Dancing Queen (or King?)

So many women feel so very icky during pregnancy. Even though it's one of the most feminine things you can do - grow a baby - it's a time when you feel so very unfeminine. One friend of mine couldn't keep anything down and had to be hospitalized, the poor soul. When you're not busy losing your lunch, you're sleeping like a sloth, eating like a pig, and finally get the reward of looking (and feeling) like a walrus in the end. Heck, then you have the baby and feel like a milking cow! Yes, it's hard to feel like yourself when you’re pregnant. You just feel like one animal or another. If only it was an eagle or a dolphin or a gazelle or something.

I’m one of the lucky ones who has been spared so much of the ickiness and I’m grateful for that. I kept waiting for the nausea to come but it never did. There were a few moments, brief and mild, and that was it. If this is an easy pregnancy, I’ll take it.

Still, it’s hard not to worry when the symptoms aren’t there and these three weeks went by a little too quietly for my tastes. Even though I don’t enjoy nausea, or the smell of a toilet bowl, it’s comforting to feel like you’re a full-blown pregnant woman. So I actually celebrated any little bouts of nausea that I had and was hoping for more.

Just yesterday, I got my fetal Doppler from my friend and took it home looking for some reassurance, even though I know it’s a little early to be hearing anything. I wasn’t able to hear a heartbeat, but I thought I heard some movement and that gave me hope.

Perhaps those little movements helped me to feel as calm and confident as I did today, going in to meet my new doctor and check on the baby. It’s a good thing I was so calm because the wait was awful. It took an hour for them to call me back, then another fifteen minutes before the doctor came to my room. That would have been an excruciating wait if I’d have been worried about the baby!

The doctor came in and talked with me about my history. We talked about my pregnancy with Gavin, how my lungs had filled up with fluid, how my delivery was so sudden, and how my stubborn placenta didn’t want to come out. Yeah, there was nothing noteworthy about that pregnancy!

After our little meet and greet, we went in to do the ultrasound. Up popped a beautiful looking baby, now 11 weeks along and about an inch and half long. It’s amazing to me how well-defined everything is, the arms and legs and the face, even the fingers and toes! That’s right. In just two months, we go from this to this.

What I loved was how relaxed the baby looked, like it had its leg up resting on the wall, taking a little nap. I thought of the baby relaxing on a hammock, enjoying its little home. I guess Baby better enjoy it now before it gets a whole lot more crowded in there!

I enjoyed watching this little siesta inside of me, but I was downright giddy when that baby started doing some water aerobics in there! All of a sudden, Baby starts bouncing around and I got all kinds of views of the arms and legs and even a butt shot. Frankly, I was a little jealous. It looks pretty fun to be that weightless, fluttering around. I always did enjoy that about skin diving and snorkeling, feeling that weightlessness and freedom. Enjoy it, Baby, while you still have the chance.

Click here to the see the video, which is really quite fun.

It still blows my mind that this is happening inside of me. There’s something so odd to me about a living being growing and dancing inside of me and yet I can’t feel it or detect it in any way. I’d think you’d be able to sense that, even with it being so small. Man, our bodies are so amazing and bizarre and mind-boggling and complex. And I’m growing another one inside of me right now.

Mind. Blown.

The doctor told me that my chances of miscarriage are only between one and two percent now. Those are great numbers and do make me feel at ease, as if the dancing baby wasn’t hope enough. I’m set to go back on December 28^th and I’ll be close to 15 weeks at that point. The doctor told me we can usually tell the gender by then, which is a little earlier than I thought. So that’ll be exciting! We’ll find out if Gavin is getting a brother or a sister!

I may not have the nausea, but I am sleeping like a sloth, eating like a pig, and slowly morphing into walrus-mode, one cookie at a time. Since I got none of my usual three naps in today, I’m about ready to hit the hay! Got me some baby to grow!