Bouncing Baby Bean

Today marks the beginning of Week 23 in this journey toward parenthood. Since about week 15 there have been faint, fluttering signs that something is afoot within my uterus. Intermittent bouts of barely felt movement to reinforce the notion that something has taken up residence in there.

I had been primarily feeling these sensations in the wee hours of the morning, shortly after midnight, in keeping with the long-standing tradition, passed down from generation to generation within my family, of night-owl-hood. There is something encouraging about that to me.

First off, it suggests that perhaps this little person will also inherit the remarkable 'Sleepy Gene' famous in my genetic line. A blessing and a curse, the Sleepy Gene ensures infants that sleep through the night from early on...not only sleeping through the night, but also waaaay into the morning--often into the noon-time hour, in fact. Past infancy, once attaining school age, this can often lead to difficulty making the school bus on time, and frequent tardy passes being accumulated despite best efforts to roust little ones from bed on time. And, of course, in later life, Vampiric hours are often kept by those of the Sleepy Gene, leading to all sorts of interesting life experiences and perspectives. The rising of the sun is a sight rarely seen by those of the Sleepy Gene--with the exception of those dawn times witnessed at the end of a long night, just before finally hitting the sack to fall into sweet slumber.

Well, in this past week, the sensations of movement have become more consistent, slightly stronger (not really packing any heft yet, but more definitely movement rather than potentially gas or some other internal gurgling) and a whole lot more frequent. This little tyke is quite busy these days, moving around all over the place, swimming up a storm and, apparently, enjoying a vigorous workout routine. We're not yet to the point where Ross can feel these movements from outside the belly, so for now I am the only one able to enjoy the action.

And, with this added activity, comes some insight into the fetal personality--the jury is out on whether these insights will have any bearing on the actual personality of our little person, as anecdotes fall on both side of the aisle on this one. But, I learned the other night that Peanut seems to dislike having anyone invade his/er personal space.

At bedtime, still one of Peanut's most active dayparts, Winston Pants likes to snuggle and give me big hugs, dogpile style. So, the other night he comes over and curls up against me, with his fuzzy little face in the middle of my belly. Almost immediately, Peanut proceeds to kick directly at the spot where Winston's face was. Hmmmm. Coincidence? Can Peanut tell that Win is there? (I do know, Winston was completely oblivious to Peanut's presence, as he didn't react at all to the barrage of kicks coming at his face from within my belly.)

I shifted around a bit, and sparked Winston to readjust as well. Now his face was snuggled against the side of my belly. Well, whadya know? Peanut starts a new barrage of kicking, aimed once again at the exact spot where Winston's face was resting. Very interesting! It'll be even more interesting to see what happens when Peanut gets a bit more heft behind those kicks. I can only imagine what Winston's reaction will be! ;)