Big news

...sometimes comes in small packages. In this case, one of the biggest things ever to happen to me is, at this moment, just over 7 centimeters long and 13 weeks old, but is going to change my life forever.

Or, put simply, we're pregnant! (Note that I use "we" in this case in the most general sense, even though my contribution for the next six months consists mostly of satisfying late-night food cravings and not doing anything to provoke my baby's mama unnecessarily.)

After trying for over a year and a half, we found out a few weeks ago that all of the charting, planning, and testing had finally paid off. In fact, we had finally decided to book an appointment with a fertility clinic, and we found out the good news just two hours before our first appointment. The doctor joked that these are the fastest results they've ever seen.

Actually, as it turns out, the baby was conceived the day after one friend's wedding, and we got the positive test results the morning of another one. The moral of the story is: if you're having trouble conceiving, try arranging marriages for some of your single friends.

After doing a screening for any genetic problems, the results came back completely clean, and as an added bonus, we know for sure that it's a girl. We're planning on naming her Sofia, after Amy's grandmother and great-grandmother. Luckily it's also a name that is pronounced the same in English and in Spanish; since my own name doesn't fall into that category (I regularly get Catalan speakers referring to me as "el Grec", or "the Greek"), I want to make sure that my daughter doesn't have the same problem.

The due date is set for May 24th, although if our friends with babies are any indication, the actual date will be somewhere between May 15th and Christmas. This means I won't quite have managed to be a dad before I turn 40, but I won't have missed by much. On the bright side, having 40 years' difference with your child gives so much more weight to the saying, "why, back when I was your age..."

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go stock the freezer with an emergency pint of Häagen-Dazs...