Jon and Amber

Well, there it is! As of today, we are 12 weeks and 4 days pregnant (or 12 weeks and 3 days according to the ultrasound technician). But who’s counting? We are due around the end of April, 2008, and that’s all that matters.

We wanted to be sure we’d gotten through the first trimester before going public with the news, so now that we’re there, everyone can share the excitement!

We were not supposed to get an ultrasound until another two months from now, at our 20-week appointment, but our first OB visit at 12 weeks (last Thursday) was a little scary – the doctor wasn’t able to find a fetal heartbeat at all. Everything else checked out as healthy, but she ordered an ultrasound to double-check all our dates and confirm viability of the fetus. Those few days between the two appointments were a little nerve-wracking, but now that we know everything is OK, things are feeling much better.

The reason the doctor wasn’t able to hear a heartbeat is simple – we’ve got a wild little jumper in there – a real athlete! It’s hard to get a close listen to someone who refuses to sit still for more than a few seconds at a time. So while it was a little scary at first, we now know that our baby is active and healthy.

We don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl yet – it’s still a little early to tell for sure – but we’re hoping to find out in mid-December when we have our 20-week ultrasound. Until then, it’s going to be pretty exciting to see how fast my (Amber’s) belly grows – up until now, I’ve only gained 2/10ths of a pound, which they tell me is perfectly OK, but that’s going to start changing very fast! We’ll start taking belly-growth pictures very soon. Stay tuned for more updates!

Amber here, with a quick rant.

Jon and I watched the series premier of ABC’s “Cavemen” the other night, and it was just terrible, un-funny, and generally pathetic.

But my real gripe was not the lack of humor. My real gripe is that the show, and all the reviews and articles about the show, constantly compare “Cro-Magnons” with “Homo sapiens” as if they were two separate species (or at one point in the show, they even claim that “Sapes” are a different GENUS – oh dear, someone wake me up from this nightmare).

Let me say this right now – “Cro-Magnon” is an outdated, unscientific term, which refers to ANATOMICALLY MODERN HUMANS who lived during the late Pleistocene in Europe, OK? They were just like us, although morphologically a bit more robustly built. But they were Homo sapiens, 100%. Remember this fact, and tell all your friends and relatives. And someone, please, tell me how to get this information to the writers of the show.

I know, I’m being pedantic, but this is something I have really strong feelings about as a former archaeologist. This means something to me. I love everything about our prehistoric ancestors, and this show is spreading all kinds of horrible garbage that people are believing! Please, please, don’t ever forget that Cro-Magnon is not a term for anything but an Anatomically Modern Human. I promise. If anyone tries to tell you otherwise, you just tell them to go get a basic education in paleoanthropology, and then to get back to me if they still disagree. Because they’re still wrong and I will tell them that very loudly and probably with great frustration.

OK, thanks, and now back to your regularly scheduled web browsing.
-’ber