Simply Amazing

Yesterday (Tuesday), Emily and I got to hear our child's hearbeat for the first time. It was truly a remarkable experience. The doctor handed me a little contraption that looked a lot like a child's microphone/cassette-player set. He squeezed a little bit of gel on Emily's abdomen and then I put the wand/microphone from the doppler machine on the gel and voila! It was incredible to hear that little heart beating. If you pointed the wand in one direction, you could hear Emily's relatively loud and slow pulse (about 80 bpm), while in the opposite direction the baby's heart raced away at 160 bpm! The baby's pulse was also fainter than Emily's, but it was especially fun to point the wand in a 3rd direction and get to hear both at the same time. The book says that at this point in the pregnancy, the baby's ears aren't very developed, so I imagine that about all the baby can hear is mommy's heartbeat. I'm more excited every day.

By the Pricking of my Thumbs

It's late Sunday night and for some reason I can't sleep.

On Saturday night, Emily and I went to see Macbeth at the Old Globe Theater in Balboa Park (my anniversary gift from her). It was a fun experience for both of us. It is an open air theater, so it got a little cool at the end, but fortunately we had brought a blanket.

I really enjoyed the play. I like Shakespeare in general, and though I much prefer King Lear to Macbeth, the production was very well done and it's nice not thinking about all the symbols and themes that are so important in Lear. Macbeth is about ambition, unnatural crime, and madness, with a touch of the supernatural thrown in. It's pretty straightforward for a great tragedy.

One of the Gospel Doctrine teachers had a baby this week, which means I got to substitute on late notice. I used to enjoy teaching, but I think that was mostly because standing in front of everyone satisfied some vain ambition. Well, either that ambition is gone or I've realized that I'm not a good enough teacher to gratify my pride in that fashion because I no longer enjoy it. Now I only teach because I feel bad trying to thrust this responsibility on anyone else at the last minute.

Today, Graton Gathright was called to be in the Elders' Quorum presidency in our ward. That means that of the set of people that were Sunday School teachers when I became SS president in May, only Liz Findlay and Valerie Gathright remain and Liz is on sick leave until well after she delivers her twins. I guess when you have such great people as teachers, you have to expect that the other auxilliaries are going to try to steal them away. For some reason, I find filling teaching positions to be one of the most difficult parts of this calling. I just want to make sure we have the best teachers possible.

I made a lot of progress on my homepage this week. Feel free to look at it by following the link in the sidebar to the right. If you have any ideas, please let me know.

I am happy to announce that Emily is feeling much better. The cold she had earlier this week is gone, but it sure wiped her out. We're excited to visit the doctor on Tuesday where we expect to hear the baby's heartbeat.

She's Sick ...

...and she swears she's not faking it.

For the last couple of weeks as we've alerted people to Emily's condition, our friends and family members have asked "how's she feeling?" We've been blessed to be able to answer that she has not really been sick at all.

We forgot to knock on wood.

I have been married to Emily for 4 years. She has worked full time for most of those years. I think in all that time, she has missed one full day and one half day because she was sick. I think it has a lot to do with her upbringing, because she and her siblings have all kinds of perfect attendence certificates and t-shirts from the public schools. Emily does not stay home without a good reason.

I was never like that. When I was a kid I'd fake sick all the time. I'm not sure why; I remember mostly enjoying school. (How else can you explain my refusal to graduate and get a job?)

Well, it looks like the Wignall that is growing insider Emily is starting to take over: she stayed home from work yesterday.

It's surprising to us because she's at the end of her first trimester and most of what we've read indicates that the sick stage is supposed to end with the first trimester, not begin with the second. I guess that's just one more piece of evidence that every woman handles pregnancy differently.

Is she pregnant or is she expecting?

I've noticed that Emily and I have different perspecives on the whole pregnancy experience.

Maybe I can explain it with an example. At about Thanksgiving time, Emily puts out the creche and pulls out the Christmas CD's and starts planning and actually doing Christmas shopping. She loves Christmas time. She loves the anticipation. She loves the whole season. She is like Buddy the Elf. I think she really could eat a whole tube of cookie dough.

I, on the other hand, am more like the 'bah, humbug!' Ebenezer Scrooge. Not really. In fact, I enjoy Christmas day and I enjoy the carols and the nice decorations. For about 2 weeks. Which means I'm sick of the Christmas season right about the time December starts. I don't enjoy the shopping, I don't enjoy the decorating, and I get sick of Jingle Bell Rock about half-way through the first of the approximately 1.23 million times I hear it each year. December is the month you have to endure for the pleasant family-oriented day that Christmas should be.

The point is, while I enjoy Christmas as much as the next person, I don't appreciate the anticipatory season as much as those whose livelihoods are in the retail sector. Or Emily. She loves the build-up as much as the Christmas climax.

We have similar attitudes about the federally mandated 40 week wait period that those in the "medical profession" call "being great with child." I think she really enjoys being pregnant. She likes thinking about decorating a nursery and buying maternity clothes and picking a name and having "showers" and all the great things with which I would rather not be involved. To me it's just an anxious wait for the real event: when I get to see my child for the first time.

To me, pregnancy is not the enjoyable experience. It's the 40 week period where space aliens have taken my wife and replaced her with an individual that is the same in almost every way, except they weren't able to get everything perfect. Now her tear ducts leak all the time, her self-awareness is confused to the point where she feels much fatter than she actually is, and she can't remember simple things like why she would ever marry someone like me or precisely which emotion she is feeling at any particular time. The aliens promise, however, that if I pretended like none of this is happening, at the end of the 40 weeks they'll bring my wife back. Of course when they bring her back, her feet will be swollen, body parts I didn't know she had will hurt, and I think the tear duct thing will still be going on.

A Big Day

Today was our first visit to the OB/GYN. Dr. Dunn was a very friendly guy and his nurse was very kind to Emily. Overall, the experience was unique, by which of course I mean gross. Emily was subjected to a battery of tests, many of which I wouldn't perform for $1m. Nevertheless, I'm glad everything is going well and I'm excited about becoming a father.

I have been asked to write a referee report for an article that an economist has submitted to a journal for publication. This basically means that I (along with other economists) have to evaluate the work and decide whether it should be published. The editor of the journal is my advisor, so it's not like I've reached any level of notoriety within my field, but it will still look good on my CV and it's further proof that I've selected an advisor who has high expectations, e.g.; the right one for me.

In other news, we got a really nifty new mobile phone.