My Little Produce

Since this is my first baby, I tend to read a lot about it. I read pregnancy magazines, pregnancy books, and pregnancy websites. I even receive an email every week that tells me about the week of pregnancy I'm in. And since I've been at this trying to have a baby thing for so long, I even have some nifty things at home to inform me. When we hadn't been "trying" for very long and hadn't even conceived our first baby, I began to get discouraged (silly me). Shane bought me a gift to cheer me up...a poster that shows a lifesize (though not anatomically correct) picture of the embryo/fetus every 4 weeks. After losing the first and then the second baby, this poster was relegated to a dark corner under our bookshelves. I drug it out when it became evident this baby was sticking around for a while. One of Autumn's favorite things to do when she is at our house on the weekend is to see how big the baby is. So we look up the closest week on the poster and hold it up for her to see. She has a fascination with the size of the hands though. She always says so that would make his/her (depending on her mood) hands this big (holding up her fingers to demonstrate...or designating only a part of her finger as the size)?? And we have to evaluate proportionately how big we think it's hands (and sometimes feet) are.

We also give her size comparisons. The email I mentioned earlier often compares the size of the baby to a fruit or vegetable. So we might tell Autumn the baby is the size of an apple this week or last week the baby was as heavy as a turnip (except she's never had turnip so I had to try to explain that to her!). This week the email said my baby measures about 5.5 inches from head to rear which is about the size of a bell pepper. I don't eat bell peppers much. But the last one I had was decidedly smaller than 5.5 inches. I even got my ruler out to look at it. That's a rather large bell pepper. So my friend (who affectionately refers to baby as "Creature") and I have a new nickname for the baby. The Genetically Altered Bell Pepper!