Sunday, January 31, 2010

A False Alarm, and The Godfather

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For the last few weeks, we've been meaning to make it to Shands to take a tour of the labor & delivery floor, but each time we've tried it either has not worked out with our schedule or theirs. But we finally got to see part of it on Tuesday, even though we had not planned on it at all. In the last several weeks of the pregnancy, we're supposed to be taking note of the number of times Baby A moves around each hour, because a sudden change could mean something needs to be checked out. I guess she was taking a break from her usual somersaults on Tuesday, because when I got home from work, Tam mentioned that she had not felt her move much at all. So Tam sat down with a glass of orange juice and a stopwatch to give Baby A a boost of sugar and to see if she perked up.

We didn't get quite the results we were looking for, so the on-call doc suggested we head over to Labor & Delivery for a monitoring session. We got worried for nothing, though - Ava's heartbeat was strong and regular, and the nurse said she sounded perfect. Of course, the next day, she was back to kicking and dancing and whatever else she does in there to keep busy.

And now that we're in the home stretch with just two weeks to go until the due date, we've been taking care of some important items that we needed to tend to. One of these decisions was choosing a godfather. Neither of us knew precisely what a godfather's role is, or what the "requirements" are. It turns out these are varied depending on various religions, but the definition we settled on is: somebody with an interest in the well-being of the child, who acts as a spiritual advisor and moral guide when needed. We asked the one person that we feel fits this description better than anybody we know, and we are delighted that he accepted. If Ava ever has something that she feels she can't come to me or Tam about, then I have no doubt that Colin Brown will give her wise counsel and sound guidance. Thank you, Dr. Brown.

Despite the legend of a full moon inducing labor, an especially full, especially bright moon this weekend failed to coax Baby A out in to the world. We'll check the last chapters of "What to Expect" to see what other tricks we can try...