Heather in to the hospital “just so they can check on her”

We grabbed a few things and headed out the door. Once at the hospital I don’t actually know how much time they spent thinking about her symptoms before deciding to send her to the maternity area as I was parking the car. On the bright side, Heathers mom had been a guest at the shower, and was able to accompany us to the hospital, so I didn’t have to abandon Heather while finding a place to legally leave our vehicle.

I made it inside just in time to accompany Heather down to the maturity area, where they immediately hooked up monitors for her vitals and the baby, followed by an IV running at what the nurse described as a quick pace. Once all of that was in place the nurse told us they had been seeing a lot of the flu that  weekend, and that Heather should be fine once she got hydrated.

Four hours and two liters of IV fluid later, the nurse recommended that we spend the night, because Heather was still dehydrated. This meant that I needed to take Heather’s mom back to our place, and pickup a few overnight items for myself and Heather.

Once back in the hospital room, I discovered a few things: First, that the cot the nurse had so helpfully provided wasn’t very comfortable, Second that I was too tired to really care, and finally, that the monitor tracking our child somehow got turned up making the dominant sound in the room her heartbeat.

It was an interesting experience. I hope it’s the last time I ever fall asleep listening to her heartbeat, but at the same time it was rather reassuring.

By morning, Heather was feeling much better, and the doctor came in to look her over and gave us the all-clear to head home. We decided it was a good practice run for our “real” trip to the hospital coming up soon, given that we now know exactly where we need to go, and what items we should have brought (or a few more anyway).

 

-Jordan

 

99 Days…

Posted on by Jordan

If our baby hits her dates, she will be here in 99 days.

It’s a distressingly long, and short, time all in one!

Heather and I went to the Hospital to take our “accelerated” baby class a few days ago.

It was overwhelming to say the least. I was expecting to have too much information thrown at me, and maybe even to walk out concerned that I might not remember something critical.

As it turns out, those things weren’t an issue at all. Despite the quantity of information we felt it was fairly easy to absorb, and the instructors were very effective.

What I didn’t expect was to not know what to do with the information presented. After the fourth or fifth “raw from the delivery room” clip the nurse showed us I looked at Heather and thought “What did I get you into!?”

Heather seems to have been less intimidated by the presentation than I was… probably a good thing given her role in the process 🙂

While what we learned was generally speaking helpful and reassuring, the majority of it isn’t anything I will bother to recount here…

With one exception: Cold Sores

The nurse running the class was adamant that we understand that people with cold active sores not be allowed anywhere near infants. I don’t know if I had heard this before and forgotten, but apparently cold sores sometimes kill babies. That topic was one of the only times truly dire outcomes were discussed.

Beyond that downer piece of news, the class really did build up our comfort level and confidence that we will manage the birth of our child. It did thoroughly drive home the idea that the birthing process is in no way glamorous or dignified.

 

Sorry if this post ended up being somewhat rambling… I wanted to get the thoughts down before it went too long. Also, there would be a picture but, the obvious picture would be of Heather… and she isn’t really in the mood to have a pregnancy highlighting picture taken these days so, just imagine 😉

 

-Jordan

 

The Frame

Posted on by Jordan

This post is purely shop-project focused, so if you aren’t interested in that, perhaps you would enjoy an essay Heather found. I have spent a lot of time thinking about it as of late, maybe you will find it interesting too: I Don’t Wait Anymore

Ok, on to the project!

I mentioned a few weeks ago that I had managed to sell the idea of buying a saw in order to frame something for the baby’s room. Well I got the saw:

But that means I had to actually try making this frame. To be honest I started feeling rather intimidated the more I thought about it. Intimidation or no, I had this fancy new saw on my bench, and knew I needed to give the frame a shot. Things did not get off to an encouraging start when I flipped a piece of casing end-for-end thinking it would be easier to cut right handed that way… only to realize that it made my cut completely backwards… after I completed the cut.

On the bright side, we had picked out some inexpensive casing, so the replacement board wasn’t a significant portion of the budget 🙂

eight painstakingly double-checked cuts later, and I was ready for the scary part: glue

You can kind of see the guide I made to help keep things square. It didn’t work out as well as I had hoped, but did at least give me something to brace against. I quickly realized that I need some clamps. Wouldn’t need to be anything fancy, but gluing doesn’t work too well when you can’t hold things together with a little pressure.

To that end, I carefully drilled some pilot holes in from the top and bottom sections to let me draw the corners together with a trim screw. My first two corners worked ok, but really should have been counter-sunk. The second two I stepped up to a larger pilot bit, and then free-handed a pseudo-countersink to finish it off, and had really good results. It really helped that the casing was blurring the lines between cardboard and wood, but I was producing respectable corners that were somewhat solid.

The picture above shows right before the last corner, where I may have become a little over-confident and let my screw pull the corner out of alignment at a critical moment. In the end however, it wasn’t so far off, and some putty, sandpaper, and black spray-paint  were next in the plan anyway.

After a few coats of paint, all that was left to do was add some hooks to the top, and double-sided poster hanging strips to the lower edges and we have a fairly nice looking map if I can be so bold:

I won’t say that I found a new hobby in frame-making, but it was a nice change of pace from my normal digital project! 🙂

 

-Jordan