BabyCar was lucky.
She was able to feel our little guy/girl squirming around in there beginning in about her 15th week. This is not typical.
All of the books and websites and message boards out there say that week 14 is about as early as you can hope for and that some women might not feel anything until week 20 or beyond.
The movement is faint, but it’s there. The downside to this early excitement is that we got started with our first dose of parental anxiety a little bit early.
Once you get used to feeling somebody in there (or hearing about feeling somebody in there) it is really unsettling when that feeling disappears for a while.
Baby decided to have a little three day hibernation session recently, which left BabyCar and I pacing around the living room paging though baby books and surfing the Web.
Everything we found said that a day or two without movement is nothing to worry about. Babies get turned around funny, start to kick inwardly where the mom can’t feel it, or just tweak their activity cycles.
The books all offered the same advice: if you haven’t felt the baby for a day or two and are starting to get anxious, your obstetrician will be happy to hook you up to the fetal heartbeat monitor to put your mind at ease.
Yeah, right.
A fetal heartbeat monitor is about as complicated to use as a glue stick and could be done in less than a minute, but I don’t think we could get into that place on less than a month’s notice if BabyCar’s uterus was on fire.
We couldn’t even get our doctor on the phone, much less get a foot in the door.
Two nurses collaborated for a few minutes and managed to call us back with a confidence inspiring, “umm, we talked and think you should go see your family practitioner.”
Near as I can tell, facial piercings are the only qualifications necessary to become an OB/GYN nurse – my health insurance dollars at work.
Long story short, we didn’t get in to see the doctor. We didn’t go to the family doctor and we didn’t have a very relaxing evening. But late that night, as if finally deciding to cut the old ‘rents some slack, Baby mustered a kick or two.
Looking back, it was the only way that either of us were going to get any sleep that night.
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2 comments:
I'm 26 weeks and still don't feel baby move as much as I want to?! Usually after meals is when my baby moves the most. When I was in the hospital the nurses would crinkle a empty pop can to get baby active and surprisingly it kinda worked? Of course when my hubby tried the pop can test at home baby wasn't falling for it but it did work in the hospital ?
I also tend to squirm about when someone shakes a pop can at me.
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