Daniel J. Wright - Pregnancy and birth

Baby News

12/23/00 (5 Weeks)
    It was the day before Christmas. Leanne and I were at K-Mart and she told me she wanted to get a pregnancy test because she hadn't been feeling well for a while and wanted to see if she might be pregnant. Being the money-tight scrooge that I am, I resisted and told here that she didn't need it. Well.. she bought it anyway.
    Later that evening, while I was working on my computer she opened the door into the room where my computer was with a big grin on her face as she was holding up the test staring at it. She said "Dan, I think we are going to have a baby" and started jumping up and down. Since Leanne is prone to get excited easily, I wasn't quite convinced. She showed me the test, and sure enough, there were two lines. I was excited, but I didn't want to get too excited.. I didn't know how reliable those tests were.
    Leanne wanted to call her parents right away, but I made her promise not to tell them until we saw them in person. She reluctantly promised. The plan was to suprised them over Christmas dinner. We were having Christmas Eve dinner at my parents house, and we planned on supprising them the same way.

12/24/00 (6 Weeks)
We were at my parents house for about two hours before we spilled the beans. Its hard keeping a secret as exciting as this. So, we decided that waiting till dinner on Christmas would be impossible, and we needed to have a "plan B".

12/25/00 (6 Weeks)
We arrived at Leanne's parents house just as everybody was starting to open presents. We handed Leanne's Dad a small wrapped box and told him that he had to open this present first. He thought it was some kind of prank gift and opened it while everybody watched him. When he got the box open, there was the pregnancy test in a zip-lock bag. As he was looking at it, he couldn't tell what exactly it was. Suddenly Tammy figured it out and said "Leanne's pregnant". Dave's mouth dropped open and looked over at her to see if Tammy was right. Leanne nodded and soon the excitement started flying as everybody was hugging everybody.


Supprise, you're going to be grandparents!

12/26/00 (6 Weeks)
We went to the pre-natal clinic at the hospital for a pregnancy test. The nurse did the test right in front of us, and within a couple of minutes informed us that we were going to have a baby. She set up an appointment for a sonogram for the next day to find out how far along the pregnancy was.

12/27/00 (6 Weeks)

Here is what we believe to be the very first baby picture. The small little black spot within the + symbols appears to be the formation of a node which contains the embryo. It is still too small to even measure. The radiologist esitmated that Leanne is about 4 weeks pregnant. This means that the expected birthday would be either late August or early September.

1/24/01 (10 Weeks)
Some more pictures from today's ultrasound (click on them for enlargements). The small black dot from the orignal picture has grown significantly in this picture, and inside you can see the baby forming. The head is towards the right side and tiny legs can be seen staring to develop on the right. In the middle, there was a tiny little section that was flickering very fast on the ultrasound monitor, that is the baby's heart. We got to hear the heartbeat for the first time today. The doctor says everything is going well.

2/14/01 (13 Weeks)
Another visit to the doctor's office today. We got to hear the heart beat. Everything is going well at this point. Another sonogram is scheduled in late March

3/26/01 (19 Weeks)
Leanne had another sonogram today. They did something called a triple screen to check for down syndrom and a number of other potential problems. The baby's current weight is 10 oz's. There is still a great deal of uncertainty, but the radiologist did not find anything that would make her think that this baby will be a boy.
Click on the images on either side for enlarged versions, or click on the links below for more images from the sonogram.

5/23/01 (27 Weeks)
The final ultrasound today. Everything seems to be doing well. All evidence points towards the baby being a girl.

6/29/01 (32 Weeks)
Last week, Leanne went in for a one hour glucose test. The results of that test apparently did not come out well, so we had to go in for a more accurate, 3 hour glucose test. Fortunately, this test revealed that everything is going well.

8/22/01 (Day 1)
After going a few weeks with high blood pressure, Leanne's doctors decided to induce labor for Leanne since we were very close to the due date anyway.

We arrived at the hospital at 6:30 in the morning. After being admitted, we went directly to the birthing suite, where they got leanne set up with some medicine to help along the contractions. They figgured the baby would be born by dinner time.

By 3:00pm the contractions were coming, but they did not hit hard until Leanne's water broke around 4:30. After that, we had a rough couple of hours while we waited for Leanne to be far enough along to get some medicine. Then we had peace until around quater after ten when it was time to start pushing. Finally at 11:07pm, my wife gave birth to our daughter, Natalie Anne Wright weighing 6lbs 15ozs.