Baby kicks

I have been eagerly awaiting the day when I will feel baby kicking inside, and know without a doubt, that it is baby. A first time mother-to-be feels this movement much later than others who have been through it before and know what it is like. I read that I should expect to feel baby's kicks as late as 22 weeks, so I haven't been worried about it. When you've seen your baby squirming around in utero on the "big screen", it gives you patience.

[When pregnant, you are sometimes offered unsolicited advice. I was at a family party at 16w2d when asked about baby movement. When I repeated the above info, I was firmly told by someone who last had a baby over 40 years ago, "No, you should be feeling the baby now." This is when you learn to just smile and change the subject.]

I think I first felt baby move on June 23 (17w4d), the day before we flew back to the East Coast to visit family. I was at the kitchen sink, and felt something like a small tap. Very brief, not repeated, but definitely not one of my ligament pulls or a gas bubble in my stomach. (Or as Scrooge told Marley, "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese.")

Two days later, I again felt a very small tap, deep inside, that I wasn't sure about and guessed could be baby. But it was the last tap I felt for a week, when there again was another something, like a tiny finger wiping at my insides briefly. But with everything getting crunched up inside as the uterus has expanded, who really knew? In the last few days, I would say to Tim, "well I might have just felt baby," and touch Tim's arm with the briefest of touches to describe the feeling. Each of these odd taps would be so brief that I wouldn't notice it until it was gone, and each was never repeated.

But today! Three or four hard kicks in one area! Someone was definitely saying hello! I was lying on my left side on the couch in the office, getting ready to take a nap after lunch, when I felt the movement. Oh this was baby firmly kicking! (The ultrasound technician warned me baby's legs were up by his head, and in prime kicking position!) I felt them one after another in the same area, on the left side of the uterus. Maybe baby was feeling a little squished and pushing himself into a roomier position.

All I could do was smile a big contented smile, knowing baby was there, doing well inside my pregnant belly.