Baby's Heart / 26 Weeks / Sleep Study / Thanksgiving in California
Nicole's pregnancy continues! Right at the end of October was the 20-week Anatomy Scan . Our little girl was so active and bouncy (She's got some real rabbit genes) that they couldn't get a good photo of her heart. Worse, they thought something might be wrong with it. So in early November, we were referred to a specialized clinic in Portland for another scan. It was a rough two-week wait to until that appointment but we tried to keep our spirits up. The condition they thought our daughter might have was very mild. I've forgotten now what exactly they called it but it was something that could heal on its own before birth or would require a minor surgery after birth to fix. She'd go on to have a perfectly normal life and it would be a mild blip. All the worry was for not, though, as the subsequent ultrasound in Portland revealed that our little rabbit girl has a perfectly normal heart. Whew!
So here we are in early December now and she's at 26 weeks. As we ramp into the third and final trimester, every piece of data we have implies that she's going to be just perfect. We've been really out there baby-shopping and it's beginning to get really real that our daughter is coming. People are starting to make plans to visit before and after the arrival and we've been accumulating furniture for the nursery. It's still so hard to believe but here we are on this journey! I hope we're worthy!
A few months back, I was getting a routine physical and my doctor asked if there were any other conditions I was concerned about. I had mentioned that my snoring was keeping people awake and so they referred me to a sleep study clinic. Initially, they gave me a strange device that I wore three nights in a row to measure how much my chest was expanding, what my pulse and oxygen saturation was, and how much air i was breathing. It was a bizarre and uncomfortable few nights. Unfortunately, the scans were inconclusive because one of the modules wasn't working properly, so they wanted me to come in for a full-blown in-office overnight sleep study. It was pretty damn fascinating! They glued dozens of probes to my scalp, chin, chest, and even my legs. I had a private room in the back of the office purpose-built for these studies and there was a guy who monitored me all night. It was bizarre but entertaining. I thought I was having trouble getting to sleep but once I was out the morning seemed to arrive all too quickly. The results indicate that I've got something called obstructive sleep apnea which is where I stop breathing overnight because the back of my throat is loose and blocks airways or something. Thankfully my case is very mild and we're going to try a dental device I can wear every night before one day perhaps needing a full-on CPAP machine. Hopefully this will help my snoring and apnea which is something I didn't even have the symptoms for. But hey, everyone might sleep better, so hopefully the adventure will prove to be worth it.
Once again and for the second year in a row, Nicole and I visited her parents in central California for the Thanksgiving holiday. The visit itself was a little longer than we normally do clocking in at six days including the two driving days. Along with good food and board games and Minecraft with Nicole's family, I was able to participate in some Black Friday thrifting! Last year, we spent Black Friday at a thrift store down there that was selling music CDs for less than a dollar each and I was immediately bitten by the music collecting bug! It's been a fantastic full year of collecting CDs for the first time since I was a teenager and now our collection has over 600 CDs. It takes up an entire wall in my office and includes so many '90s and early 2000s jams that symbolize our younger years. So it's pretty much a nostalgia wall. This year's Black Friday trip to the same thrift store may not have yielded the same amount of CDs as last year when I was beginning our collection and going crazy with the cheap CDs, but it was a treat. I really have been enjoying this new hobby of collecting CDs of the music Nicole and I grew up with. I look forward to sharing this music one day with our daughter although she'll probably hate most of it. Here's a look at what one year of CD collecting can look like:
So here we are in early December now and she's at 26 weeks. As we ramp into the third and final trimester, every piece of data we have implies that she's going to be just perfect. We've been really out there baby-shopping and it's beginning to get really real that our daughter is coming. People are starting to make plans to visit before and after the arrival and we've been accumulating furniture for the nursery. It's still so hard to believe but here we are on this journey! I hope we're worthy!
A few months back, I was getting a routine physical and my doctor asked if there were any other conditions I was concerned about. I had mentioned that my snoring was keeping people awake and so they referred me to a sleep study clinic. Initially, they gave me a strange device that I wore three nights in a row to measure how much my chest was expanding, what my pulse and oxygen saturation was, and how much air i was breathing. It was a bizarre and uncomfortable few nights. Unfortunately, the scans were inconclusive because one of the modules wasn't working properly, so they wanted me to come in for a full-blown in-office overnight sleep study. It was pretty damn fascinating! They glued dozens of probes to my scalp, chin, chest, and even my legs. I had a private room in the back of the office purpose-built for these studies and there was a guy who monitored me all night. It was bizarre but entertaining. I thought I was having trouble getting to sleep but once I was out the morning seemed to arrive all too quickly. The results indicate that I've got something called obstructive sleep apnea which is where I stop breathing overnight because the back of my throat is loose and blocks airways or something. Thankfully my case is very mild and we're going to try a dental device I can wear every night before one day perhaps needing a full-on CPAP machine. Hopefully this will help my snoring and apnea which is something I didn't even have the symptoms for. But hey, everyone might sleep better, so hopefully the adventure will prove to be worth it.
Once again and for the second year in a row, Nicole and I visited her parents in central California for the Thanksgiving holiday. The visit itself was a little longer than we normally do clocking in at six days including the two driving days. Along with good food and board games and Minecraft with Nicole's family, I was able to participate in some Black Friday thrifting! Last year, we spent Black Friday at a thrift store down there that was selling music CDs for less than a dollar each and I was immediately bitten by the music collecting bug! It's been a fantastic full year of collecting CDs for the first time since I was a teenager and now our collection has over 600 CDs. It takes up an entire wall in my office and includes so many '90s and early 2000s jams that symbolize our younger years. So it's pretty much a nostalgia wall. This year's Black Friday trip to the same thrift store may not have yielded the same amount of CDs as last year when I was beginning our collection and going crazy with the cheap CDs, but it was a treat. I really have been enjoying this new hobby of collecting CDs of the music Nicole and I grew up with. I look forward to sharing this music one day with our daughter although she'll probably hate most of it. Here's a look at what one year of CD collecting can look like: