Growing pains...

My wife of a little over two years is well over five months pregnant. She's not uncomfortably big so that she's waddling around yet, but she feels the difference in her size. It's about time, say more experienced people, that she should be able to feel the baby kick. Move. But not just yet. This is the stage of wonderment.

During our routine visits to the Ob-Gy, we've heard the heartbeat with the help of the heartbeat monitor. During the ultrasound, we've seen the heart beating, the limbs moving, the head turning. I cannot describe the feeling going through my mind at that instant. It's like everything in the world can be possible, if it is possible that another life is being created over this span of 40 weeks.

Now, every night, when we're falling asleep, the Wife and I run our hands over her stomach. We can distinctly make out where the baby is: her stomach is stretched tight there, like she's over eaten at dinnertime.

Over the past two nights however, we have felt a perceptible movement, as the foetus shifts about inside of her. One moment, its lying at the bottom of her abdominal cavity, the next moment, its gone and moved to her side. Placing our palms and fingers over my wife's stomach, we can feel that the baby has moved around. We're trying to make out where the head is, but we can't. Not for sure, anyway. However, my wife complains every time she has to turn, that the baby is holding on to her from inside, making her feel heavy on the wrong side.

I wonder: what must it be like, for the baby? 40 weeks enclosed in a bubble of water that moves, stretches and shifts. What must it be feeling like, to have its cocoon - its entire world upto this point - move about as my wife goes through the daily grind? Does it ever complain that my wife is shaking it about, just about the time that it's trying to sleep? Or that there's a cacophony outside, when we're stuck in a traffic jam? Does it feel scared? Lost?

We're almost there, Baby. Just hold on for a few weeks more and you'll be with us.