The Flutters!

For quite a few weeks now I have been feeling some gurgles from below. Sometimes I convinced myself that it was gas, others I thought I must have a super baby in there to feel movement this early, and yet I knew I was. Now in my 18th week, I can definitely feel the flutters, and I am positive that the movements within are not my dinner, but my baby. Only other women who have felt these tiny shifts can understand how each one is so precious. They let you know that on "the other side" the life within is growing and flourishing. It's funny because each flutter seems to remind me, "Hey I'm in here, you can talk to me too!"

Having a second child is so different from the first. With Zach I constantly read weekly what was developing when, and took hours to sit on the couch and just try to feel some movement. I waited anxiously for each moment, and called everyone I knew the instant something new happened. This time around I find myself racing through the day, trying to make dinner as a toddler hangs from my legs, hoping my house doesn't look as unorganized to others as it does to me, and wishing I had more time to enjoy my hubby and my son. No where in that list do you see me reading to Baby X, or rubbing my ever growing belly, and yet, that little girl/boy reaches out to me, and says, "Hey Mom, I'm waiting!" I feel guilty quite a bit that Baby X seems to come in last place on my to focus on list, wait to be fair, I kind of come in last place, but still you get the point. I don't fret over the nutritional value of every meal, I don't look at my belly from every angle to see what's changed, I don't discuss names incessantly or scour the Internet for design ideas, or cribs to have, and yet I love this child.

On some deeper level, I know that the moment they arrive I will learn that love can grow in ways I never knew, and I know they will shape my world just as much as I will shape theirs. I know all of this, and yet each flutter reminds me! Its almost as though this baby was sent to me to say, "Slow down Mom, you can enjoy things and still be productive." And as this baby grows it reminds me that all kids really need is their mother to nurture them,love them, and take the time to focus on their flutters. My baby X is teaching me, that I am not only mothering the child who runs through my house with dimples blazing, but the little one within who communicates silently but poignantly, that life lies not in the hassles of the day, but in the beauty of what is grown within.