Feeling Movements!
Whether you were naturally gaseous before, or rarely let a peep fall out of your precious and perfectly-rounded behind, let me clue you in on a little secret: pregnancy changes EVERYTHING about your body. Not just your cute little tummy and your sense of smell. For those of us that are a little more modest I'll break it down. Maybe you are the perfect specimen of a lady and always excuse yourself at the proper time to -- ahem -- toot (or pee or, Heaven forbid, poop). However, for the rest of us (and our poor husbands), we have come to not only accept but sometimes embrace our bodily functions.
Obviously, there is a time and a place for everything. Unfortunately, when pregnant, that little precious beanbug growing inside your little precious rumbling tummy DOES NOT CARE that you are at work, in the car with a friend, talking to a stranger, etc. Sometimes, farts just happen. The biggest advice I think I could ever give to a woman who is trying to conceive or recently found out she is pregnant would be this: Accept the fact now that your body is no longer your own. Smile at the odd way you no longer feel at home in the body you've grown so accustomed to. It is both terrifying and miraculous because all of these weird, sometimes creepy (let's all just take a moment of silence for the inordinate amount of hair that grows in places we never wanted it to), symptoms point to one seriously beautiful thing: a LIFE growing inside of you. So if you can just laugh at yourself and all of the weird things happening, you'll survive!
Now, let me get to the actual point of this post: Fetal (or, what I like to say, "Baby") Movement.
IT. FINALLY. HAPPENED.
While sitting at work yesterday (Wednesday July 16th, 2014) I was busy checking emails when, suddenly, I felt an electric tickle in my lower abdomen. Yes, a tickle. I don't know exactly how else to describe this feeling. All I know is I was mindlessly checking my email when suddenly something so strange and electric-feather-feeling zapped my insides: causing me to look down in curiosity and smile. I grinned from ear-to-ear like a baboon and didn't care. Two more quick tickle-zaps followed 20-30 seconds later. And that was it.
Now, don't get me wrong, I wasn't fully convinced. There was a small (small) portion of my brain that told me to get it together.. "You're only 15 weeks. You couldn't possibly be feeling anything yet. What is wrong with you? You're tricking yourself." But, alas, nothing could rob me of that wonderfully excited feeling.
I knew that I would need to feel that sensation again to fully confirm that what I was feeling legitimately was, in fact, baby, and not just my insides playing tricks on me.
The reason I was such a skeptic is because so many women say the first baby movement they could feel was/is similar to how gas feels.
..................................................................gas.
I don't know about you, but, lately, when I am "gassy" there is no mistaking it. It is not sitting idly in my tummy, if you catch my drift (no pun intended). So you have to understand my hesitance when I have been told over and over I would feel "gas-like-flutters" and got electrically-zapped by a feather, instead.
Luckily this morning my little bean reassured me that I was, in fact, feeling his or her precious little movements. While driving to work I kept feeling this weird tickling sensation in an area that I typically would get cramps prior to pregnancy. Because of location I wondered whether I was, in fact, getting some odd 15-week cramps. I was not. I began to really pay attention to my body and would feel a tickling sensation followed by a pause, and again the tickle followed by the pause. But not so synchronized that I could predict when it would happen. It was sporadic and wonderful all at the same time.
And so the joy of falling in love with being my babybean's punching bag begins!