Did I just? I think I did . .

So, when I was exactly 16 weeks pregnant (August 6th) something strange and wonderful and exciting happened! Brad and I woke up early that day, thanks to my inability to sleep as of late. We were hanging out on the couch and he had his arm draped over my belly with his elbow just below my belly button. I felt a small twitching right where his elbow was, like maybe a muscle in his arm was twitching. I asked him if it was and he said no. So I had him move his arm and I still felt it! I felt like it was just below the surface! I have no idea but I think it was the baby! And when he put his arm back on my belly it started going faster . . . I think this kiddo is already in love with her father!

For the rest of the day I waited for it to happen again, but nothing. Until Raina crawled on my lap that night. Again I started feeling some twitching right where she was leaning on my belly. Eventually she got up and left and the twitching kept on going for another few minutes!! I felt like if it was the kiddo, we had established that she likes her father and her dog but she's not really into performing for her mother! ;-)

So, over the next few weeks it turns out some of the movement I felt early on really was her movement and others were who-knows-what. But now I'm 21 weeks along (yay for being half way through!!) and I'm definitely feeling her kicks and tumbles. It's awesome. I never felt the swishy, water-y movement that my mom and a couple of my friends say they felt. Mine start out feeling like muscle twitches and have escalated to feeling like tiny pokes. And occasionally I can tell that she's actually rolling because I can feel the tumble! But they all come from my lower abdomen, near my pelvic bone. It seems like I can feel them the best when I'm sitting up and especially when I lean forward. Which kinda makes me feel bad because I always imagine that it's because I'm squishing her! :-)

When the movement first started (at 16 weeks), I would go days in between feeling anything. It's gotten more and more frequent but still I will go hours without necessarily noticing movement. At first, I think it was because the movement was so light that I really needed to be sitting still to notice it. But now she is moving more and more and I've noticed a bit of a pattern. They say most babies move more in the evening and she is no exception to that rule. She doesn't move a whole lot in the morning when I first get up. It usually starts a couple hours later. But her most active time is in the evening between dinner and bedtime. So, she is a night-owl like her momma!

I have been trying and trying and TRYING to get Brad to feel her but no such luck so far. I know that he COULD because I can feel her with my hands. But this little thing is very uncooperative. She'll start moving and just when I think she's going to keep it up, I grab his hand and put it on my belly. And then she stops. If I could just time it to where he was touching her right when she landed a nice kick I really think he'd feel her! I've also tried to listen to her heartbeat with my stethoscope. (No! I'm not crazy! Supposedly you can hear a fetal heartbeat with a stethoscope at around 20 weeks.) But I've had no luck. I asked my doctor if she'd ever tried and she said that she did try on herself when she was pregnant but was never able to hear anything that early. She said give it another shot around 24 weeks.

Brad is so excited about this little girl. And that's almost the best part about this whole thing, seeing how happy he is. He's never been around babies and has always been a little awkward around kids but it doesn't seem to matter. He is excited about everything to do with this baby! The room, the name, everything! The other night we had dinner with his parents at their house and he asked about some of his childhood books. My mom had just given me my old childhood books and we were going through them and I was so excited to read them to the little girl when she came! And I think that got him excited too because he asked his mom if he could have some of his old books for her library.

The whole time we were driving home that night, all he could talk about was how he was excited about getting his books for her, especially the Dr. Seuss books. He said he couldn't wait to read her "How the Grinch Stole Christmas" for her first Christmas! And he was just grinning the whole time!

Sorry, this post was just kind of a ramble. I felt like I hadn't updated in a while and there were so many things that had been running through my mind. In other news, the blood sugars have definitely been changing over the last few weeks and the belly has too. I plan on writing posts about both soon!

~Layne