Doctor Visit: 04

For the second time in a row, we waited for quite a while in the doctor's waiting room before a fairly routine five-minute check-up. Apparently, Monday nights are extremely popular at the Ob/Gyn's, so we're going to try and have the next appointment on a quieter day. Hopefully, this will help to minimize or even eliminate the Monster's prenatal exposure to Oprah.

As for the Monster itself, it's doing just fine. Stef has gained 3.5 lbs, which is right in keeping with all the books and charts and what-have-yous. The Monster's heartbeat is still chugging away at a clip of about 160 BPM (and, no, that is not indicative of a gender, sorry). However, perhaps the best news of the entire visit was that Stef got express permission to eat the occasional sushi roll or deli meats - advice which is in keeping with every pregnancy book written in the past decade that I've read, but against the "conventional" wisdom and habits of some of our more cautious pregnant friends.