baybeasts

still feeling so very lucky

I first started to feel some kicks at around 16 weeks. I noticed them most if I was sitting down and a bit scrunched over. Then at 17 weeks, S was able to feel a couple of kicks if I was lying flat on my back. It seemed early for a kick to be palpable from the outside, but they have only increased since then and now she feels one every day. If I lie down, I can usually feel kicking or rolling from inside and out, within a few minutes. This wee one is mighty strong, and I’m only 19 weeks tomorrow.
So… I’m thrilled. Becoming aware of B1 moving has been the best part of this pregnancy and is the best part of my day. Actually, S managing to feel a kick is the best part of my day. It has made a huge difference to my low level of anxiety about how the baby is doing. I’m no longer desperate to steal a doppler at work and rush off into a spare room to check the heartbeat (I never did). I’m not as needy for the next scan to tell me everything is OK, and I feel much more connected to the fairly big lump in my belly.
A few days ago, I started to feel the kicks when I was standing up, and that afternoon, after work, I was able to see a little kick when I was lying down. This is such a lovely time. When I was immersed in the unrelenting weeks of nausea, I honestly couldn’t imagine a time when I would enjoy this pregnancy. I feel very lucky. B1 is kicking right now.

“19 weeks”

Unlike Esther, I have not loved my garden nearly enough this year. Superficially it looks very pretty, but get right in among it and it is dry, littered with dead and dying pansies and tomatoes and large barren patches. I feel a lingering sense of guilt and sadness every time I go out there. I don’t know where the long days of lovingly tending the garden have gone - my weekends always seem too full and my weeknights too tired. And water restrictions are breaking my heart - Wednesdays and Saturdays (or is it Thursdays and Sundays? I can never remember) seem to slip by so fast.

Despite this sad lack of attention, there are still somehow always treats waiting out there for me. There is more corn than we can manage to eat; at least twice a week we can easily pick a punnet’s worth of strawberries; the fuji apple tree is so tiny and laden that it almost has more apples than tree; the plum tree provided enough plums for a week’s good eating and half a dozen jars of deep red glorious jam; lebanese cucumbers are crisp and plentiful and the zucchinis and squash seem to be able to withstand terrible neglect and still produce more than we can eat; there are onions stored under the house and potatoes just waiting to be lifted; the rhubarb and silverbeet are perennially generous and the roses - oh the roses are divine: big blowsy red, yellow and apricot bundles of mind-blowing scent. I don’t know why, but despite the dry and the uninspiring soil I planted them in they are deliriously happy.

At least the empty space will be ready for the huge crop of broccoli that I am planning for winter. Maybe it will even rain again one of these days.

The baby in bean’s belly becomes daily more real. She has started showing, just a little bit, but there is definitely a bump. When she lies on her back we both often poke around, feeling the hard mass of uterus that weekly sits a little higher towards her belly button. It will be the most poked baby ever - today we were joking that we should nickname hir Pokee. We are both impatiently waiting for the day that we can feel B1 move. Every night I press my ear to her stomach, listening intently for the heartbeat that I know is there, but it is still too far away. The other morning, lying in lazily on a Sunday, bean was dozing on her back, hands cradling her bump, when she had a vivid dream - she felt the baby move, pushing against her insides and up against her hand. It took a while after waking to confirm that really, there is no way it could have been real, no matter how much we wished it so. B1 is still swimming freely in hir pool of amniotic fluid, barely touching the sides - only when ze is big enough to be cramped will hir movements be relayed to the outside world. We’re trying to slow down, be patient, enjoy these last precious months together, but this baby has been so long in the making that it is hard not to want it right here, right now.

Pregnancy is also challenging because of the lack of information available due to the baby being locked away inside the mysterious body. We have both often wished for a little transparent window into bean’s uterus, so we could see what the little bugger is up to in there - wriggling, dancing, making faces… I think that’s why we are waiting for movement. It will help us to feel connected, somehow - help us to believe that the baby that we know conceptually is in there is really and truly there.

But it is sinking in, and so finally we are beginning to prepare. We’ve ordered a wilkinet carrier, and bean bought an oddly shaped pillow which will hopefully solve her sleeping dilemma - as a committed tummy sleeper pregnancy is just starting to be a challenge. My gorgeous cousin Ari lent us some maternity clothes. The bra situation, however, is still critical.

In three weeks we will have another scan - this is the big one, where they measure all the bits and check that all the organs are on the inside. The sixty million dollar question (if only I had a dollar for how many times we have been asked already, way before it is even possible to know), is what sex is the baby. We’ve thought long and hard about whether to find this out. I don’t want to find out early - I want the surprise, and I want to find out for ourselves rather than be told by some medical personage. Bean wants to know - she is just so curious about B1 that she wants to know everything, as soon as possible! So we have reached a compromise - we will ask the ultrasonographer not to tell us what they think, but we won’t look away, and will allow ourselves to speculate as much as we wish on which variety of bits we think we can decipher on the scan. So you may ask, but all you will get is wild guesses!

So it slowly becomes real. Although as I write this bean is lying on the couch with her hands on her belly intoning ‘connecting with baby…connecting with unfeelable baby…connecting with lump…’ So perhaps we still have a way to go!

(PS I fully intended to write a lovely elegy about our holiday. I was going to wax lyrical about whistling, families, beer and crosswords, swimming and walking and even the occasional jog, food and frangelico and lots of laughter and relaxation. But I fear I have left it too late.)