No Closer

The kid does not appear to be in the holiday spirit. Nilda is due in five days on Saturday, December 17, and Baby C is no closer to being born than he was a few weeks ago. Nilda had an ultrasound last week and the baby was completely healthy: 10 fingers, 10 toes, still a boy. The one thing we didn't count on was his MASSIVE HEAD. He's measuring 62nd percentile generally, but his head is in the 95th percentile, which means his head could actually be above 95%. Nilda was 38 weeks & 3 days, but he was measuring 40 weeks & 3 days. His head, however, was measuring 41 weeks & 1 day. It's possible that his head is too big to drop into the birth and get labor started. He was estimated to weigh 7 pounds 14 ounces, give or take a pound, which means he could weigh close to 9 pounds. The doctor walked in looking at the results of Nilda's growth scan and her jaw dropped.

No details yet, but we're looking at setting an end date by c-section for this pregnancy. The doctor said we could wait to see if Nilda goes into labor naturally, saying, "Women do give birth to babies with heads this size." This is about as reassuring as telling us that a species of rare bird may not go extinct because they can to burrow into the ground to survive a wildfire. It makes no sense to wait for a natural labor that may not come that will most likely end in c-section, anyway.

Now we're both done with waiting and we're ready for this kid to get here. Nilda is especially done. I now know how far the difference between 32 weeks and 39 weeks is. I have done a fabulous job of completing Nilda's list of things for me to do around the house, but it keeps getting longer and the only thing that can save me is for the baby to come already.

I've been getting things ready at work, too, trying to buy some time for upcoming deadlines. Court conference scheduled for next week? My wife and I are expecting our first kid = adjournment. Discovery deadline? I'm going to need a brief extension because I'm about to be a father and if you don't agree you're a terrible person. Yes, we know that it's going to be a boy. We have a name but we're not telling people until after he's born, so no one can criticize it. A surprisingly common response is "Your life is going to change," which basically means that the speaker had no idea what having a kid was going to be like and is still recovering.

We got a picture of the kid at the ultrasound this weekend. Look at these cheeks and know why we now call him Baby Chubs.

I fully expect the kid to read this some day and know now that I say this about you: I love you and you have a ginormous head.