Ya’ll ladies know that sound, right? The super-quick washing machine swish of a little fetal heartbeat? Often accompanied by the much stronger, much slower beat of its mother’s heart, together entwining to form a glorious symphony of rushing blood and health and life? (POETRY, what’s up.) Love that sound. That sound, and the little flutter kicks, are the only thing I enjoy about pregnancy. So I basically live through preggo hell for a little block of time that lasts twenty seconds once per month. If I wasn’t certain that I’d be bad at finding a beat and constantly freak myself out, I’d go buy a Doppler now and listen to it all day.
Today I had a regular old checkup, and although eventually I heard the whoosh whoosh, it took forever. The nurse had a really hard time finding the heartbeat. Fortunately, despite the looooong minutes of radio silence on the Doppler, there was no stopping Mama’s heart with that cold fear (ya’ll know the cold fear?) that the beat won’t show up, that something unexplainable will have happened to stop that precious sound since last time you heard it. Nope – the nurse couldn’t find the heartbeat because baby was TICKED, and kept running away from the Doppler and beating up on it. We’d hear my heart beat, and then I’d feel a pretty solid flutter and we’d hear a THUMP on the Doppler. “Baby’s kicking!” the nurse would say, and then she’d chase it to the other side and we’d hear some more THUMP THUMPs. I could feel every move – I’ve been feeling a lot of activity out of this wee little beefsteak tomato already, for weeks now, which is awesomely early and a welcome little gift in exchange for all of my vomitous misery. So although we could only find my ponderously slow heart on the Doppler, there was no question that I had a furious, fidgety, living little baby in there who simply wasn’t interested in sitting still and being poked. A full five minutes later, we finally got a solid read – 150-160 bpm, which according to old wive’s tales is the “Girl” range. (Boys’ beats are supposedly slower – 130-140. In the deepest, darkest recesses of my brain, I seem to recall Jack’s early heartbeats being in the 150s, but whatever. As long as possible, I will live oooooon in my deluuuuuusion that my husband and I can create anything but wee-wees.)
Anyway, I was just tickled to death by this episode, which shows how foolish parents are – how ready we are to find every little thing our Precious Snowflake does to be charming and hilarious. Baby punched the Doppler! It’s a Genius Baby! A King/Queen of Comedy! Listen to my cuuuute story about my cuuuuuute fetus!