Being pregnant is an amazing thing. Sure your hormones are out of control at times and you feel like an 80 year old women complaining about your aches and pains. But seriously the downsides do not even compare to the amazing experience of having a child grow inside of you. And it's something that I think I have been taking for granted.
My husband will ask me all the time about the baby and if he is moving or what he's doing or how this pregnancy compares to the last one. It made me think that it must be very odd to be a father. You must feel so left out during those 9 months. As a mother you get to know what your baby likes and does not like right from the start, you get to feel them move and be assured that they are ok, you know where the like to sleep and when, you get little hints into their personality everyday which helps you "get to know" your baby, and most of all you get to carry the baby around everywhere you go to protect them and keep them safe.
I think I am noticing all these things even more with this pregnancy than with the last. With the first you have nothing else to compare it to so you figure that being pregnant is kind of standard. But I am noticing how my first little guy's personality was defined when I was pregnant and is already so much different than this one.
With the first... well he was CRAZY right from the start. i remember telling a friend when I was almost 5 months pregnant that at any point in the day if I stopped what I was doing and concentrated I could feel the baby move. Now I am starting to realize that that was very unusual. You usually have just started feeling the baby kick around that time and the kicks are very soft and fairly rare. But my little guy was VERY active a trait that has definately stuck with him. By the time I was this far along last time (8 months) I was being kicked to death all day and night. Something that if you know my little boy now is not so surprising.
He was also a burrower (is that even a word?) from the start. He liked to see how much of his little body he could wiggle underneath my rib cage, which was a fairly painful experience for me. I would often wake up gasping for breath, unable to bend my body because I had this little ball of child wedged into my ribs. His favorite way to sleep was with his head in my ribs and his little bum sticking up. I would get up in the morning and have this lump sticking up right below my ribs where his little bum was. And now when he sleeps he lays on his belly in a little ball with his bum sticking up in the air.
This second little guy is much more mellow, which gives me hope that he will be a calm baby too. Where as my first seemed to always be testing the limits of his confined space this one is more content to just float. He kicks often enough so that I am assured that he is doing ok but certainly not at the same rate or intensity as his brother. He kicks more actively after I eat like his brother but I also notice that he kicks me when he is hungry too. Which is probably the result of being a second child, when I was pregnant with the first I didn't have someone else to take care of so eating regularly was easier. Now it' almost like he is saying "hey mom remember me? I'm hungry too!"
As far as sleeping habits, this one has so far blessedly stayed away from my rib cage! He prefers something that I have begun to refer to as his bowling ball impression. He will go completely limp and his whole body weight will lay at the bottom of my stomache making it feel like I have a bowling ball strapped to my stomache. It is really an interesting sensation because one minute he's peacefully floating along and then the next I feel like he might drop right out onto the floor.
It is pretty cool be able to tell already how different my little boys will be.
