Appreciating the Hiccups

My midwife swears that every mom says each baby is WAY more active than the baby they carried before.

Maybe it's because they are. At least, in my case. This baby is crazed. He kicks and pokes me simultaneously in places I can't believe he can reach. Some days, I swear he's going to stick his hand right out Down Below and wave to me.

I'm far more uncomfortable at 31 weeks than I was with my first two.

I was rubbing my belly a bit the other day while hanging with my friend at Starbucks. The baby was swinging from my ribs after I downed a large ice tea and a cranberry-orange scone. I asked her if she wanted to feel him kick.

I probably mentioned something about how he's KILLING me.

She felt him doing the mambo. Smiled. Then sat back down.

"I really am sad that I'll never be able to know what it's like, to be pregnant," she said.

Oh.

She and her husband tried unsuccessfully for years to get pregnant. They have an adopted son, whom they adore, and she is grateful she's a Mommy. But, you know, to want to give birth and not be able to - I can't imagine.

Pregnancy is something many of us take for granted. Or see as almost a necessary evil to get to the goal: a chid.

We complain about the nausea and the weight-gain, the heartburn and the hemorrhoids, the elbow shots to the ribs that make us double over. We bemoan the mind-numbing exhaustion and the insatiable appetite, the aching breasts, the stretch marks and cankles.

Then we talk to someone like my friend and we get a slap-in-the-head reminder of how extremely blessed we are to grow a life inside us.

I have no idea why I can have healthy pregnancies and why other women can't. I'm humbled by my luck, incredibly saddened by those not as fortunate, women who receive the diagnosis of "unexplained infertility," meaning even the specialists have no idea.

Conception, pregnancy, birth - basic human functions, right? Definitely something we never consider won't happen for us. Until it doesn't.

Of course there are options available now. Artificial Insemination, In Vitro Fertilization, adoption, surrogacy, sperm donors, egg donors, embryo donors. But each comes with a price, whether financial, emotional, physical, or all of the above. And they're not right for everyone.

So I will try to savor these last weeks of pregnancy. I will remember mornings like this one, where I was awakened at 5:15 by tiny hiccups vibrating my left side like an eensy tennis ball bouncing off my abdominal wall.

I only groaned for a second once I saw the time on the clock. Then I put my hand on my belly and enjoyed the show.