Husband: merMAN!

We have reached the five-week mark with baby Charlie/Susan. Mary is going to work on the brain, spinal cord and heart this week. I figure that’s as good a place to start as any, although I would have gone with hair or big toe, which as we all know is the most important of all the toes.

I’m getting conflicting reports from various books and websites that the baby is either the size of an orange seed (bigger) or a sesame seed (smaller). Whatever the size, it allegedly looks like a tadpole, ginger root or alien from Alien. The tail is an issue. It is 1/6^th the size of the entire baby at this point. The tail is supposed to get absorbed back into the body, but if baby decides to keep it, we could have an Olympic gold medalist swimmer come 2032.

Best case scenario: Dara Torres/Michael Phelps. Worst case scenario: This.

And WHO knew harboring a growing human in your uterus was so exhausting? Wife has to actually make an effort to stay up past 8 p.m. every night. She is usually pretty exhausted whenever she gets home, and I fear that she and the couch may soon become one. She was able to take a nap at work today (during her lunch break, dear co-workers at OAD), and I think that helped her make it to the end of the day.

Her symptoms at this point, in order of prominence, are extreme exhaustion, emotional ups and downs, sore breasts (not my fault) and queasiness. To me, it seems a lot like when she was studying for the Bar exam except without all of the anxiety and flashcards.  

I should note she passed the Bar with flying colors.That only lasted about three months though, and this pregnancy thing lasts around nine. If pregnancy were a drug, nobody would take it. Except Manny Ramirez.

Manny's endorsement potential has taken a hit in retirement.

But even with all the negative side effects of being pregnant (of which my brave and tough-as-nails wife is bearing the brunt of), we have a lot of things to look forward to: first baby ultrasound, finding out the sex, feeling it kick, decorating the nursery and telling it the complete adventures of Harry Potter and Luke Skywalker.