I didn’t want to say so, but for a while I believed that my child might be a quadriplegic.

I had been reading in books and talking to people about all of the movement that their little utero-nuggets are doing by now. They kick, flip, and do somersaults. I had not felt the slightest flutter from this little lady that lives inside of me. I did yoga moves to flip the baby around. Nothing. I would poke at her with my fingers and try to make her poke back. Apparently the womb doesn’t work like facebook. The books told me that even as a first time mother I would start feeling her move around 16 weeks. I figured things would move a little more slowly than that because she is half Chris, and that man doesn’t like to dance at all. So 16 weeks came and went, then eighteen, then twenty and nothing. No movement to be felt.

In quiet panic, my brain would start to adopt mom strategy and imagine a series of the worst case scenarios. Maybe she’s paralyzed. Maybe I ate some MSG that damaged her developing brain and hampered her motor skills. Maybe she doesn’t have arms and legs. Are prostheses expensive? Is our house able to be made handicap accessible? Will we have to buy a wheelchair van? Am I going to be a good mom to a special needs child? Will I handle it with grace and patience, or will Oprah have to come cut me out of my house one day because I locked myself in to hide from the world

And then one day I got gas. I had eaten a large meal at Rosie’s Mexican Cantina, and I could feel some serious issues brewing in my abdomen. I decided to lay low, so as not to offend anyone with the Cantina aftermath, so I went home to read the latest chapter of What to Expect When You’re Expecting and wait for the poo to hit the fan (pardon the pun).

And I waited. And waited.

I took some tums.

More waiting.

Nothing.

And then I realized that what I thought was gas, felt a little more solid than that. And kinda rhythmic.  So I looked down at my stomach and I saw it…

A jiggle on the left. Then a jiggle on the right. And then I remembered what might become my motto for the pregnancy: “It’s not gas- it’s a baby!”

My baby was moving and I could feel it and see it. Weird. Again, I was hoping that this would be another momentous occasion that would really make me connect more with the little life inside of me. Some women talk about the baby moving in the womb making them feel truly alive and connected to the great gravity of the cycle of life. Some women have had their babies kick them at just the right time, as if they were answering a question their mother asked. Instead, it made me camp out near the bathroom and chow down on some antacids. Not the magical bonding I imagined. But what about this pregnancy has been the way I imagined?

Nothing.

So it all makes sense.

So and So it all makes sense.