Sandy's Surprise -- Baby is Listening!

Read All of Sandy's Surprise -- A Pregnancy Journal

Last night we met with our midwife, Janice, for the first time. I must say, at first I was nervous because she was 20 minutes late showing up. She had told me she had a prenatal appointment before then, and gave me an estimate of when she would arrive.

But still, Tim and I were hoping it wasn't a portent of things to come. I called her, and she said she was on her way, the appointment had just ended up taking longer than she had initially thought it would.

The good news is that we LOVED her! -- both Tim and I, which is rare, because he is very strict like that. She is a very homey person, not too old and not too young. She has been a midwife for 17 years. She spent lots of time talking with us, and was willing to answer any and all questions that she could.

We are definitely going to be going with her, I just have to call her tomorrow and set up my first prenatal appointment. I am really excited to get this underway!

The bad news is that she is considerably more expensive than we had thought. So we talked, and decided that we probably won't be making the trip to see Tim's parents in a couple of weeks like we had wanted to. The trip will cost us about $1000 that we don't have to spare right now.

Although we didn't go through with the adoption, we still put about $3000 into it which means that our savings is looking a little puny right now. Anyway, I think it's sad, but those are just our priorities right now. And plus, they'll be flying up here for Christmas anyway, so we'll see them in a few months' time.

In other pregnancy news, my belly has really popped! It was looking big before, but oh my gosh! It looks enormous now.

And I'm getting a little off balance. It is extremely hard to lift myself off our couch, which is a little low to the ground. Tim always laughs at my efforts as I grunt and groan trying to wedge myself out of the seat. I've found that tailor-sitting on the floor really helps! A little tip from our first Bradley class.

I was reading that the baby has started reactive listening to things around it already! I thought that was so exciting so I got two books, "Guess How Much I Love You" and "Love You Forever", and started to read them to the baby. About halfway through "Love You Forever" it started to kick! It was amazing!

And later, I was subbing for some kids and their teacher put on a Barney movie for them to watch during break. The kids were singing some song about outer space, and the baby starts kicking again!

Everytime the kids would talk or sing, the baby would kick -- I think it liked their voices. It was just so cool to see it react to outside responses.

Those interactions validated what had happened about a week ago. Tim and I were in the living room late at night. We have an alarm on our backdoor that needs to be turned off before the backdoor is opened, or it shrieks really loudly. Well, the dogs needed to go out, and Tim opened the door but forgot to turn off the alarm. I jumped when it went off, and so did the baby!

We were both so excited, but I kind of wondered if the baby did in fact hear it. It seemed like it did, because of the way the movement felt -- sudden, as if it had started, rather than just plain movement. And now I know that's exactly what it was! Apparently they start reactive listening at 16 weeks of age, and they start hearing everything at about 20 weeks or so.

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