Quickening

Tomorrow I will be 19 weeks pregnant.

Even in a short 19 weeks, pregnancy has had plenty of ups and downs. 

Pro: No one judges me for how much food is on my plate.  Ever.  In fact, I could probably get away with eating sticks of butter at the moment.  (No, I do not crave butter.)  In fact, most people actually encourage heaping portions of any and everything on my plate.  Never mind that my diet is only supposed to increase by a scant 100-150 calories compared to my pre-pregnancy diet.  But hey, it's always a relief to know that should I want a second piece of lasagna, no one will blame me or complain that I got more than my share. 

Con: While everyone has been encouraging me to "Eat for two..." since I was 5 weeks, there was a good 7+ weeks in there where eating for 1/2 was a challenge, and keeping it in my body even more so.  I will spare you the gritty details. 

Pro: Pregnancy is the best motivation in the world to be nicer to your body.  (Eat better things, take supplements, lift things that aren't quite so heavy, for which my joints are certainly grateful.)

Con: Motivation is actually a nice word.  Non-negotiable demands may be more accurate at times, usually regarding when I eat, urinate, and beginning to be how I sit, etc.

Pro: The beautiful knowledge that life is being cultivated within my womb.

Con: The moments where I wake with heart pounding and palms sweating with the jolting realization that there is a baby in there, and one way or another, it has to come out.

So yes.  Lots of pros and cons.  You can read my earlier post about pregnancy and easily see that I hated being pregnant at that point.  I no longer hate it, and am actually enjoying it now, but my frustration has been that other than the weird way I felt, the swelling of my belly (which I see as a major deal, but most people see as very slight,) and the fact that we can hear a tiny, fast little heartbeat on the Doppler at appointments with my midwives, I didn't feel like things were changing, namely because I couldn't feel the little nugget moving.

When I reached 15 or 16 weeks the questions started coming.  "Have you felt the baby move?"  To which my blank, sad stare would communicate that no, I haven't.  What exactly am I supposed to be "feeling" for?  If you want women to get really weird really quick, get them to start talking about fetal movement.  I'm serious.  Women will tell you all kinds of things. 

"It starts as just little flutterings, like a butterfly in your stomach." 

"It feels like someone is tickling you!  Just like this." *proceeds to give my belly a little tickle.*  Teehee! 

"It feels like an air bubble.  Almost like you just drank a Dr. Pepper and some carbonation is just being weird in your stomach." 

"It feels like gas." 

And my personal favorite, coming from my friend Kara who is currently in the hospital on bed rest, pregnant with twins, "When it feels like a goldfish is swimming around in there, you know it's the baby!"  Turns out, this has been the most accurate, but I get ahead of myself.  (To learn about Kara's miraculous journey so far with her twins, here is a link to her blog.)

3 weeks may seem like a short amount of time, but when you spend every day waiting for something, it feels like an eternity.  We all know how long 3-5 business days are when we are waiting for UPS to drop off that new book/gadget that we ordered.  Just imagine that, but longer.  Every day I would lay down and concentrate and will myself to feel that baby.  Sometimes I would think, *gasp* Maybe that was it!  But for all I know, I ate too much spicy food at dinner.  (They said it feels like gas.  Maybe what they felt actually was gas.)

I watched bitterly and cynically as I unfortunately sat through Twilight: Breaking Dawn and, (SPOILER ALERT!!!) it depicted Bella feeling her baby moving after a short 14 days post-conception.  For those of you playing at home...  In the real world, you know, planet Earth where real women are delivering real babies, 2 weeks post-conception the baby hasn't even earned the name of 'fetus' yet.  It is still simply referred to as an 'embryo'.  It will be 2-3 weeks before it even begins developing arms and legs and is incapable of moving.  Disclaimer: No, I haven't read the Twilight books, and am not sure that I will ever be able to stomach reading them.  I do realize that Bella's pregnancy is not "normal."  But come on.  2 weeks?  Give me a freakin' break.  As we watched the movie I rolled my eyes and probably talked constantly to my husband about how stupid this was.  I was mad because Bella could feel her baby moving, and I couldn't.  Lame, I know.  Pregnancy does stupid things to you.  (Pro: You can blame ANYTHING on pregnancy and get away with it.  Forgetfulness, mood swings, cravings, tears...  anything.)

So now you are caught up to the completion of my 17th week.  At my prenatal appointment my midwife recommended that I try laying down immediately after dinner to feel the baby, as that is the time when they seem to be the most active.  (Sugar rush?  Who knows.)  I tried this and kept gasping and saying, "I think I might have felt it!"  My husband was skeptical.  He was certain that I only thought I could feel it because Kelly, my midwife, had told me I might be able to.  (He is convinced that I am a hypochondriac and that any time a medical professional tells me something, I believe it. He thinks that if I am ever concerned that I may be getting sick, I am then certain to get sick, because I psyched myself into it.  This is not true.  The reason I always get sick when I say I think I'm getting sick is because I don't want to admit in the beginning that I may be getting sick, then by the time I admit it, I'm already sick.  You are welcome for that unnecessary peek into our marital disputes.)  He may have been right.  I don't know if that was the baby moving or not.  If it felt like gas, then who could know what was gas and what was fetal movement?  Certainly not me.  (The only reason I am admitting to gas is because I'm pregnant.  It's the baby's fault.  Please see the above pro.)

A couple of days ago, after I had eaten a late night snack, I was sitting at the computer bumming around on Facebook and I felt it.  And I was certain.  Somebody was kicking me in there.  And not just kicking.  The whole goldfish thing was pretty spot on.  Ever put your foot in water and waited with incessant giggling for minnows to nibble your toes?  It's okay, men.  You don't have to admit that you were giggling.  (But we all know it's true...)  That's how I felt.  It was a strange, strange feeling.  But it was a relief to have confirmation other than hearing the heartbeat once a month that there really is something going on in there to justify all of these crazy symptoms.

My husband told me as he was pressing his hand on my stomach, "It's not fair that you can feel the baby and I can't."  Well, there are a lot of things about this pregnancy that aren't fair, let me tell you.  But we won't get into that.  He tries to use my belly button like a microphone or a walkie-talkie to the baby.  "This is your father..."  Star Wars style.  But all to no avail.  I thought it would probably be a while before you could feel anything at all from the outside.

This morning as I laid in bed putting off getting up, (it's the weekend!) my stomach was kind of hurting.  This is a common occurrence, really, because I'm convinced that overnight is when my organs decide to shift.  They are all looking for room in there and decide that an all-nighter of abdominal organ tetrus is a good idea.  So sometimes my abdomen (the place where a good deal of my digestive and internal reproductive equipment hang out) doesn't feel the best first thing in the morning.  Oh well.  Not that big of a deal.  I sat there with my hand on my stomach, and was incredibly surprised when I felt something move.  If that was gas, I would really be in trouble.  Yikes.  I grabbed my husband's hand (who was currently dead to the world,) and pressed it down on my stomach where I'd had mine.  When I had woken him up enough, he too could feel somebody doing somersaults in there.  "Did you feel that?"  I asked him?  "There's a baby in there!" he said, and shortly thereafter proceeded to roll back over and go back to sleep.

I am not the sappy type.  I'm not good at sentimental garbage.  I only cry in movies, where people have made it their life's work to figure out what emotional strings to pull at in order to eek a few tears out of women.  I did not cry when I found out I was pregnant, or when I heard our baby's heartbeat for the first time.  I kind of live in the camp that says, "The concept is cool, but hearing fuzzy whoosh-whoosh-whoosh sounds on the Doppler just doesn't bring me to tears."  Does that make me a bad mom?  I don't know.  But getting to see my husband feel his baby for the first time this morning was the closest I've come to crying.  I'll have to hold it together for months now, as I will be the first witness to daddy-baby bonding time. 

Here goes nothing.