Dancer

I don’t dance. I used to years ago but I never enjoyed it. I always felt uncoordinated and awkward. My friends used to time their moves to the rythm of the song and I felt stupid and out of place. Eventually I just gave it up. I decided it wasn’t giving me the joy or sense of freedom people talk about. I’m sure a shrink wouldn’t approve of my giving up but I don’t miss it much.


My baby, it appears, loves dancing. S/he is already dancing and s/he’s not even out yet.

One of the things you’re supposed to start doing in the third trimester of pregnancy is to keep “kick logs.” These are typically done after dinner while you lay on your side. You take thirty minutes or one hour and count how many times the baby kicks in that time frame. Or you can count up to so many kicks and find out how much time it took the baby to kick that many times. This is so the doctor can make sure your baby is okay. A moving baby is a healthy baby, they say.

I’ve never had to do one of those logs. As soon as my body is in bed, the baby decides it’s time to dance. I generally count until 100 before I give up. We seem to reach three digit numbers in less than 20 minutes most nights. Just to give you a sense, they say to worry if the baby kicks fewer than ten times in a 24-hour period. Obviously, that’s not a problem we have.

Last week, I had a long week at work and noticed that the baby wasn’t kicking as much as usual. We were still easily over 50 in a day but for my baby that’s not a lot. I decided to wait until Friday to see if it was work-related. As we guessed, come Friday night, the minute my vacation began, the baby began dancing. S/he didn’t stop all weekend. At points it was so strong that you could see my entire belly shift to one side and come back or stretch in ways that look like they must hurt. But they don’t.

The kicking never hurts me. I love it. It’s like a way for the baby to talk to me before we get to meet each other. I know s/he can hear me now but I can’t hear the baby yet and such we communicate through the kicks. As long as s/he doesn’t keep it up once s/he’s on the outside, we’re good.