Week 25: Greetings from inside the womb! Wish you were here…

24 weeks, 5 days: Part II.

Ok, forget that last part of the title – Small Monster almost certainly does not wish you were in there with him. I certainly do not wish you were, no matter how much I like you, dear reader. Small Monster seems to be pretty happy in there these days, though some days he’s more obvious than others. The anterior placenta business still seems to be dampening his kicks, and I swear that sometimes I actually feel him better from the outside than I do from inside. But when he moves… it’s a wonderous thing.

Mr. Squirmy does in fact seem to like to move – he’s kicked my hand on my belly a few times, surprising me, and he seems to have definite preferences in what I sing to him (he is more active when I sing in lower keys, although I have no idea whether that means he likes it or he is trying to run away from it… I suspect it makes my diaphragm vibrate more (I have a pretty low voice to begin with), so he may just be reacting to that). He stops moving whenever his papa tries to feel him, for some reason (I think he’s just being a troublemaker), and the rhythmic thumping of the dishwasher gets him wiggling as well. And mama watching Jon Stewart or Colbert gets him going too (probably the laughing…). I don’t usually feel him turning over, though, and I really wish I could feel him more. Other moms at the same point are always talking on the pregnancy forum I read about how wiggly their little ones are and how it’s driving them crazy, and I admit, I’m just a little bit jealous…

The cold drink business doesn’t seem to have the same effect it did early on, but then, I feel him more now anyway. And in about 15 weeks, I’ll get to be kicked by him from the outside anyway, so I suppose I shouldn’t complain, no?

Anyway, the movement does make me feel more like I’m really carrying a baby around, and I don’t forget I’m pregnant anymore. If his movement doesn’t make me feel his presence, the fact that I require more clearance space than before to walk between tables in a restaurant or past people on the bus sure does. And this totally instinctive protectiveness of my belly reminds me the little guy is in there – I freak out about knives on counters (which are at belly level), doorknobs (also at belly level), and rude people with their shopping carts (unfortunately, also at belly level) without even thinking about it. I know this isn’t a conscious paranoia on my part, it just happened all of a sudden one day.

If there’s one thing being pregnant will teach you, it’s that as much as you think human beings are total masters of their own destiny, Mother Nature has other ideas, and you’d better just get used to it.

Two weeks until the next OB appointment and the horrible gestational diabetes test, where they will make me drink something almost sure to make me throw up so that they can measure my blood sugar. I can’t really drink soda right now anyway (too damned sweet), so drinking a soda with twice the sugar (called “glucola”) makes me feel ill just thinking about it. Yuck, yuck, yuck. The problem is, if I throw it up, I’ll have to come back another day and drink it again. So, um… yuck.

But I guess if anything will get the little monster moving, an ice cold soda saturated with glucose should do it, no?