Belly Reflections

Almost from the first moment that I knew I was pregnant, I looked forward to feeling our baby move.  I mean, I was really excited about the idea!  And for the past 3-ish weeks since my morning sickness stopped, I've seen it as the next sign that this pregnancy is real and is continuing to be healthy.  I know that you don't have to feel your baby move for everything to be totally normal.  But still, I started to think, "Maybe I am just getting fat, and getting over a 3-month bout of bulimia."

No, honestly, I am sure that I have felt the baby moving as far back as 6 weeks ago (around 14 weeks).  I read up a bunch on feeling baby movements, and all of the things said I'd feel gas or feathery feelings.  So I've been waiting for those kinds of feelings.  In the mean time, I started feeling things that were more like muscle twitches in my abdomen.  At first it was not very often at all, just an occasional twitch.  Which made it seem likely that it really was just a muscle twitch.  I mean, my abdomen was going through some changes (Hello, uterus!), and I knew that my ligaments were all getting ready to stretch out, which means that muscles are not supported like they used to be.  So it made sense.

However, like I said, I have been looking forward to feeling the baby like crazy!  So I said, "This is just a muscle twitch.  BUT...I'll remember this and if that ends up being what my baby feels like, I'll know that it was really movement."  Yeah, I'm no dummy.

Fast forward about 3 weeks, and I started feeling these "muscle twitches" much more often.  At this point I was like, "I will bet that this is the baby."  But I had no proof.  They were still pretty light feelings.  They did not feel like they had any more power behind them than the first few twitches had.  And I thought, "If this is the baby, wouldn't they be getting stronger?"  So I again put off a certain diagnosis.  I said, "I am pretty sure this is the baby, but I might be wrong.  I am not going to officially say that I've felt the baby move."  Because a false official statement like that would ruin my reputation.  :D

So, this last week I felt another one of those twitches, and there was a lot of force behind it, and I knew that I had felt my baby.  And then I felt it again.  And again!  I am suddenly feeling it very frequently.  Dave joined a band when we moved to Mesquite (Deserves its own post!), and I went to watch them practice last night.  When they first started playing, the baby went crazy!  She was moving around a lot.  I had earplugs in, since we were in a small basement and the music was really loud.  And I kept thinking, "Maybe the music is too loud for her!  Too bad I can't protect her ears too."  And then I realized that her ears are protected by her placenta, my uterus, and my skin.  Yeah, her ears were fine.  It's just probably the loudest things she's ever heard so even though it wasn't too loud for her she reacted pretty strongly.

All of these movements were only felt on the inside.  I've had my hand over my belly during lots of these, and never felt anything that way.  Until today!  I was sitting working at my computer and felt a pretty strong bump.  I put my hand right where I had felt it and kind of pressed a little, and she bumped it again in that spot.  I totally felt it with my hand!  I pressed around with my hand some more and felt her one more time.  I am in love!

I'm sure that a blow-by-blow of my awakening to the reality of fetal movement was thrilling for you to read, and just what you wanted today!  But just in case you didn't get your fill on the topic, please comment and let me know what it was like for you when you first felt life inside you.  Or let me know if you have any questions about it...Since I'm now an expert!