21 days is all we have left until our due date. That is just 504 hours.

They say only 5% of women actually deliver on their due date which makes one wonder why they even bother giving someone a due date. It seems like they could just say you will probably deliver sometime between week 37-42 which is the span that is considered full-term. 

They also say that 34% of babies are born during weeks 40-41. (If Jack’s due date is correct he would arrive on week 40). But that still leaves a large percentage born before or after 40-41 weeks. So I turned to Yahoo! Answers to find out during what weeks most babies are born. The results were full of moms just giving their own experience and opinions which didn’t seem to clear things up.  One woman said most women deliver between week 37-38. Yahoo! Answers gives you an option to list your sources and hers was: I currently have a bunch of friends who are pregnant and just had babies….Im expecting as well.

That seemed good enough for me. So it looks like Jack will be coming any day now. Anne, if you are reading this I will meet you at the hospital.

It is 7:11 AM on a Tuesday morning in Nashville. Looking outside our bay windows from the kitchen table, the day has a promising look of sun with a hint of rain. Anne sits across the table eating a bowl of Frosted Mini-Wheats. This has been her cereal of choice over the last few months. Also next to Anne is three bottles of vitamins that she has been taking for her pregnancy. She takes them consistently each morning but avoids it as long as she can. Right now she is in the “avoiding” stage of breakfast.

After cereal, she writes in her prayer journal–something she has done faithfully since she was in junior high. She actually still has all her journals from when she was a young girl. I find it amazing that she has kept daily prayers to God all the way back to when she was twelve. She can look back and read the heart’s desire of a young girl, teenager, young woman and now a wife and soon-to-be mom. While I am blogging about our journey to parenthood, the real journey to read would be the daily prayers of a pregnant woman. But that one isn’t available online and was intended only for an audience of One.

Mornings in the Horch house often will have music playing but this morning we sit to the sound of the fridge and some birds outside.

The avoidance time is over and Anne has taken her dreaded vitamins. Unpleasant for her, but good for Jack. The time now reads 7:39 and it is time to go to work. Anne quickly finishes her orange juice while I didn’t eat anything at all.

We take a few moments and just sit before the day gets going. We need to appreciate the quiet and the stillness we now associated with mornings. Because soon “quiet” and “still” will be the last words we will ever use to describe this early morning time.

As I wrote about earlier, the Horch family (Jeff, Anne and Jack) filled out our NCAA brackets and now it is time to give you an update on how our brackets are doing. We’ll start with Jack who took the unorthodox approach of picking each game based on which team’s name had the most letters from Jack’s own name. This led him to pick North Dakota State, Cal. State Northridge, Oklahoma State and North Carolina in the final four with Cal State winning it all. He currently has one team remaining in Carolina.

Anne had BYU, Wake Forest, Duke and Western Kentucky in the final four with Wake Forest winning it all. I am sad to report she has no teams left in contention.

And finally, I had Louisville, Memphis, Pitt and North Carolina with Carolina winning it all. So I have one team left with my overall winner still alive.

According to our pregnancy book, if Jack came today he would be considered full term. But Jack continues to grow. He is growing about a half a pound a week. And apparently that half pound is made up mostly of pie. (See earlier blog on Anne’s new favorite dessert).

Overall, at the 37th week Anne is feeling pretty good. Sleep can be difficult but she isn’t at a place where she is anxious for Jack to come out. She has really enjoyed this whole process.

It just seems we are now at a place where we are just waiting–waiting for the next three weeks to pass quickly so we can finally meet our son face to face.

Anne has a theory and it goes something like this: Every woman who has been pregnant thinks they were bigger than any woman who has ever bore a child.

It seems that everyone who looks at Anne tells her she looks great (which she does) and then makes a comment about how when they were pregnant they were huge. But Anne thinks she is pretty big too and in fact, when she looks at other women who are at a similar stage, she thinks they look small.

It seems like pregnant women have a natural self-consciousness about this strange new shape their body is taking. They see their body everyday and in a ways only they can see. They feel big and therefore think they must be abnormally huge. But they probably look like everyone else who is 9 months pregnant.

I think it fits into that category where we think everyone notices our bad hair, wrinkled shirt, extra weight or whatever we are self-conscious about. But the reality is we probably look fine.

So pregnant woman, next time you want to tell your “you’re tiny, I was huge” story, remember you probably looked great.

We learned that Jack is in the right position waiting to be born. Our doctor confirmed that his head is straight down with his bottom up although he has not officially dropped yet. This news surprised Anne because she really thought Jack was probably still heads up.

This past week Anne has developed a new favorite when it comes to food or more specifically when it comes to desserts. Last monday she bought a cherry pie for our small group but it didn’t get eaten. And so in our fridge sat a whole cherry pie just waiting for someone to eat it. The next night Anne decided to have a slice after dinner. After that slice was done she decided to have another. Then the next night she repeated her after dinner ritual. I was starting to notice a trend. And by the third night she just started out with two pieces knowing she was heading there anyway. Needless to say, our cherry pie is gone.

But then yesterday Anne had to face the scale. She was having her doctor appointment which always starts with the dreaded weigh-in. She had just consumed a whole pie and she was nervous how much she might have gained. In her last weigh-in, she had gained 6 pounds in 2 weeks–and that was without pie.

She boldly but nervously stepped on the scaled. And there was the result: ONE POUND!

Anne smiled and said to me, “Well, I guess I can eat LOTS of cherry pie.”

According to a recent study that came out last week, there has been a two-year trend of more births than deaths in the United States. The National Center for Health Statistics found the nation produced 4,317,000 babies in 2007 — the largest number in its history. They said this trend has continued through mid 2008.

Historically, births decrease during recessions and economic down times, but the continual increase in births comes from those deciding to have kids before the economy became a major concern.

We can’t make any promises but Anne and I will certainly do our best as patriotic Americans to help this country grow one baby at a time.

They say you teach what you know and you illustrate from what you live. So now I have officially moved into that new season of my life in which my child (and hopefully children) will now become fodder for sermon illustrations.

On Sunday I taught at a church about an hour south of Nashville. My main idea was that our view of God determines our actions and our actions determines our life. I opened by talking about the fact that my child’s view of God will be largely shaped by his view of me as his father because his ability to know God rightly as a father will be determined by his understanding of what a father is. And the reason this thought was sobering was because my child’s view of who God is will determine every aspect of his life. I then went and looked at the life of Saul and how his distorted view of God caused him to continually make foolish decisions (decisions he thought were wise).

It marked the first time I was able to use my soon-to-be-born child as a sermon illustration. I’m sure over the next 20 years I’ll begin many bible studies and sermons with the phrase, “My son said the funniest thing this week…”

You can hear Sunday’s sermon here (It might take a minute or two to load)

Yesterday Anne officially entered into the all-important ninth month. We are now in the red zone or maybe we should call it the baby blue zone. Although I don’t think Anne will be having Jack anytime soon this is the time during the pregnancy that surprise deliveries could happen. It is certainly not unheard of for babies to come weeks to even a month early. I keep joking with Anne that I think he could be coming soon and I even talk to Jack and tell him to come on out. Anne quickly tells Jack, “don’t listen to daddy”

I would like to hear from other moms out there? Did you have a child that came early and if so, how early were they?

This afternoon Anne’s sister (Amy Mayer) and sister-in-law (Julie Goldsmith) hosted a shower for Anne at our house. Since I had to leave shortly before it started I can only report on the rumors I have heard. But based on the sketchy details that I have picked up from various eyewitnesses and news reports, it appears they had a great time full of food, games and of course gifts. Jack continues to receive fun stuff and his allegiance to the Dallas Mavericks will not be doubted as his grandmother gave him a tiny Mavericks warm-up suit complete with jacket, pants, shirt and tennis shoe.

Thank you for all the friends and family who came and supported and encouraged Anne with a very wonderful shower!

43,829.0639 minutes.
730.484398 hours.
31 days.
Four weeks and three days.

In other words, Jack is coming in one month.

With the greatest sporting event starting today (ok, it officially started Tuesday between Alabama State and Morehead State) the Horch household filled out their NCAA brackets. Anne has Wake Forest winning it all and I have North Carolina giving Roy Williams his second championship.

 Jack even filled out a bracket, too. Now of course he can’t actually tell us who he would pick so I developed a system to make his picks for him. In each game, I picked the team that had the most letters in the name “Jack”. For example, in the game between Oklahoma and Morgan St — Jack picks Oklahoma because Oklahoma has an “A” and “K” and Morgan St only has an “A”. Make sense?

Well, based on this system Jack has North Dakota St, Cal State Northridge, North Carolina and Oklahoma State in the Final Four. And then Jack likes Cal State Northridge winning it all over North Carolina.

Too bad Jackson State didn’t make the tournament this year, I think they would have swept Jack’s bracket.