Orange "Meets" Isabella

Right now I'm sitting with Orange draped across my belly, the happiest cat in the world, eyes closed and purring loudly. Isabella just woke up and started kicking the heck out of the purring machine! At first Orange's eyes flew open and got wide and wild looking. "WHAT was THAT?!" he asked with his eyes and flattened ears. I just smiled and kept petting him. "Bella's talking back to you," I told him. His eyes closed, ears relaxed, and the purring resumed. She is still thumping him on his chest as I write this. Awww my two babies talking to each other. :P

Thanksgiving Early

We have just so much to be thankful for! What a week! After I felt and saw Isabella's antics on Sunday, Monday night Alex and I got home after the club closed and we lay in bed with the TV on low, low volume. He rested his hand on my belly. She had been active all day ("Aren't you tired from being up all night??" I said to her!) and I wasn't sure if she would continue that night. But after a few minutes, bump! A little pop erupted just below Alex's fingers. My eyes got wide and I whispered, "Did you feel it?!" He nodded, concentrating. Her kicks were not as forceful as the night before but they were there and she was positioned correctly. We stayed this way for a little while, and he felt her a couple more times. Yay!! She got tired a little more quickly this time though, and retired to the back of my body to hide. She has yet to punch me hard enough at the right time for Alex to see her.

Then on Tuesday, we got news from the realtor handling the apartment we recently found and applied for: We got it! In the middle of the afternoon, while we were out registering for baby stuff, I got an email. The staff at the store told us congratulations because as we were turning in our registry form, I blurted out, "WE GOT IT!" sort of loudly as I skimmed the email message on my phone.

It's a fairly spacious two bedroom, one bath, in a secured building with a covered parking stall. The kitchen and bath are pretty small, but it does have a lanai that runs the length of the unit. It's not luxurious but it's big enough for us to grow as a family, Isabella will have her own room, it's in good shape, and it's all for a reasonable price.

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving, and it's not as if we didn't already have a million things to be thankful for especially this year, but so many great things in one week is almost too good to be true!

BOP!

So last night, I'm lying in bed watching TV, with my hand on my belly just because it happened to rest there. And suddenly, THUMP! It was a little, tiny creature bopping my hand - from under my hand! "Do it again Bella!" I whispered. BOP! I almost wanted to hold my breath, scared any movement would frighten her into stopping (or rock her back to sleep). I lifted my hand, and POP! I saw my belly jump in just one little spot just like the curtain jumps when Orange punches it with his paw. Oh my gosh! Feeling it from the outside and seeing it all in one sitting!

(She must know I'm talking about her because she's poking around right now.)

I texted Alex right away, so excited but also a little disappointed he wasn't here to feel it and see it also. I stayed there for over an hour feeling her migrate from one side to the other, holding my belly. My back started to seriously hurt from lying prone for so long, but I didn't want to move! I wanted to feel her for as long as she was awake. Finally I decided I really did have to turn over, and found that lying on my side, I could still at least feel her from the inside. I wasn't talking to her except in my head, but I still felt like we were having our first conversation. She was pretty active for about three hours, and even though I knew I had to work early the next morning, I stayed up till about 1:30am "talking" with our little girl. When Alex finally got home, she got really quiet and pretty much stopped moving. Maybe she felt his presence and felt like she could finally settle down?

So incredible. People talk about really missing this part of pregnancy once they give birth. I do feel like I've been pregnant forever and ever, and we're only half way through, but on the other hand I already know that I'm going to miss this, and I hope I get to feel it all the time until she's born. I want to savor every moment because once she's born - no more poking me from inside there!

Getting a kick out of this!

At first I wasn't sure whether what I was feeling really was Isabella moving around in there.. On a drive over the mountain to my mom's house one night - October 29th to be exact - I sat at the stoplight next to Kam Shopping Center and felt something funny. The books all said it might be similar to hunger gurgles, or gas bubbles, or popcorn popping inside me. But they all also said it's actually indescribable. Whatever it was that I was feeling was almost tickle-y and sort of did feel like popcorn popping - but not exactly. The rest of the drive was a pretty distracted one! I kept feeling flutters, repeated flutters but not rhythmic or regular. At the same time, I didn't want to trick myself into wishing so hard that I could feel her that I imagined something that wasn't there. Hmmm..

Over the next couple of days I felt the same thing a couple times, and then for a couple of days, nothing. Maybe I was wrong.

But at our appointment on the 9th, I felt her and saw her move on the screen at the same time. Sure enough, those were baby twists, kicks and punches I had been feeling! How exciting!

Now it's most days that I can feel her, usually when I'm winding down in the evening or right after I've gotten up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, but also sometimes when I'm driving, or when I'm working. Last Sunday, we discovered that Isabella either really likes or really hates Prince. Alex played a Prince song at work, and out of nowhere she was moving around like crazy! And as soon as the song ended, she calmed down. Sari said maybe she's going to be a dancer. Ha! That would be cool, except that is not something she would get from me, that's for sure!

Now we're just waiting for her to get big and strong enough so Alex can feel her moving from the outside. Alex asked me the other night what it feels like. Definitely not like gas. I can see where people would think it was a hunger gurgle but once you know, it's definitely different. Popcorn popping was the closest description I've read. But also it feels almost the same as when you literally can feel your heart skip a beat or palpitate, except instead of feeling it in your chest it's in your belly area - or lower, or to the side a little.

This is so exciting! Bella, we can't wait to meet you!!!

It's a....

BIG

On Tuesday Alex and I celebrated our first anniversary (a day early - work schedules don't care about such occasions), and he took me on a helicopter tour! Exciting!

And a little scary. They tell you all about how once you have a child (or one on the way) your perspective on life changes, your priorities change, blahblahblah. Obviously. They don't tell you about the details of what this really means. For most of my adult life, I've lived with the general philosophy, when it comes to risk taking, of "What's the worst that could happen?" And even the worst, death, didn't scare me too much. I suppose the worst would be debilitating injury, but I figured I could deal with that if it happened. Now, the worst that could happen is still death or debilitating injury, but I guess my point is that actually matters now, a LOT (and add a third "worst" - the baby could get hurt). If I die, I won't be around for Bean. If I'm injured forever, I won't be the same kind of mom for Bean I want to be. If Bean gets hurt, I'll never forgive myself. So now I - a person who gladly walked to the edges of cliffs to see what's down there, a person who was never afraid of flying, or afraid of thugs walking down the street acting dumb - stood in front of this chopper, my heart pounding. Who am I?! I wondered.

The tour was (obviously) safe and successful, and it was pretty damn cool. So I was just working on uploading our photos to Facebook, when I came across the one of me and Alex standing in front of the helicopter. "Oh my God," I muttered. I spent a good, full, five minutes debating whether to even upload that one. I. Am. Puffy. I'm not just belly-pregnant. I'm...bigger. Rounder. Fluffier. Dough-ier. Even in my face. That's how you know it's not just my imagination.

I already have been feeling enormous, as you know. But seeing it. Confirming it with more than a funkified mirror (I don't trust mirrors, really, because I've learned that in general my view of my mirror image doesn't really apply to reality). Staring at it in digital high resolution. This was more than I was prepared for. Which prompted me to search online for other blogs or articles by women who feel this way. (A good one here.) Clearly from all the literature out there, every single woman who gets pregnant has at least some of these thoughts. Maybe some or most other women don't obsess over it like I do, or are more positive about it. But if you meet someone who is in love with her body the whole time she's pregnant - tell her she's a liar.

It's also great when people see me and say, "Wow!" and then ask how far along I am. And then say things like, "Wow your baby is growing fast!" or "Mmmm..you got a long ways to go - and grow!" Uhuh. Thanks. Now shut up and hand me that cookie.

Google Images

I firmly discourage any pregnant woman from trying to Google "17 week old fetus" or any similar phrase on Google images. I did just such a thing, out of curiosity as to what Bean might look like right about now. I was met with an abundance of interesting photos - and a surprising number of photos of aborted fetuses at varying ages of gestation.

I vehemently defend a woman's right to choose abortion or not; no one can tell a woman what should happen with her body. But I also firmly believe that abortions should not be performed past the first trimester regardless of any "viability" arguments. I won't get into my reasons here.

After seeing these photos of aborted fetuses, I feel sick and just generally disturbed. Except in the most mitigating circumstances I would not ever consider abortion in my own choices, and after seeing these photos I feel this ever more strongly. Even a fetus at 9 weeks seems too "real" to consider non-human.

So, another truth about pregnancy, especially in this ever-increasingly technologically accessible world - don't Google for images you're not absolutely sure you're ready to see.