Movement

This stage of my pregnancies are always a little hard for me. You only go in once a month to hear the heartbeat to know it's doing okay and the baby is not big enough to feel consistently and it makes me nervous. Over the weekend I started filling in things about this pregnancy in the back of my "What to Expect When You're Expecting" book and noticed that by that by this time in my other pregnancies (16 weeks) I was feeling the baby move regularly and by 17 weeks Tim could feel the baby too.

This one, not so much. I have thought I have felt it a couple different times, but couldn't really be certain and even though I try not to worry, it's hard sometimes. I mentioned my concerns to Tim as we were sitting on the couch Sunday night and he says, "Well, let's see what I can do."

I will say that Tim is not one to just have a hand on my belly just to feel the baby, but he'll feel "with purpose." Meaning if I tell him where the baby is kicking or he wants to feel around and determine the position of the baby he'll feel then. He uses both hands and really works my belly over (he pushes pretty hard), and he had to work hard this time since the baby is so small still. He's very good at it too, my first midwife said Tim should go into midwifery and we both just laughed!

He's even tried it on a couple of our pregnant friends and while is a little disconcerting if you're not his wife or used to it, he's very accurate with his determination of the position. It's actually really cool and they thought so too.

He'd never tried to feel the baby like that this early on, I mean you can barely even tell I'm pregnant. He was feeling around and determined where the baby was, about how big it was (right on with how big the books say it should be) and said he felt it move 5 or 6 times. He just laughed and said, "It's probably a girl and just doesn't move around as much as the boys did." He did say though that he couldn't always be certain what was the baby and what was my heartbeat.

I did feel the baby 2 or 3 times on Monday so that was good and made me feel better. However no movement thus far today that I could distinguish. Maybe it is a girl, or maybe it just won't be so rowdy as the boys are, or by the fourth time around maybe it's just positioned differently that I can't feel it as well. I really don't care, I just pray for a healthy baby and uncomplicated delivery. God has blessed us in that regard and I'm very thankful!

Although at this point I can't think of delivery or I get a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach and wonder why I thought this was a good idea to do again! But it's just one day, right?