Somersaults

After a bit of worrying and a reassuring chat with a nurse at my doctor's office, I think I've finally realized that I've been able to feel my baby moving. If no one had told me that I could start feeling movement as early as 15 or 16 weeks, or if I hadn't been asked by curious friends whether I've felt it move yet, I wouldn't have given the lack of detectable movement a second thought. Despite all the changes in my body, it appears I had actually gotten used to all the noises and odd sensations coming from my belly. Or since I've forgotten what it feels like not to be pregnant, it's possible I'd just thought the inner workings of my stomach were always that active.

By yesterday, the "bubbles popping against the inside of my stomach" sensation that started intermittently maybe two weeks ago erupted into repeated "butterfly flutters" throughout the day. It was one of the oddest sensations I've ever felt and actually, a lot of times it tickled. And it was tickling parts of my body that have never been tickled before, which made the experience sometimes uncomfortable. Chris, who loves to tickle, was delighted when I described how the baby's movements felt, and exclaimed, "That's my child," as he tried to tickle me some more. I was being attacked from both sides!

I was still in a bit of disbelief about all the new sensations. "I think this is really the baby moving," I told Chris. "Yes, it's the baby," he replied with a twinge of his own disbelief that I couldn't really recognize all these crazy movements being that of the baby and not just crazy stomach rumblings. Hadn't he read to me numerous times what those first movements might feel like? "So it's actually a baby and not tapeworm?" I half stated, half asked (in reference to a joke of mine about me finding it hard to believe I'm actually pregnant and that is what is really causing my stomach to expand). "No, it's really just the baby," he said hardly looking away from the Stanley Cup game on TV, and visibly unconcerned.

Someone from my soccer team thought the explosion in movement was just because the baby was excited about opening day - that is, the opening day of the summer season for Hansa, an intramural soccer team from Minneapolis. As the child-to-be of a sports fanatic who grows giddy in anticipation of going to a pro baseball game or remains captivated by ice hockey, even when the season stretches into June, (the sports fanatic is Chris, not me, in case you are confused) I can believe that the baby was doing somersaults of delight in a pool of amniotic fluid in anticipation of a new season for a scrappy local soccer team.