About 4 weeks ago, I wrote a first batch of lessons learned from having Josiah.

It got fairly lenghty, so I stopped at a couple of points, but lately I’ve been thinking about 2008, and what it involved and what we learned, and mostly 2008 was about the pregnancy process for us.

And gosh a good a handbook would have been nice. Not the “What To Expect When You’re Expecting” kind of book, that’s 350 pages long and doesn’t tell you any of the things you really need to know. I mean like a very concise, “Here’s What Happened To Me” kind of thing.

So, without writing a whole handbook, here are a few more things that we learned along the way:

Collaborate On The Pregnancy Test

OK. So here’s what you don’t want to happen: wife gets up (doesn’t wake up, because she was up all night waiting for morning), wakes husband up, and runs into the bathroom to take the pregnancy test. She comes back 2 minutes later with the positive pregnancy test proudly in the air and a big smile on her face, only to find said husband still mostly asleep and thinking primarily about his need for a cup of coffee. Wife gets very emotional and assumes husband doesn’t care that she’s pregnant. You see where it goes from there…

Of course this is just hypothetical…

But guys and gals, you might want to compare notes about when that test is going to happen. And fellas, you should go ahead and make a plan to get up extra early and get that cup of coffee or something.

The Pregnant Woman Stereotypes Are Only Sort Of True

You know the “Father Of The Bride 2″ stereotypes about pregnant women? They love spicy foods, pickles, and random/disturbing combinations of food?

Those are sort of true.

The reality is that a pregnant woman’s body is so constantly changing that she’ll likely go through lots of phases during those 9 months.

And I don’t mean it like “Oh that’s cute. Her body is changing.” I mean you will be married to like 5 different women over the course of a few months.

First she’ll spend a month convinced that you never wanted this baby in the first place, and she’s all alone.

Then she’ll probably be too sick to care about that any more, and she’ll just want to be left alone… except simultaneously waited on hand and foot.

If and when the morning sickness wares off, that’s when the appetite might kick up for a while. Steph blew away an economy size jar of pickles in a week. But, then she didn’t want pickles any more for the rest of the pregnancy. She moved on to peppers form there, but got sick of those as well, and then it was salsa, then pizza… you get the idea.

At some point she’ll spend a couple weeks convinced that the baby isn’t going to make it.  Don’t bother telling her that that’s silly… not a good idea to tell a pregnant woman that she’s silly…

This is about the time when she’ll actually (and probably for the only time in her life) complain that her stomach isn’t big enough. She’ll freak out because her stomach isn’t growing fast enough to make room for the baby that she imagines to be growing in there.

Eventually that transitions into stage 1 of the nesting period. This is where you have to go register for $11,000 worth of stuff for the baby so people can buy it for the baby showers that are sure to happen.

Stage 1 of the nesting period eventually transitions into stage 2. This is where she’ll suddenly realize, “We need a nursery!” For the next month you’ll spend lots of time at places like Babies R Us looking at nursery stuff. What makes this part interesting is that at this point, she’s usually like 6 months pregnant, and convinced that she’s going to have a baby any day, so everything is absolutely urgent. You can’t buy that thing tomorrow. You have to go today. What if we go into labor tonight?

Ironically, this when she shifts the other way and starts to get really self-conscious that her stomach is too big. She’ll say she feels like a whale and will likely assume that she is unattractive. She’ll think it’s silly and patronizing when you tell her that pregnant women are beautiful, and especially her because she’s carrying your baby. You’ll have to get creative…

Once the nursery is in order, and the baby showers have come and gone and all the right stuff exists, stage 3 of nesting kicks in. This is a real sight to see. Your house will never be more clean and orderly than during stage 3 of nesting. She’s gonna clean every closet, every drawer, every corner of your house.

This stage can be both frustrating and helpful. Helpful because she’ll find all the stuff you ever lost in your life. But frustrating because she’ll crack the whip if the silverware isn’t arranged alphabetically…

Finally comes the end, where false-labor kicks in. This can be tough, because almost daily she’ll think she’s in labor, but want to keep it a secret for a few hours so she can drop it on you at the last minute and have one of those ‘rush to the hospital’ scenes right out of a movie. But when she realizes that the baby ain’t comming today, she’ll get bummed and you’ll have to remind her that this might be the last day you have alone together.

I’m sure there are other important details I’m missing, but those are the basics of the stages of maternity.

This all leads up to delivery day, which brings out the last point for this post:

Get Your Game Face Ready For Delivery Day

Alright. I don’t even need to spell this one out. Just look at all the ingredients for a rough couple weeks.

• You will likely be awake for at least 48 hours
• She will likely be awake for at least 48 hours
• When this period of time is over, a baby will be asleep in a basinette beside your hospital couch
• When you finally get a chance to sleep, it’s only 1 hour at a time (and then you have to wake up and help your wife figure out how to breast feed this thing)
• If you leave your phone on, you will get even less sleep, because friends and family will be checking in, but if you turn it off, you’ll get flack from said friends and family for not keeping them up-to-date
• Breastfeeding is very difficult at first, so baby and mommy will probably be crying when they do it
• While all of this is happening, the hormones that mom built up for 9 months go off a cliff, and she essentially begins a 6-week period (while exhausted and frustrated)
• If all goes well, mom will get her first good night’s sleep in 6-8 weeks

So there you go. That’s what’s waiting on the other side of the delivery room. Bring your game face.

…and hope that your hospital has a Starbucks…

What am I leaving out here?

Thinking about having a baby?

Josiah is now just about 4 weeks old, and as parents of a newborn, here are some things we learned/wish we had known in the past few months:

Babies Are Expensive

When we first seriously considered pregnancy, it seems like the concensus was that a baby costs about $5,000. I can’t think of any specific time when someone told us that, but I feel like we heard it a lot. For some reason, I had it in my head that a baby costs about five grand, so you want good insurance to cover most of that.

…not so.

So far (I hope the bill we got yesterday was the last one), Josiah’s price tag (just to be born) is up to about $17,000.

That breaks down roughly as follows:

• $5,000 for the doctor including all appointments along the way.
• Around $1,000 for various blood tests all throughout the pregnancy.
• Almost $10,000 for the hospital’s portion, including 3 days at the hospital, some blood tests, circumcission ($1,800 all by itself) and various one-line expenses like “lactation training”.
• Another $1,400 for an epidural (they don’t mention that when they give it to you :0)

And this was a very healthy pregnancy with no complications. Throw in an emergency c-section, a couple extra days at the hospital, or even a couple days in the neo-natal ICU, and you can get over $50,000 pretty quick (according to a good friends’ experience).

You should also be prepared to pay your hospital bill before you check out. This came as kind of a shock to me. I was sitting in our room with Steph and her dad and this nurse came in and asked if I was the husband. Then she looked at Steph’s dad and asked, “Do you feel comfortable discussing your finances in front of him?” Once I gave her the green light, she presented me with our hospital bill and asked to be paid on-the-spot. This seemed very, very tacky to me. I wish I had known so I could have a check ready or something…

Now, by God’s grace, my new job has some really good insurance, but even still, our part came out around $1,100, which was a bit more than I expected. And if I was still working at my old job, I think our part would be more like $2,000. (thank You Jesus!)

So, don’t let that scare you off. Josiah is totally worth it! I would go into debt up to my eyeballs to get my hands on this kid, and I remember that every time I look at him. But it helps to leap with your eyes wide open.

Everyone Wants To Give You Advice

At each stop of maternity, and especially after the baby is born, everyone you know will want to give you advice about how to take care of a child. Everyone. People who have never even had kids will be telling you how to raise your kid. A telemarketer could call and hear the baby cry in the background and she’ll start giving you advice about why the baby is crying and how to fix it…

What’s really entertaining about this, is that half of the advice directly conflicts with the other half. And it usually goes like this, “I know that some people think (x), but when (so and so) was a baby, we did (y) and I think it was a really good idea.” Then the next day, another person, “I know some people will encourage you to do (y), but we read a book that (x) is better for (this or that).”

This can get somewhat frustrating though, because every conversation becomes sort of the same. They ask how the baby is doing, and then, if you’re not patronizing, you tell the truth and say he’s kind of fussy sometimes and he has a diaper rash (or whatever). And then the rest of the conversation is their best effort at educating you about how to fix the fussiness and the diaper rash.

This advice is all very helpful in the end, but you can start to develop a bit of a complex that everyone you know thinks you’re an idiot.

Just be prepared…

The ‘Due Date’ Is Just A Guess

I was really surprised by this one… you find out that you’re pregnant and immediately you want to know the due date, so you get online and find a dozen websites that will calculate it for you. So you punch in the info and you have a due date! Then, you go to the doctor and they do a urine sample AND a blood test and come back and give you an exact date that your baby is due…. and it’s different than the website said. Then, you get a maternity calendar at Walmart and spend hours filling in all the pages until you realize that it’s got you on track for yet another due date…

Is this a joke?

No, it just turns out that there are a couple of x-factors. One is that the website and the calendar might be using the rule of thumb that pregnancy lasts 9 months, which is close, but not exactly true. Furthermore, one might be using 30-day months while the other might actually be using a calendar to calculate the number of days in each month between now and the ‘due date’. In actuality, a baby is due 40 weeks after the beginning of the last menstrual cycle, which is where the ambiguity comes from.

On top of all of this, a baby is considered ‘full term’ beginning at 37 weeks, and doctors don’t really worry about a baby being ‘overdue’ until 42 weeks.

That means that for potentially 5 weeks you can wake up every day and think, “Today I’m going to get ready and go to work and then go to Bible study and then come home… unless we have a baby today… in which case my whole life is going to change.” For a month your answer to every invitation is, “Sure, we can come, unless we’re in labor.”

You’ll Need a Doctor, A Pediatrician, and a Hospital

It never occurred to me that these are completely independent, but I guess it makes sense. You need to find a doctor for the momma, who may or may not make arrangements for the hospital where you will deliver the baby. Either way, if you are unfamiliar with the hospital, you should arrange to take a tour so you’re not freaking out on the day you come in labor.

You also need to choose a pediatrician and make arrangements in advance for them to come and see the baby at the hospital.

According To The Government, A Baby Doesn’t Exist For 6-12 Weeks

That’s how long it takes to get back a birth certificate with a social security number on it….

That might seem silly, but keep in mind that if your kid is born in December and you plan on claiming him on your taxes, you’ll need that SSN by mid-march ;0)

Or, let’s say you’re a missionary and you come home to give birth. It might take a while to get his passport…

They also wanted Josiah’s SSN when I tried to add him to our insurance policy, but once I explained everything, they were happy to add him and wait for the SSN.

Little Boys Pee On Everything

Everything. They’re like territorial dogs. You can watch them and know that they just emptied the sum of their internal organs into their diaper, but when you go to change that diaper, you better watch out ’cause they’re looking to get you.

They say that a newborn’s stomach is the size of a marble. That may be true, but their bladder must be the size of a grapefruit….

And they’re ruthless! They don’t care if they pee on themselves as long as they pee on you. In fact, I think they often pee on themselves on purpose. It’s a trick, because then, while you’re scrambling to get a handle on things and clean them up, they have a chance to do some real damage: projectile poo.

This is why I say to you single guys who think you’re too macho or whatever to get married and settle down and be a daddy: hah!

Babies Are Expensive

Besides all the fun doctor bills, babies also come with a long list of stuff you gotta get. Now, this is where, by God’s grace, our friends and family have been such an amazing blessing! We only paid for 2 things on Josiah’s list. Everything else came from the generosity of our friends and family.

It was ridiculous.

For weeks we would come to church to worship and see friends and we would leave with the car loaded down with baby stuff.

They threw TWO baby showers for us.

Such a blessing!

But, just as a head’s up, here are some of the things you might want to think about:

• Changing table
• Dresser
• Crib
• Bassinet
• Clothes
• Diapers
• Wipes
• Linens
• Bath stuff
• Car seat
• Stroller
• Rocker/Glider
• Toys
• Feeding stuff (bottles, breast pump, etc)
• High chair
• Baby clothes
• Supplies to decorate the nursery
• Maternity stuff

Let’s see…. I’m sure there’s more, but I’m outta time for now. I guess there will have to be a part 2.

What advice do you have for parents-to-be? Or, what questions do you have as parents-to-be?

I think from beginning to end, it took a couple of months to get everything in place… we thought it would never be done, but I’m glad we put in the time.

At one point, there was about a 3-week stretch where all the furniture for the nursery was in our living room and dining room while I painted the walls. I couldn’t find any whole days to set aside and work on it, so I had to get everything set up, paint for an hour or two, and then put everything away until my next chance.

…I do not recommend painting in this way :0)

When the day finally came that the painting was done and we put the furniture back, we had a celebration! Here’s what that looked like:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9NPOke_Xc

And here are some photos of the finished product.

The amazing thing is that out of everything you see in these photos, we didn’t pay for any of it except for the changing table and some paint/supplies.

Everything else you see was a gift by our generous friends and family!

Through you guys, God provided so abundantly for us to provide a great home for Josiah!

Thanks so much!

(you can click on any of the photos to see a larger version)

He’s a little bit jaundiced, so they have us going back and forth to the doctor/hospital until it goes away, but other than that, things are going really well… other than the whole sleep deprivation thing :0)

I added several more photos here. I won’t post them all here because if I did, this post would take forever to load. But here are a couple of them:

The Riesland family just a few minutes after Josiah was born.

The doctor and nurse who stayed up all night with us and delivered Josiah. The nurse was AWESOME.

(You can see the rest of ‘em here)

Steph was going stir crazy from being on bed rest, so we went out to the damn and played with the camera.

(These come from the ‘Fall 2008′ album here)

“Full Term” pregnancy is 37 weeks, and we passed that point on Sunday, so our little guy could come any day now!

One of the things our labor and delivery coach encouraged us to do is to use music in the delivery room, and Steph liked the idea. She said you might want different kinds of music for different stages of the delivery, and based on your own preferences.

I bought a cheap little battery-operated boombox that we can hook the iPod up to, but Steph still needs to make her ‘labor’ playlist.

What would you put on it?

(guys can feel free to chime in… it should be interesting to see the difference between the sexes on this one)

You can see the whole album here.