Bubbles or Alien?

I realized today that I never wrote about the experience of feeling the baby move for the first time. I first felt movement in my 18th week. I was sitting in a very long meeting at work when I first realized what I was feeling. Of all the common descriptions of how that first movement feels (butterfly wings, a finger flicking your stomach, bubbles), I suppose that the bubbles description comes closest to what I felt. I actually kind of felt like I had one tiny muscle spasm in my stomach. And then another one in a different location. Other people don’t seem to agree with my description, but that’s what it felt like to me.

In all, those first few movements felt very, very natural. I was expecting it to be very strange feeling something move around inside my body. But, it really was almost difficult to believe that those sensations were the baby and not just feelings from my own body.

It’s a good thing, probably some result of natural selection, that the movements gain strength naturally. Because, if I’d felt at first the kind of movement I feel now, I’m sure I would have freaked out! I expected the kicks and jabs. Those feel pretty much like you would expect. More uncomfortable is the “stretch”. Sometimes it feels like the baby is trying to make more room in there by pushing out with all its limbs at once. The movement that always makes me jump, though, is the “roll”.

I’m not sure exactly what causes it - maybe a knee or elbow? Imagine this: take a knuckle on your hand and rub it in a 3” circle around your belly button. Now imagine that sensation being on the inside and that you’re pressing hard enough that you can see the skin bulging out about an inch where the knuckle is. It’s weird.

I was sitting in a boring meeting this morning, watching my belly bulge out in different places as the baby moved around. I’m telling you, if a primitive human felt this as the first signal of pregnancy, they’d probably assume that they were inhabited by a deamon of some sort.