“Alien Lifeform” Within

Eli kicked up a fuss over lunch today. Being quite used to it, I lingered over my grilled milk-fish, fresh tomatoes and the usual office gossip, until one of my co-workers exclaimed that my tummy was heaving in irregular little bumps and bulges.

My Eli. He's turning 36 weeks soon, and the apprehension of future labor pains washes over me. This is NOT the kind of pregnancy where I have to monitor fetal movements intermittently. With Eli, I have become the privileged recipient of enormous belly-quakes that wake me up in the middle of the night. With Eli I have mastered the art of sleeping upright, proudly surviving heartburn, acid reflux and the accompanying breathing problems.

Eli at 12 Weeks

In the middle of the working day, I load the cd-rom drive with the classics and bring the speakers right up to my belly: voila! The tiny tornado that is my second child quiets down to the occasional stretch and hiccup, allowing me to get on with trying to earn a living.

The other night, sandwiched between my husband and four-year-old son, Woog, while watching Disney Channel (you can guess who wears the viewing preference pants at home), a tiny limb from within began to violently poke Atch's arm. On the opposite side, another body part started an epileptic little dance against my volatile pre-schooler's ribs.

Two sets of eyes turned to me. One crinkled with amusement, the other with two thick eyebrows bunched into a unibrow. My husband laughed and gently rubbed my belly, while Woog moved away from his offending sibling muttering a “tsk” sound, his eyes turning back to Lilo & Stitch.

Boy, do I have my future referee work cut out for me.

While browsing through some baby websites, I learned that at 35 weeks the baby should have grown to around 18 inches and would weigh in the neighborhood of 5 pounds. The snug-as-a-bug scenario should about limit the room to somersault in. But this medical fact hasn't seemed to stop my little blackbelt from issuing regular roundhouse kicks and elbow jabs to my poor abused insides. Sometimes I imagine my uterus to be one whole black-and-blue mass of tenderized meat, courtesy of the unstoppable juggernaut that is Eli.

A deluge of folic acid and iron supplements notwithstanding, my OB-Gyn assures me everything's normal: from the initial butterflies-in-my-stomach fluttering in the fourth month to the UFC-inspired moves in the ninth. But Eli's hyperactivity came as a great surprise. Woog, while not the most complacent of fetuses, was gentle in comparison.

As I type this, Eli is drumming an energetic sousa march against the top of my stomach – his heels, most likely. I think its about time to turn on the classics again.

08 June 2006