Dad Diary: Baby starts kicking

Being a mother is probably the most joyous experience for a woman! The fact that she is now the vessel of a new life brings her immense happiness and a tad bit apprehension, because every mother wants a safe delivery so that their little one can walk out of the womb all healthy to experience the wonderful world. That aside, pregnancy brings with it its own wonders. The physical changes and emotional fluctuations are unavoidable. But what acts as a silvering lining of delight are moments like when the mother feels a baby kick inside a womb which most expecting mothers describe as a “soul communication”. And even fathers to be have their moments of inexplicable elation when they feel the baby kick!

A man can never approximate what a woman feels with a life inside her womb! When I heard that my wife was pregnant I was ecstatic and got busy to arrange the best environment for our little one, who’s already growing inside my wife’ womb with every passing say. Countless anecdotes shared by my friends and their wives made me curious as to how would that sensation of a baby kick feels like, both for a man and a woman. Can that soft piece of life inside the womb sense what a mother feels when she feels the kick? If even I get to feel the kick will my baby know I am his/her father. My mind hovered around countless thoughts and I felt bubbles of joy bursting inside of me.

During her pregnancy period, my wife was curious to experience the baby kick! She often said, since a life was growing inside of her, she needed a sign from the Universe that she’s doing it all right. Also, being metaphysically inclined, she wanted to connect with our little one even before delivery. So, she sometimes before sleeping at night, she would recline back and have be talk to the bump waiting to feel the kick. We followed this before sleep ritual for a while and stopped, as nothing happened. And then one day, when I was in office my wife rang up in her total elation, sharing that she felt our baby kick. I could sense her overflowing happiness and secretly desired to experience what she did.

My wife had started feeling our baby right from the eleventh week of her pregnancy. First, I thought, it could be an anticipatory imagination. But as my wife tells me now, it wasn’t and that Ria, our little one did start to communicate with her. There were times when she experienced minimized fetal movement and got into bouts of worry, thinking if all’s well with our little one. And as she sailed through her pregnancy I could see it in her eyes, how she wished for me to feel our baby kick.

And one fine day, at a winter night on the 20th week of her pregnancy whilst we were sleeping, my wife recalls that suddenly, she felt our baby kicking rather too frequently. She secretly woke up and didn’t inform me anything about it. She kept her hand on the baby bump and was silently feeling the baby kicks and responding to it with a loving though. Then one day on the 21st week, she felt slightly nauseous at night.

I woke up, attended her physically challenging state and when the queasiness reduced I was helping her recline back to bed. We both exchanged a loving glance and touched her womb, and pat came a soft kick. She said, “Our little is talking to us” and smiled. As she lied down my palm were on her baby belly and there were few more soft kicks. This continued for a while and then we went back to sleep.

Now that we have our little Ria beside us, I can only get back to that December winter night when I first felt her communicating with me. Getting to experience your baby kick is a surreal experience that can only be felt deeply, never expressed in totality.