Sue is getting ready to pop! Her due date is October 26th, but we recently found out that Asian women often deliver at 39 weeks, not the usual 40 weeks, so there's a good chance it could happen next week:

"A 2003 London-based study of over 122,000 pregnancies... found that average gestational age at delivery was 40 weeks for white Europeans but only 39 weeks for members of the black and Asian ethnic groups"

Our Birth Plans:

• Where we're giving birth: We are planning a home birth (more on what that's like in a future blog post!) so if everything goes as planned, we won't be at a hospital.

• Updates: We're planning on texting & emailing updates to family & friends as Sue's labor starts & progresses. Or to put it another way, "our people will call your people." First-time mothers can labor for as long as 14-36 hours, so once the process begins, it could take a while!

• Visitors: We can't wait to introduce Baby DROdio to our friends and family, but we also have no idea what the birth process and recovery is going to be like for us (does anyone have an instruction manual for this stuff?). As soon as we get a handle on everything, you'll be the first to know!

• No gifts, please! We are taking an "agile" approach to parenting. For those of you who aren't techies, that means we are taking it step by step, and we will purchase baby items as we learn the needs of our baby. We don't want to start out with a room full of boxes of baby things that we don't know whether we'll need or not.

If you really really want to get us something (and you're really stubborn even though we don't need anything!), we would ask that you get us a Munchery Gift Card. This is a food ordering service that will allow us to have freshly prepared food delivered daily for the first few weeks, and that would help both of us cope. (Since Sue is the one who usually feeds us, I especially would appreciate this, since I'll be responsible for feeding her!) To make sure it arrives at the right place, use email address "us -at- danielodio -dot- com" for the gift card.

That's it for now, more updates to come!