*hic* *hic* *hic*

mom's research turned up this little gem for next week:

These movements will increase as his body grows and becomes more developed and functional. As his diaphragm develops, your tiny tenant may also start to get the hiccups. Because he's still so small, though, you won't feel any of his workouts or intrauterine gulps until sometime between weeks 16 and 20.

Of course, hiccups are often associated with alcoholism. It's certainly a little early for Lil' Genghis to be hitting the bottle -- either kind of bottle, as it happens.

Over the years, though, we've collected a number of tips about alcohol and babies. The doctors say, of course, that no level of alcohol intake has been proven to be safe. mom is thus playing it cautious, and is now drinking substantially less than three bottles of Scotch a night.*

Still, Aunt Becky mentioned that her father dipped his finger in whiskey to ease her teething pains; to date, she's a Ph.D.-wielding professional with no public record of executing homeless people while dressed as a male mobster, so it could have worked far worse. Uncle Jack once mentioned that he dipped the pacifier in Kahlua to help dad's cousins, Bobby and Erica, sleep.

Still, it's far too early to start Lil' Genghis' post-birth subscription to Modern Drunkard magazine.

Given that his child is almost able to start burping like an alcoholic, though, dad is thinking about how to introduce alcohol, more than a decade from now. Both parents have done a regrettable thing or two under the influence -- no, we won't say it here, even though dad reallllly wants to type it -- and of course Lil' Genghis will never be able to meet Grandma Kathryn because of an indirect, but very real, connection to a drunk driver in a big truck. It's not clear on how to reduce the risk of these kinds of problems.

In the short term, though, it's much easier to think of our Lil' Genghis getting a little bit bigger every day, developing a little bit more, and getting ready to hiccup.

In the middle term, how much longer will it be before dad starts a burping contest? =)


* Three bottles under three bottles a night, actually.

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Edited by mom: Lil Genghis is due on St. Patrick's Day, how ominous!