pregnant life

the japanese writing says, “teacher, i forgot my bathing cap”. (color pencil drawing)

i don’t know what’s going on in my womb world. my belly has started to get really big, especially in the last week. i can now clearly see a curved line at the bottom where the womb begins to stick out. my belly button is almost flat. it’s not inside out yet, but i can see the inside. it looks like my body wants to be extroverted, unlike its mental counterpart.

poko-chan is doing well, i think and hope. it’s becoming more active. it’s so active that even paul could feel it. he was very happy. i feel its movement more at night in the bed than during the day when i’m active. usually what happens is that poko-chan starts off by kicking at the top left and proceeds to the bottom and the right and comes back to the initial position. it’s an acrobatic baby. sometimes i can’t fall asleep because it’s so active. last night, i was lying in bed listening to kruder and dorfmeister and poko-chan started dancing in the womb club.

since i’ve been in my second trimester, i feel more energetic. i started taking an aqua fitness class. i used to go to the gym to walk on a treadmill in the first trimester, but it got really boring. it’s probably better to go for a walk outside, but it’s -20℃ (with a windchill of -30℃) and the sidewalk is frozen. i don’t want to catch a cold. and i especially want to avoid a situation where i fall on the ice and my belly explodes and i give birth to the baby on the icy sidewalk and our baby gets frozen and slides away from me with the umbilical cord still attached. that would be pretty embarrassing.

so i decided to take an aqua fitness class. my gym is one minute walk from my apartment. it’s not an aqua fitness for pregnant woman — the members are mostly grandpas and grandmas. it shouldn’t be too hard on my body. perfect. i feel much better and poko-chan seems to like it too. after class, i can feel it doing aerobics and swimming around its indoor pool.

actually, my drawing is misleading. i never wear a bathing cap.

i’m just starting my 21st week. it’s our first baby.

my belly has really started getting bigger recently, so i’m visibly pregnant as well. the baby is already quite active. it started moving in my belly around 17 weeks. at first, it felt like bubbles popping. some pregnancy books describe this as “butterfly flapping”, but i’ve never eaten any live butterflies, so how would i know?

more recently, i can really feel the baby kicking. this involuntary movement (on my end) is absolutely amazing. sometimes, when i feel its kicks, i tap it back around the same area. a few seconds later, it kicks back :) i’m enjoying this non-verbal communication so much. the kicking feels like “poko-poko” to me (the japanese language has lots more sounds to describe things than english does), so i gave the baby a nickname: “poko-chan”.

yesterday morning, i could feel the baby pushing out against my left and right sides at the same time — like stretching out, slowly. the baby is building a new body, and it’s going to be crowded inside me.

just before i found out i was pregnant, i started drawing the baby in my drawing “numb“. after i found out, i went to the doctor and saw the heart beating on the ultrasound, and heard the heartbeat sound with the fetal doppler. i did another drawing: “new heartbeat“.

paul and i went to get an ultrasound last week. the radiologist gave us a 3D image of one of the photos, which shows our baby’s face, with the right hand held up shyly in front of it.

mmm~~ good looking. as you can tell, i’m already starting my “oya-baka” (foolish parents) plan (親ばか実行計画）. :D

during the ultrasound, we saw our baby open its mouth and wave its hands around. the baby got much bigger since the last ultrasound. now it actually looks more like a human. it’s got fingers, toes, ears, eyes, and a cute bum. at first, i thought i might give birth to some sort of animal, but now officially it’s a human. :)

i knew something was living inside of me… no wonder my belly is getting so much bigger. i’ve never experienced this type of rapid physical transformation before, except in my mind. it’s interesting — all the changes seem to happen according to a schedule. it’s like my body is a machine. but i’ve never felt so human before.

some other time, i’ll post about my early pregnancy experience, and my weird “morning sickness” behaviour, which lasted about 8 weeks.

in a meantime, this is me with our baby inside. :)

16 weeks 2 days

20 weeks 1 day

(paul took the photos of me)