Looks as though everything is going great, swivel! I wish you and Megan a good future with your kid.

Thank you, Ashbad, we very much appreciate that.

Oh, I forgot to ask, do you know the gender of your baby yet?

Isn't gender only able to be discerned in the 2nd trimester? I mean, hasn't it only been about a month since conception? The baby-in-progress can't be developed enough to determine that yet, right?

Well, it says 10 weeks 4 days on the sonograms, so that's about 2.5 months, right? That's not quite one trimester, so I could certainly believe they don't know. But if they do bloodwork, then they could easily do a simple genetic test for the gender of the baby from the chromosomic data.

Ah yes, true. Heh, I was only thinking in terms of ultrasound guessing (or maybe a mildly invasive camera? I don't know, heh). Totally forgot about doing chromosome analysis from blood work.

I'm interested in how the blood work.. well.. works. Isn't the blood pumping through the baby basically the mother's blood? My expertise in this area is sorely lacking

I'm not entirely sure how much of the child's blood is his own during the pregnancy, but if the child's own blood is incompatible with the mother's after birth, you get complications like jaundice, where the mother's blood literally tries to kill off the infant's. Both me and my brother had this, and with my brother it was apparently so bad it may have caused his mild autism.

Well, it says 10 weeks, but it's actually 11 weeks (fixed) and 3 days. But, Keith is right, the baby's gender is detectable between 18-22 weeks.

There is a way to detect the baby's gender prior to ~20 weeks, which is just an extra for doing an assortment of prenatal testing, but we won't be doing that. Roughly 1% of the babies tested actually come back positive, and 70-80% of those are false-positives. The cons include things like possibility of miscarriage and the-like. High risk for something that's really quite unnecessary. If our child is born with Down syndrome, we'll deal with it. But with the risk involved, it's quite unnecessary for such an unreliable test.

And, DShiz is right. But this goes far deeper than just a baby's blood with the mother's. Any blood, even compatible types, will be rejected by the body because of conflicting DNA. A medication has to be injected to trip up this mechanism in the body in order to receive blood. This is one reason why the Nazi's sick attempts to sew someone else's arm on some random guy didn't work.


[edit] Also, there's never actually a point in which the mother's blood is pumping through the baby. As soon as the need for blood arises, the baby's heart is already beating on its own. The only thing the mother provides is nutrients through the umbilical and an environment for it to grow and mature.

well, that sounds like a rather nasty thing to have :/ I really hope your baby turns out pitch perfect with nothing wrong.

Well, though I would never wish those upon anyone, either way what ever happens we'll be ready to take care of our child whatever the case may be

That's extremely respectable obviously you'll be a good father no matter the outcome.

Plot twist! The baby will look like Kerm and be twice as white and nerdy!

Erm, good luck with raising the kid, Swivel. Remember: if your kid ever outsmarts you, give 'im a good whack. Whacks decrease IQ points

Thanks again for the encouragement, Ashbad! ^^,

Keith, hahaha, well, ironically, I was the one walking around with the "White and Nerdy" hoody every day for the first two years of my high school career. Weird Al ftw

And I'll keep that in mind, Keith hahah

If you pass through Colorado I'd love to tag along

I feel like I should mention, be wary of the date of the wedding. It could be difficult to find a dress the further into pregnancy she gets, plus other considerations. If you can't make it soon, you might want to go for after the birth.

One of my friends had their wedding while they too were having a baby. That said, maternity wedding dresses, and their stores/outlets/departments do exist.

This. Indeed the do.

But I think we really are going to wait until after the baby is born to have our wedding.

What last name will the baby adopt?

Or you could just feed him delicious pistachio-flavored lead paint chips...

This just in: nobody cares about any of this.

Just because your parents never loved you doesn't mean other peoples' parents don't love them.