During the last weeks of your pregnancy, pay close attention to how your baby moves. After your baby is born, those adorable movements will be the same for the first few weeks. You’ll recognize the way your baby kicks and moves her arms. It’s incredible to make that connection between the baby you knew in your womb and the baby you cradle in your arms.
From the beginning, from those first kicks and throughout my pregnancy, I began to get a sense of my son’s personality. Pressing my fingers into the side of my belly, I would be kicked repeatedly. If I moved my hand, the kicks would follow. It was as though my son was playing a game with me, and now, he still loves to kick or punch at a moving target. I also remember that during that last month of pregnancy, I would often feel a small tickling sensation near the bottom of my belly. I told my family it felt like my son was “scratching at the door” – almost like he was trying to break my water and escape. Sure enough, as a newborn, he would often hold his fist near his head and open and close his fingers over and over. If we were holding his upright on our shoulder, his little fingers would grasp and claw at our necks, and it felt exactly the same way it did when I was pregnant. When it was time to start tracking kick counts, I realized that I had a seriously active baby. He wasn’t kicking ten times in an hour. He was sometimes kicking ten times in thirty seconds! To this day, he is so energetic and wants to move around non stop. I have a feeling that once he learns to run, I’ll never get a break from chasing him!
If you are pregnant, how does your baby behave? Is he especially active? Sleepy? Are there any particular movements that make you laugh or seem unusual? If your baby has already arrived, do you recognize the familiar movements and personality that began to show when you were still pregnant?