Not even five months along, and already I'm starting to get a complex. Pregnant Genia, 7 months along tells me, repeatedly: "You MUST be feeling kicks by now, right?! The baby kicks me in the ribs!"
Pregnant Caroline, due almost the same day as I am, tells me, repeatedly: "Oh, Brent can feel the baby's kicks from the outside now! Kicking me all the time, kick kick kick!"
Kick, Kick, Kick.
(Yes, when you get pregnant, many of your friends do, too. Or, I just successfully avoided pregnant people before I was inducted into The Alien Host Club. And given the current situation, maybe I should've continued avoiding them?)
No, Lyric has not kicked me yet. At all. Not once. No, I can't feel anything. No, I'm not just "not paying attention." No, for the love of god, I'm not mistaking it for gas. Yes, I've felt the flutters, but no, not a real kick.
I guarantee: When an foot-long human being, living in my belly, kicks me, I'll know it.
Naturally, I've been a basket case, wondering on any given day if Lyric is dead, handicapped, comatose. Nonpregnant people don't understand what totally sane thoughts these are--God knows I wouldn't have understood this before a few months ago.
On my more generous days, I wonder if she's just the laziest fetus ever: Like host organism, like fetus.
I've had hardly any adverse pregnancy symptoms (see earlier 'Barfing Up Baby' post), so it's easy at 3am to start wondering if I'm just fat and this baby thing has all been a daydream. Especially when the Pregnant Friends are all so insistent about how I must be feeling the kicks by now.
Twice this week I've counted the days til my next doctor appointment, eager for the 30 seconds of heartbeat I get to hear on the magic Doppler radar wand. I want to buy my own wand, but you need a prescription from the Magician. And I'm not so far gone yet that I can ask my doctor to let me buy a $300 instrument to obsess over fetal heartbeat. But I'm well on my way.
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