Bridget's Pregnancy Blog

Now that I’m at about 31 weeks, my baby’s movements have become strong enough to not only feel really strongly, but also to see. It’s pretty entertaining to watch my stomach move when he squirms or kicks. It’s also fun to show friends when he starts to really get going.

At first, the visible movements were a little creepy. Don’t get me wrong, I thought it was quite cool to actually see him. But there’s still something strange and unnerving about watching your own belly move and poke out when you aren’t in control of it at all. As I’ve gotten more and more used to it, it’s become definitely more cool than creepy, though. I still do sometimes get the reaction of “That is so weird” from friends, however.

Meanwhile, I’ve discovered a new source of entertainment involving the baby. I’ve started to try to be interactive with his world by tapping or pushing back when he pushes out on me. If I feel a particularly hard thump, I’ll nudge him in the same spot. Sometimes he will go completely quiet, like he’s wondering what just happened. Other times, he will get even more active, pushing back again, as if to try and see if he can get another reaction from me.

Sometimes I vary the reaction and instead of nudging back, I start to sing or hum to him. This seems to stimulate him to react more, also. I’ve tried to avoid doing this too much in public, though, since I feel kind of silly randomly singing baby songs to my belly in a crowd of strangers.

When I first started this experimental playing back with baby, I was a little worried about whether poking or nudging would hurt the baby in any way, but I’ve since learned that he’s so well protected in there that anything I do would have to hurt me first before it could harm him. So, for moms-to-be who want to try and play interactively with their baby belly- go right ahead. Poking and pushing can’t harm the baby.

The one caveat to this is that I try to not poke him too much if he seems to be in his sleep phase, especially since I’m really starting to notice him shifting between times of inactivity and times of high activity. I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt him, but I can’t imagine he’d be too happy if I kept disturbing his sleep!