Stats

After dragging Scarlett back to San Francisco for her 6 month doctors visit and taking Max for an unnecessary trip to the ER, we realized it would be best to find a local Doctor in Alameda. I decided on Doctor Parker, who I really love. But... I really miss Dr. Simons and his wonderful office. I didn't realize how amazing his office really was until visiting a typical doctors office. Dr. Simons was like being at a kid centric spa. The lighting was lovely, there were clean toys to play with, a train that circled the waiting room, modern decor, fish tanks on kid level in the exam rooms, and the walls were covered in interesting art. Although Max hated his visits for the first 18 months, once Max realized a doctors visit meant a delicious (organic) lollipop and helium balloon was to be had, he also realized Dr. Simons was not such a bad guy. It makes me SO sad to leave him. While Dr. Parker seems truly great, the office feels like, well... a doctors office. A really OLD doctors office. The lighting makes you feel like you're in a hospital, and the exam rooms are bare. I guess we were spoiled. Still, I suppose having a great doctor close by is more important than ascetics, lollipops and balloons.

Here are Scarlett's stats at 9 months

Weight: 19.6 pounds - 66%

Height: 29.25 inches - 75%
Head: 18.11 - 94%

Here are Max's stats at 3 years

Weight: 34 pounds 11oz (with clothes) - 79%

Height: 38 inches - 64%

Doc appointment #3

Today was a quick checkup at Dr. Galaif's office. Heather dropped off her pee, and then we listened to the heartbeat on the doppler. This time we heard it loud and clear! They say that after 20 weeks, you can hear the heartbeat without a doppler--you can just use a standard stethoscope. I bet we'll probably end up buying one so we can hear blueberry's heartbeat at home.
We were out of the office before we knew it, sent on our way with more prenatal vitamin samples. One thing we did learn is that the doctors at this practice trade off the oncall pager weekly. If blueberry happens to come during non-business hours--which I imagine is quite likely, it is possible it could be delivered by a different doctor. Dr. Galaif said we can schedule some of our future appointments/checkins with each of the other doctors, so we can get to know all of them. I get the feeling that this is how a lot of practices do this.
I took the day off, so I dropped Heather back off at work and enjoyed the rest of the day. The next big date is the second trimester ultrasound on Sept 18th, where (hopefully) we'll find out whether its a boy or a girl!

Appt with Dr. Galaif and a Pleasant Surprise!

Today was a checkup for Heather with Dr. Galaif, and it was my first time meeting her. She seemed pretty nice, and I liked her. She generally seems to get good reviews on Yelp, however there is one worrisome one about failing to remove the placenta post-delivery (yes, pretty worrisome!). We're wondering if we should bring this up with her in the future to ask for her side of the story.

The checkup started off well. The doctor wanted to hear blueberry's heartbeat with a fetal doppler, but was having problems finding it. We got a little worried there, and I think the doctor could tell, so she moved us over to the other room to do a quick ultrasound to confirm everything was OK.

She found the blueberry pretty quickly, so that was a relief. It looked much more "baby-like" this time, and it was kicking around like crazy! We watched it for about 2 minutes, and in that time, it kicked 3-4 times. It looked a little bit like a bean jumping around in a mini-moonwalk.

Here's a short clip i filmed on my digicam showing a nice kick at about 20 seconds in:


Incredible!