Me and One Very Active Baby

At nineteen weeks, I get a rare privilege: a trip to the Ob’s office without my children. They are across the river, playing with cousins under the eye of grown-up cousin-once-removed, auntie, and Great-Grandma.

The doctor’s running late, so I pore through the pages of a magazine I’ve been trying to market research but haven’t been able to find a copy of. Then I edit an essay and start working on a presentation I have to give in November.

Soon enough, I’m flat on my back with the Doppler wand pressed to my abdomen. It takes all of two seconds for my slow heartbeat to give way to the rushing shew shew shew shew (shew shew shew…) The baby’s on the move. I smile, because I knew that already from the wide and varied placement of the kicks I’ve been feeling. The doctor chases the baby with the wand, and the heartbeat returns. Only this time, it’s punctuated by sharp, high-pitched points of sound. I figure it’s me moving around, but the doctor’s face quickly spreads into a smile and then a chuckle. He pulls the wand off and shakes his head. “That’s you and one very active baby in there,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard so many kicks.”

“Oh, those were kicks?” I say. (My fourth child, and still I’m in the dark.)

He raises his eyebrows and plunks the wand on my belly again. Shew shew(POP) shew shew shew POP shew POP POP shew shew POP. The doctor counts: “One. Two, three…four…five six…” He pulls the wand off, grinning. “There’s as many movements of the extremities as there are heartbeats!”

Is it unfair to read into my unborn baby’s personality based on this? 🙂

Related articles

• Heartbeats (kathleenbasi.com)