Hide & Seek

Apparently, my child already has a favorite game to play. It's called Hide & Seek, AKA freak Mommy out. I was supposed to go to the doctor Tuesday, but I rescheduled after we had ice & sleet come in. So the appointment was pushed back to Thursday (today). Now, most mornings I end up waking up because he is kicking me in the ribs or playing soccer with my bladder. Wednesday around 12:30, I got thinking that I hadn't felt much movement from him, and the more I thought about it, I remembered that I had been woken up that morning by a neighbor revving his motor trying to get out of his driveway, and it hadn't been from kicks, and I couldn't really remember feeling any kicks. So I drank orange juice, which usually revs him up and waited. Nothing. Decided to eat lunch and see if actual food would get him moving. Still nothing. A couple of times I thought that maybe, possibly I was feeling him, but then I wasn't sure if it was real, or if I was letting my mind play tricks on me. So I called my doctors office and he told me to go ahead and go to the labor & delivery at the hospital and let them monitor me for a while. He said usually just the act of putting the monitor on will usually wake up babies who are being stubborn. So my mom went with me and we went. They strapped the fetal heart monitor on me, and we heard his heartbeat loud and clear. The speakers had noise that the nurse said was him moving, but I still wasn't feeling anything. After a few minutes, he did move enough for me to feel him, and after that it was back to normal with the amount that I felt him move. after the monitor had been on about 15 minutes, I felt him do a big move. (And you really hear it on the speakers, too.) After that, we stopped hearing his heartbeat. The nurse came in and moved the monitor around and found him again, and in just a few seconds, he moved away again. Apparently, he thought it was a game of hide from the heartbeat monitor. At that point, I had already been monitored for almost an hour, so since he was obviously moving and I was again able to feel the movement and nothing else was going on, they let me go home. I saw the doctor today and I felt a little silly, but he reassured me that it's not just a first time mommy thing, that he's had patients on their 3rd or 4th sometimes have to be checked. He said everything looks great, and I have another ultrasound scheduled for Feb 18. I asked him how good the chances are of making sure that the baby arrives while Daniel is home on his leave, and he said he really won't let me go past my due date of April 4, so even if we do have to wait until that date, Daniel won't have to worry about having to go back from his leave just to get a message when he gets there that the baby was born while he was on a flight somewhere. So all in all, good news on the baby front.