Totally Cool Experience!

This is my13th pregnancy to progress this far along. Incredibly we are just on the heels of the third trimester. (Only today I called it the third semester! School must be on my mind.) It seems that no matter how many times you are pregnant it is never humdrum. I have been dreading the idea of this baby following in her youngest elder sister's footsteps and transverse baby necessitating a repeat c-section. As I still resent my last one and the terrible after care I received - the very idea of another almost puts me in tears. The past few weeks have been rather difficult for me as I felt as though being so close to the last trimester - I really should be bigger. Mind I looked large, but I felt very small. I felt a lot of space below my ribs and it was very easy to bend over as well as to breath. I was so worried that my baby was not growing at the right rate.

It never occurred to me that it might be her position that was allowing all of this extra room. Not even when I began to suspect another transverse lie did it dawn on me this could be the reason I would have so much space below my ribs as Elsa, you see, turned transverse late in the pregnancy. So she had already been making me uncomfortable with that huge hippopotamus feeling you get as you close in on the last few months. I only began to suspect a transverse lie when I realized how consistently the baby's movements were only being felt on the lower sides of my stomach. Not once had I felt a single punch or kick below the ribs. It was all side to side. So in addition to my worries of the idea that perhaps the baby was not growing, I now had the added worry that she was preparing to be a transverse lie baby.

However, this afternoon I had the most incredible experience. Unlike Nathaniel who, at about eight months, decided to go from head up to bottoms up causing so me so much pain I thought I was in labour - this was a very gentle experience.

So today, after a busy day at co-op and some writing on the computer, I needed to lie down for a spell. While lying on my left side I felt some gentle kicks on my lower right side. I drifted off only to be awakened again by more gentle kicks - a little higher now. I thought 'huh her stretch is getting longer'. Once more I drifted off only to be awakened again by more taping - this time while still on my right it was much higher than I had ever felt her move. Sleepily I wondered if maybe she was correcting her position and then I lazily fell back asleep. At last I was awakened by some thumps just where I should feel them - under my breast bone.

Even though I had at one point wondered if she were flipping into the bottoms up position it had not really sunk in, and when I got up from my rest I wondered why suddenly was I grunting so much when I bent over. Why, bending over this morning to pick bits of this and that off the floor had been dead easy. In fact, just before lying down I had done a quick cleaning of my bed room floor, bending with ease - comparatively speaking of course.

Still rather dense, I sat at my computer to do a little more writing on my latest book review and, wonderingly, huffed and puffed when I bent to pick up a dropped pencil off the floor. It was only as we were quickly getting the younger kids ready to join us in a quick run to Salisbury - did it dawn on my that my tummy was firm - just under my ribs. That empty space had been filled up and my stomach had a more narrow look to it. So this little one of mine and all of her 11 inches and 1.5 lbs is no longer stretching from side to side but is now up and down. The question is - which direction is her head in? But no matter - that is a little problem my chiropractor and I can handle with a small instrument called an activator. Just ask Nathaniel - he can tell you how Dr. John and I convinced him to turn bottoms up. That little popping sound of the activator was just so annoying!


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