After working so hard nursing my wife back to some sort of health I was wacked with whatever virus she had.  I was completely out of it for a day and barely getting by with various medications.  I could tell it was coming on.  Stress with work and lack of sleep really put me at risk and I was fighting it for a couple of days before succumbing to the inevitable.

I remember being sick pre-pregnancy and my wife would cook and care for me.  These days I’ve been reduced to a can of soup and tossed an extra blanket.  I can’t say I blame her though, she’s pregnant and battling some new illness every day.  What the hell can I really complain about?

Off Topic – Speaking of spreading the wealth – I just heard that Tiger Woods’ divorce is going to cost him $750 million dollars.  Not that his wife is entitled to a fair share, but one would think that Tiger could have afforded a better divorce lawyer.  Oh well, the price you have to pay for not keeping it your pants I guess.

We are officially at the half way mark and thought this would be a good time to break free from all the complaints and the tough choice of curing my wife over building a meth lab to share with you some of the latest pictures from the ultra sound.
Just look at that head! Yep, that is definitely my kid. And yes, we stayed strong willed enough to decline knowing the sex of the child for those who are wondering. We of course have received pleas from our family (who have even offered bribes), but we are holding our ground.

During our last doctors visit Christine and I learned something that all new parents may or may not be aware of. As we waited patiently for our doctor to enter the room we were more than just surprised when a different doctor entered the room. At first we thought perhaps that it was simply a mistake, and then he greeted us and began to read my wife?s chart and give a diagnosis of our baby and its health at this stage. I then thought perhaps he was simply on coverage as our usual doctor was awfully busy when we arrived. This too was not the case.
Apparently all of my efforts in selecting a great doctor may have been for not. If the doctor belongs to a particular group, you are not selecting a specific doctor but the group. The doctor that we selected is our primary, but my wife will be seeing all of the groups? doctors. To make matters worse, our doctor may or may not be the one to deliver the child.
As you can imagine, this did not sit well with either of us. We were told to become familiar with the groups handful of doctors and if there was one we did not want to work with or see again to notify them and we would be accommodated. We did not sign up to work with a series of doctors. Furthermore, this was not explained to us at the beginning. The ?Group? which belongs to a major hospital in our area waited until 4 months into the pregnancy to inform us of this? This has put my wife in a very uncomfortable and me in a peculiar situation.

Christine has been dealing with a terrible cold.   With the temperatures hovering in the mid 90’s its awfully hard to imagine, but true.  Having a cold under any circumstance is terrible let alone when you’re pregnant.  The selection of medicines is rather slim according to her doctor.  She has her pick of Tylenol, Benedryl, or Sudafed.  We chose to go with Sudafed and that is only after she suffered for 3 days hoping that it would pass without medication (not my choice).

Now, the challenging part is when I actually went to buy the Sudafed.  In the past you could just go and pick up a box of Sudafed and be on your way, but not today.  There are 14 kinds of Sudafed to choose from.  With multiple combinations of pain, sinus, congestion, pressure, 12-hour relief, 24-hour relief, non-drowsy, non-drying, (you get the point).  What they don’t tell you is that the stuff they are selling over the counter as Sudafed is in fact Phenylephrine which is another nasal decongestant not Pseudoephedrine (a.k.a Sudafed).  Some of the generic versions are even named Pseudoephedrine when the ingredient is actually Phenylephrine.  Talk about false advertising!  With all the confusion we chose to speak with the pharmacist.  She explained the plain, original, uncomplicated version with the true Pseudoephedrine is sold behind the counter and that is what she should take.

Now I wish the story could end there, but I then needed to register with every form of ID, give them my home address, phone number, provide a blood sample, a urine sample, pass a physical, a credit check, psychological exam, etc.  My head was spinning with multitude of questions.  I had to ask the pharmacist if it would be a requirement to provide her with all this information every time I wanted to buy drugs from behind the counter to build my meth lab.  Christine did not find this amusing.