17 weeks and 23 more to go...

Little Mike and Helen

Oh? What's this? You ask. Are you guys...?

Yep! 17 weeks in the making. 23 more to go. The plan is that it will be born here in Beijing late January/early February, after Chinese New Year.

Looking at our baby photos, I wonder what our baby will look like. My nose or his? My eyes or his? The fuzzy ultrasound photos we took in July only show a head, brain, body, spine, heart, arms, hands, and feet. That's all I could tell from the photos. It moved a lot last we saw it, and I heard its heart beat just last week.

But I want to know so much more! So I bought a couple of baby books that discusses babies and their development. I even watched a few Discovery, BBC, and other documentary videos about babies and the human body. I made hubby watch them with me. (There were some shots that we weren't ready for... aka the Big Push... ARGH!!! My eyes!!)

What about its development? Can the baby hear us now? A baby book said that babies can hear after 3 months, and has sharp hearing after 26 weeks. It doesn't hear like we hear... more like how you hear things underwater they say. Ok, I'll buy that.

So, I'm starting to do some prenatal education.

• When I can, I talk to it. When I'm talking to it I try to talk slowly, drag my vowels and repeat key words like Mommy and Daddy. I'm trying to switch to good morning instead of good night, but I snooze too much.

• When I'm at home I sing to it. I like humming Ave Maria. I'm also practicing nursery rhymes. These days it's 5 little monkeys jumping on a bed and itsy bitsy spider. Gotta go look up the right lyrics for some of the others. =p They say that sounds and music babies heard frequently in the womb comfort them after they're born. I'm sticking with ones I have fun with.
  

• At work I play it some classical music. Mostly Mozart and Beethoven.
  

• I try to practice some Spanish or Japanese with it. But I not doing too well with that. I'm not even gonna try French, don't want it to pick up my bad pronounciation.
  

• Its daddy and I try to read it some classic children stories. I looked them up on the internet and was shocked that the originals, ie: three little pigs, was nothing like what we remembered... apparently daddy and I got the Disney-ed version. To filter or not to filter this stuff with our kid... that's a question for another day.