I began to feel the rhythmic beats, thump thump thump thump thump thump, last weekend. At first I thought I had bad gas, so I spent an entire evening wedding walking around with my butt cheeks clenched and praying that I didn’t let one loose at the most silent and inopportune moment.
© 2009 Helios Media, Inc. Please click here to see this illustration on Flickr.
A day or two later, sometime after it occurred to me that I never had produced a symphony of farts, I realized that the thumps were coming from the baby, not my bowels, and this ASTOUNDED me. It took me another day or two to realize that the thumps were not punches or stretches or “yo, Mom, knock it off with the ice cream” swats. And it took me at least the last century to wrap my head around the idea that the thumps were hiccups, soft and sweet and small and (poor baby) incessant.
Having done the reading, I am well aware that my little bundle of joy is hard at work doing all sorts of disgusting stuff in my womb. Stuff like producing urine and floating around covered in white slop fuzz and gulping down amniotic fluid and the like. So it should not have come as any great surprise that the whippersnapper is also capable of hiccuping.
But it did. And even though I hate having the hiccups myself, and even though I probably should just rub the belly softly until the poor child can stop with the world’s longest hiccup session, I’ve been rather enjoying the little thump thump thump thump beat of things. I love watching my belly pop pop pop up and down to the rhythm and I love feeling it under the palm of my hand. So I just let the hiccups happen, hiccup! hiccup! hiccup!
The kid may as well begin to accept right now that a horrible fact of his or her life will be that I am an evil person who delights in the pain of others, right?
In other news? Somebody found my website by googling “Sarah farts.“ THIS IS WHAT MY LIFE HAS COME TO.
(14) -
Haha.
I LOVED baby hiccups. They made me so very happy. Alex got them multiple times a day from around 20 weeks until long after birth :) Enjoy!
-
that’s so cool! I didn’t know they did that… one more thing to look forward to. :) And very nicely written story about it too, it made me smile.
-
Sweet on the hiccups.
LOL on the search.
-
Haha. Brooklyn had them all the time too. I had forgotten about that. Once, my brother was there and I told him to feel the baby’s hiccups. He looked at me horrified and said, “Ew, GROSS!“ Nice, the one and ONLY time I invited someone other than my husband to touch my stomach, he recoiled in dsgust! GRRR. Enjoy your baby hiccups :)
-
I forgot about the hiccups. One of my babies had them all the time. I wish I could remember which one.
hahaha ... sarah farts
-
So fun! I very clearly remember the first time I realized I was feeling hiccups, too. Our little boy had lots and lots of hiccups after he was born, too. So much so that my husband got worried and called the pediatrician. We thought for sure they were as uncomfortable for our little guy as they are for adults. He said it was no problem that they aren’t as uncomfortable for teeny babies (but, really, how did he know that?!). The are totally adorable, at least!
-
My son had the hiccups all the time. Poor babies.
-FringeGirl
-
My second daughter hiccuped so much and then when she was born she did the same :)
I am still laughing at the picture in my head of you shuffling around with you cheeks clenched :D
-
So the counter to this is that these days when I have gas bubbles I worry that I’m 20 weeks pregnant and don’t know it since you don’t menstruate when breastfeeding (hey, it’s unlilkely but plausible).
-
I love the image!
-
my second daughter had them all the time! Even on the day she was born. The nurses had to turn off the fetal monitor since she was hiccuping so much,it was very noisy….But funny,and it kinda hurt,since I was about 7 centimeters at the time, and ready to deliver soon!
-
Does this mean you aren’t clenching your cheeks together anymore? Because I can tell you that around 30 weeks, it WILL slip out - and it WILL be untimely and embarassing, lol :)
-
Hahaaaaa….I hadn’t read this yet. I so love the “you may also like” thing you’ve got going on.
I am going to search Sarah butt clench and see if it brings me here. ;)
(I miss feeling Jude’s hiccups from the inside…they were one of my favorite things about being pregnant)
By Mom24@4evermom on March 27, 2009
Ah, I miss baby hiccups. Enjoy. :-)