Down to earth with a bump (6) - GETTING KICKS & FLIGHTS

At 16 weeks I had felt something. It wasn’t a kick. Bubbles in the belly I called it. It had been a fleeting sensation. One that was so quick I was unsure it was baby. But then, I’d never felt anything like it before in my life, which made me think it was.

OUR PANIC BUY

At 17 weeks I had a peculiar experience. It was just as I was falling asleep, still in that lovely mode of somewhere in between, not quite awake or asleep. I suddenly jolted upright and perhaps had made the baby jump? I was convinced that Simon had poked me in the belly button but he was snoring. But the feeling of being poked, externally, in the belly button was overwhelming.

It happened again about two hours later when I woke and sat up a little to move on to my other side. Exactly the same thing. In the morning I rang my sister and asked her if she had ever experienced this in her pregnancy. Yes, she had. She told me that baby was playing tug of war with me. That it was pulling on the umbilical cord. My instant reaction was both amazement and joy.

After that I didn’t feel a thing for a while. And then at 21 weeks I had a definite kick. And so the games began. Some days it just would not stop moving. Our hyperactive baby was a live wire alright.

On one occasion my midwife was attempting to hear baby’s heartbeat. Each time she worked out which way baby was laying, she would put the listening device in position. But in that short time, our wriggler would turn and boot her off. I said, ‘Don’t worry, it is obviously alive and well.’ But she wasn’t having it. It took eight tries for her to finally hear it. She was determined. We both smiled at the sound of the beating heart. (Something I personally found far more emotive than a scan could ever be). ‘Trust me to have a naughty baby.' 
She replied, ‘That’s a happy baby.’ I took comfort.

It was around this time in my pregnancy that I really began to enjoy it. For by ten weeks the nausea had gone to be replaced with the mid-trimester energy that you hear people talk about. 

I had that 'pregnancy glow'. In short not only my bosoms were blossoming. I felt wonderful! Yes, everything was rosy. 

Well it would be, two weeks later I was laying on a beach in Mauritius.

As the pregnancy continued, we realised that there would be many things we would never be able to do again – just the two of us. Perhaps ‘never’ is a tad strong. No sod it, ‘never’ works fine. And so, like you do, we booked a holiday to Mauritius. Two weeks of bliss, otherwise known as our panic buy.

There we were, me in my thick DVT flight socks, Simon holding three large bottles of water (all for me), undertaking a 12-hour flight. Of course we were anxious, precious cargo and all that, yet on safe arrival we locked eyes and grinned at each other. Now all that was left to concern me were the mosquitoes, constipation and extreme heat.


But oh my goodness wasn’t the trip worth it. We watched the sun set in the Indian Ocean every night for two whole weeks. We laughed a lot. We met great people. We had time to ourselves. Time to reflect. Time to enjoy.


On our last night there I shed a few tears, not because I didn’t want to leave, but because it had all been so perfect. More over the mosquitoes were nonexistent, the bran in my suitcase remained unopened, and the heat had been a comfortable 80 degrees.