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01/29/2007: "And she dances, too!"
Just thought I'd pop in and let you know that my unborn child? My heart of hearts? The true and mysterious love of my life? Well, it seems that she's a tap dancer. In the past week she's taken on the persona of Shirley Temple and is tap tap tapping her way into America's heart with her unbelievably advanced brush-step-kick-ball-change routines.
Unfortunately her favorite place to jazz it up is on my bladder. This is about what I should have expected.
I don't know what happened this week, but Tycho is now huge. I have, as the pregnancy books say, popped. It would take a very dim person to think that I was merely gaining weight these days. My belly, especially when I'm sitting, has taken on a lovely roundness that bespeaks glowing mother-to-be instead of too-many-Doritos. This is a relief because I was starting to worry that the people at Motherhood Maternity thought that I was just a slovenly fat girl looking for stretchy pants and not a legitimate consumer of the belly pant. It doesn't help that I'm still trying to wear regular T-shirts because I'm basically cheap. If I can get away with my sweatpants and Disneyland tees (purchased at the outlet mall, by the way, for anything from 50 to 80% off...) I will do so for as long as possible.
I've moved from being able to sort of, maybe, kinda, well, I guess possibly I can feel the baby to out and out knowing when she's moving around. Mostly I can feel her kick about 3 inches to the right of my navel, but the past couple of days she's all over the place. For those who haven't been there, the best way I can describe it is like the kind of shift you feel if you have gas and it's moving through the bowels. A sort of popping sort of feeling, as if there was a popcorn machine in the lower abdomen (which is, perhaps, the grossest analogy I've ever made on this blog). It is, frankly, bizarre. But terrifically comforting as well. The knowledge that I not alone is both freaky and lovely.
Much of pregnancy is both freaky and lovely. I had an awful dream the other night, for example, in which I had a very graphic and frightening miscarriage. It wasn't at all like the loss I had over the summer, which was more of a heavy period and complete mental freakout than anything physically painful - but having had the loss I am not new to the pregnancy loss dream. Like I say, though, this one was a whopper. I will not gross you out with a description but suffice it to say that the spaghetti we'd had for dinner the night before had apparently locked itself into my subconcious so that I could revisit it in the middle of the night (gee, thanks for not grossing us out, Kristin. You're welcome!)
Anyhow, I woke from the dream pretty upset and rolled onto my back. Technically I'm not supposed to rest on my back, but I don't get dizzy or nauseous when I do and that's supposed to be the indication to knock it off, so every once in a while I take advantage of the lovely new mattress that we were forced to spend an obscene amount of money for and just lie on my back, damn it. So there I am, freaked by the dream, and I put my hand on my belly and - bang! - she rolled over. I felt a head or a butt or a leg or something roll past my palm. It was like, "Don't worry Mom. I'm right here. And if you don't stop wigging out I will gladly kick you. Would you like a kick? A nice reassuring whack? I can accomodate."
It was the first and, as of right now, only time I've been able to feel her from the outside. I wish it would happen more often, as I would like Dave to be able to feel her but I'm only 22 weeks and my own adipose tissue gets in the way. Soon, I expect, we'll get to the point where he can feel her too. I'm really looking forward to that.
Replies: 1 Comment - Go read it!
on Tuesday, January 30th, Barbara said
I always miss you guys but I miss you even more right now. This is the cool stuff. Somersaults feel pretty amazing.
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