The Pregnancy - A Short Recap

Back in January, I upheld the Rustici tradition and got Beth pregnant on the first try. I guess we were fortunate, but the man in me really wishes we could have tried just a little bit harder (ok, that's the last you're going to hear about our bedroom on this blog). Come February we started to expect that something might be up. I was scheduled to go to a conference in DC on Monday so we decided we better take the test on Saturday. Well, Beth's bladder decided to call at around 5 am which meant it was time to wake up and take the test. You can all guess the ending, but it's Beth's reaction that makes this worth writing for posterity. I read the test and the results were plain as day; my reaction was joy and giggles (yes giggles, not very manly, but this whole impending fatherhood will do that to you). Beth on the other hand was in shock, "Oh Dear", "You gotta be kiddin me", "No way", "That's not right" and "It can't be". We spent the rest of the morning coming to grips with the reality and re-writing our plans for the rest of the year. Of course, there was another test on Sunday morning.

The entire pregnancy has been really great (well, it was really easy for me at least). Beth had a little sickness and some 6pm bed times early on, but overall things were great. No complications, nothing to worry about, no major difficulties whatsoever. These days she's a little tired, quite a klutz and unable to bend over. She never gained much weight and looks cute as can be with her little belly. For months, I've been waiting for the midnight ice cream cravings, always willing to take one for the team and make a run to Cold Stone...but they just haven't come. There were a couple weird eating episodes involving salt and vinegar chips and caesar salad dressing, but the only ice cream cravings have come from me....and believe me, there have been plenty, there was one point in the pregnancy where I'd gained as much weight as Beth, oops.

We tried to make a surprise trip to CT to tell my family about the pregnancy, but they sniffed out the surprise a mile away. Turns out there were on to us the minute we told them we were coming up "because I had business". We told them by putting an ultrasound picture up on the fridge and just waiting for somebody to notice it. I kept trying to get people to look at the fridge by asking them to get me things and finally Mom obliged. They were all excited, and the trip to tell them in person was definitely worth while.

We told Beth's parents on her father's birthday. He is always teasing his friends they they show too many pictures of their grandchildren (although we all know he's going to be just as bad). We decided to give him a t-shirt for his birthday that said "I'm a Great Grandpa, Just Ask....Pictures Available Upon Request". We thought it would be a dead giveaway, but when he opened it he just thought it was a joke. It was her Mom who first caught on. Their reaction was obvious joy followed by "when can we start buying it stuff". This is the first grandchild on both sides and I think excessive spoiling is going to be the order of the day.

We're about three weeks away from the Oct 17th due date and things are starting to come together. After three showers and a big trip to Babies R Us, I think we've got just about everything we need. It still doesn't seem completely real, but it's still hard to believe just how much we're already in love with this little guy (or girl).

Welcome to the Humphrey Chronicles!

The baby's not due for another month, but the grandparents in Connecticut are already hungry for pictures. We will try in vain to satiate their appetite on this site with all the latest baby news, pictures and stories.

So why the "Humphrey Chronicles"? In just the first few weeks of Beth's pregnancy, we quickly tired or referring to "it" and "the baby", so we needed a name. The name went through many iterations as the months went on. For a while it was "T-LO", or "The Little One" (for anybody reading this 20 years from now, there's a celebrity who I am sure will be obscure by then called "J-LO"). Then, for a very short while the baby was Mega Prawn....ok, so the truth is Beth nixed that name about 2 seconds after it came out of my mouth, but it still part of the history. Neither of those names ever caught on with Beth's parents as they wanted to start using the baby's real name which we refused to divulge. In an effort to pry it out of us, they started using the worst name they could think of and thus "Humphrey" was born and somehow it stuck. My apologies to anybody actually named Humphrey out there, it's really not a terrible name, and it's actually grown on us over the last few months.