It wasn’t my intention to take the week off from blogging, but the weather was beautiful and the kids and I ended up spending hours upon hours outside this week. I planted flowers while they played, we pulled the little swimming pool out of its sleeping spot in the basement and we had picnics on the deck… it felt soooo good. I’m so happy that Spring has finally arrived! One of the things that I love about spring and fall is that I can open the windows and doors and let the fresh air flow through the house… it’s a bit cleansing for me… like the breeze is taking away all of the bad stuff and replacing it with freshness… but I digress.
Today is the first installment of Flashback Friday in which I feature a post that was written over two years ago for OurMommyhood.com. I wrote this in February 2010, while I was still pregnant with Abby… little did I know that she would be making her grand entrance less than two weeks later!!!
How Do You Describe a Miracle?
As we were laying in bed getting ready to fall asleep, my husband asked me a question that many pregnant women are asked… but usually earlier in the pregnancy.
“What does it feel like when she moves?”
Here I was 33 weeks pregnant and I had been feeling our little girl move for nearly 5 months already. At first the movements just felt like little air bubbles or gas pockets in the lower abdomen… but everyone tells you that. Those first movements are great and you look forward to feeling them, because they are the sporadic reminders that… yes there is a little person growing and living in there.
As the pregnancy progresses the movements become not only more regular, but also get more of a force behind them. Before long you can actually see the movement from the outside too… another reminder for you and others that something is growing inside of you. Then sometime a few weeks later, things start to get cramped for the baby and now you’re not just getting kicked and prodded in the stomach… no, now there are feet and arms stretching up into your ribs and a little head and butt that likes to use your bladder as a trampoline.
I had been feeling all of these things for weeks… months… and yet how do you describe what it feels like to someone who will never get to experience it for himself? If you’re a mom, how would or did you describe the feel of the movements to others?
To me, feeling her move at 33 weeks is a mix between many things. There are still times, like when she may just move a hand or a leg, where it feels like gas bubbles… larger than the ones felt early on… but gas bubbles nonetheless. There are the times where she’s just rolling and moving and it’s like waves rolling through your stomach… it doesn’t hurt… it just feels and looks a little alien. Then there are the stretchers… these seem to happen more when I’m sitting than at any other time. The stretchers hurt… she gets up under my ribs and pushes up and out. Fun times!!
So that is how I explained it to him. It’s odd, because you can’t control it… you can’t say “Okay little person, now I want you to move like this.” She already does what she wants to and in doing so lets me know that she’s real… no matter how alien and foreign it may feel, she’s really real and not just some image on a screen. I love feeling her move. I love feeling when she gets the hiccups. She gets them often… even more often than my son did. Just like with Noah, I know that I will miss this once she’s born. I will miss the hiccups, the gas bubbles, the alien rolls and yes… I may even miss the stretchers, not just the ones that go under the ribs, but the other ones too… the ones that distort your stomach and change it’s shape from the nice, round bump it usually is.
For now though, I’ll try not to think about all of that. Instead I think I will enjoy it all for the few weeks that I have left… and try not to complain too much when it feels like she’s trying to break my ribs!