They Gleam and I'm Content

My big goal for tonight was to get the bathrooms cleaned. They were in desperate need of a really good cleaning. While I was nauseous for weeks and weeks the last thing I wanted to consider was scrubbing bathroom gunk, so we had to make do with the occasional Clorox wipe over the surfaces. And that is not cleaning in my house. Except when company's at the door. Then it can do in a pinch.

But we have a system for this. Paul lowers the barrier to cleaning entry by preparing my bucket of water and Pine Sol, using the precise recipe that I share with him every time. I have to remind him of the chemical formula, because his natural tendency is to believe that to be effective warm water and Pine Sol should be in a 1:1 ratio. And last time he tried that, I ended up locking myself in the bedroom with the ceiling fan going and the window open, still with a big pregnant headache from the reek hours later.

So he prepares the bucket, I remove everything from the bathrooms, clean the sinks et al first, then the toilets. When I'm not pregnant, I do the tub and shower in between. Toilets go last, of course, with their own sponge. Then Paul comes in and scrubs the floors by hand. Lately, he's doing the shower/tub too because I'm lazy.

Tonight he threw off the rhythm by deciding to go downstairs to the basement and clean his own bathroom. That room is nearly a year and a half old, and I'm not sure it's ever really been clean. Now it is! Stunning.

Anyway, while I waited for him to finish cleaning downstairs, I laid on the couch and read Parents. And my stomach felt weird. I usually try to ignore this type of thing, but I was procrastinating so I decided to focus on it. And I realized that I was feeling . . . movement. And not, I think, the bowel kind.

It's a whole different experience this time around, with a male OB. For one thing, he's nice and has an actual bedside manner, unlike my last doc. For another, he actually asks me things, which still surprises me. At my last visit, he asked if I was feeling the baby move.

"Oh! Sometimes I think I am. But I figure that I must be wrong because it's way too early, right?"

And he told me not to worry if I wasn't feeling anything yet (it is early) or if I don't feel anything regularly for a while. But he's heard patients tell him what they feel at this stage, and with not-first pregnancies, some women say that they are feeling movement this early and he believes them. He believes them! The women!

I believe I was feeling the baby move tonight while I was lying on the couch reading quietly. It felt great.

I didn't call Paul upstairs to share the experience, though. For one thing, it's totally cool that his bathroom is clean. For another thing, it will be many many weeks before he can feel the movement himself.

If I recall correctly, his ability to feel the baby move through my abdominal walls happens sometime after that strange minor miracle involving my little layer of soft belly fat.

At some point in the midst of pregnancy, the softness that waxes and wanes but is always on my gut no matter what I weigh or how many sit-ups I do disappears. It doesn't vanish from my body, but it migrates South for the winter and spends some months hiding at the nadir of my distended abdomen, where it's easily hidden and I can't see it no matter what I do.

During those months, I'm prone to lifting my shirt and allowing people to pound on my belly. "Hard as a rock!" I cry, as proud as if I'd earned a 6-pack at the gym.