Coming Together

Midwife appointment day-- Which I have to admit, I was really ready for this week. I have still found myself waking up on my stomach. It's because there's so much fat room in there, a noticeable bump for those who don't regularly see me naked is not apparent. And fyi, no one regularly sees me naked but Partner. Still even though I know that my fat is to blame, I was plagued by thoughts that the baby wasn't growing in there, or moving, and you know what the end result of thoughts like that are... I won't even say it outloud, but believe me, at 2:00 a.m., in the darkness, the bad bad thoughts run rampant. Of course thoughts like those thrive on the midnight hours. The same thoughts seem almost silly only twelve hours later. (This might be one reason why I have a problem with winter-- more hours in the dark to brood about what might be but probably never will be.)

I also haven't felt-felt the kid yet. I guess Partner and I decided that some of the fluttering I was feeling was indeed the Cricket, but being kind of thick sometimes (not just in the middle), I have desired a definitive jab in the gut. Come on kid, sock it to me! As an ex-rugby player, one might say that I need to be hit hard to even feel it. It's a theory anyway.

When I went out to leave the requisite pee, Partner apparently asked the midwife if the flutterings I was feeling might be the Cricket, and she said definitely. I suppose it wasn't hard to get there by deductive reasoning: A. Katie feels distinct fluttering in her abdominal region. B. She never felt those feelings before being pregnant. What might a logical conclusion be? Huh. Hmm. I wonder?

So when I hopped on the table so she could Doppler my beer gut/pregnant belly, she noted that maybe when listening to the heart, she'd hear it move too, and if I could match that movement with the flutter, we'd have proof in the pudding.

Okay-- Let me just say, the kid is a Mexican jumping bean. Rambunctious isn't overstating it. Kick, kick, kick, roll around, kick, jab, kick. We could hear the heart get louder or softer as it moved around. And it was hard for the midwife to really get the heart rate count because the kid was moving so much. She was laughing out loud. "You really can't feel that?" she said to me? Nope. Nada. "Well, if you can't feel it now, it won't be long until you can."

I came home to try and teach myself out of the Essential Drug Dosage Calculation book (with stupid elemental mistakes in basic math, and believe me you, I'm penning a letter to the publisher about it) and felt the flutterings. The Cricket. Fluttering around. With a heart beating. I think I'm going to have a baby. And I can unequivocally say that today was the first day I felt enormous amounts of excitement about the whole thing-- excitement that was unhindered. It floated up to the sky. It filled my house. It's made me warm. Baby.