Belgian poet and playwright Maurice Maeterlinck once wrote a fairy tale named the Blue Bird. In this work, the author describes how the soul of a baby, waits in the hall of the Blue Palace (Paradise) to be born, and comes down when called by the mother.
Although this is a fairy tale, it brings out a very interesting question: does the fetus have a soul before he/she is born?
It all depends on individual belief. To me, I think my baby already has a soul, although I don’t know when the soul enters her body.
I felt connected to her every time I talked to her. And it seemed she understood exactly what I meant.
For example, every time she was quiet and remained still for a long time, I began to wonder and worry. I either asked her telepathically and direclty:“Hi, baby, are you ok? Are you there?” She always returned me a response, either a gental kick or a small movement, no matter during the mid-night, in the early morning, or in the daytime.
Sometime when I rubbed my tummy and talked to her, she reacted to me by kicking or moving the area where I rubbed.
In my 7th month of pregancy, I found out my blood pressure was a little high and I was afraid to have PIH, which, if getting severe, might cause danger to both mommy and baby (see PIH? Oh, no!!). I talked to my baby and asked her to work with me and do our best to keep her in until full-term.
During my second glucose test (see Survived the GTT), I also asked her to understand and support me and cooperate with me to stay until the end of the test.
Most of the time she was very supportive and cooperative. Sometimes I could feel her trying to please me and work with me.
But when she had needs, she didn’t hesistate to express. When she was hungry, she was eager to let me know. If I ingored her message, she would kick, knock or wiggle persistently until I took actions. Once she got really frustrated, she kicked my tummy so hard that I jumped off my chair. Another time at the middle of the night, her kicks were so strong that I felt my whole body was shivering.
My belief is also confirmed by M’s personal experience. Years ago when his best friend’s wife was expecting their first baby, M went to visit this couple. At night he dreamed about meeting the baby’s soul. The baby was a girl. She told him she would be born at the early evening of the same date when M was born, his birthday.
When M told his friends about his dream, they laughed at him. At that time they didn’t even know the gender of their baby yet. Two weeks later, M received a phone call from his friend, telling him a baby girl was born at 5 pm, and that day was M’s birthday.
So far I didn’t dream about meeting my baby’s soul. But I do remember praying to God to give me a kind-soul baby at that special moment. Maybe the soul of this baby, waiting in the hall of the Blue Palace (Paradise), came down when called by me and fulfilled my wish to become a mother.
Looking at my tummy, I am wondering how my baby positions herself inside.
Sometimes I felt her little head moving in the lower part of my tummy. Especially when I sat, I felt her little head or fist turning aournd anxiously there, urging me to stand up. Sometimes I felt a little bump near my belly button. When I touched it and rubbed it, the little bump quickly subsided.
The landscape of my tummy also changed its shape frequently. Sometimes there were two slopes residing side by side on each side of my belly button, forming a curved shape of M; sometimes one slope shifted towards the belly button, making the other one higher and harder; sometimes two slope both disappeared and my tummy became flat.
One day, I found the two slopes coming back and formed a perfect M, with the belly button as the middle point. “Is baby lying sideways in my tummy?” I am wondering.
So I talked to her: “Hi, baby, are you lying horizontally in mommy’s tummy? If so, please move head down, otherwise mommy will have difficult to deliver you.”
Half a minute later, I witnessed a huge landscape change on my tummy. One slope suddently rose dramatically. As a consequence, the other one quickly dropped flat. Then the newly emerged mountain shifted to the lower part of my abdomen and disappeared.
The whole process lasted only few seconds. If I didn’t see it with my own eyes, I couldn’t believe my tummy have such a flexibility.
Did it mean she was heading down? I was not quite sure, because few days later I saw the two slopes coming back and formed a perfect M, with the belly button as the middle point, again!
Until now, I am still trying to figure out how she positions herself inside. How can I outsmart her?
The first time when I first felt my baby’s hiccups, I was quite intrigued by this kind of jerky and rhythmic movements. After that, once a while, I felt her hiccups, which became more and more noticable with the time going.
What is fetal hiccups? How come baby has hiccups inside the tummy since there is no air there?
The book
What to Expect When You're Expecting: 4th Edition
doesn’t give me much information. It only says fetal hiccups don’t cause the same discormfort in babies (in or out of the uterus) as they do in adults, even when they last twenty minutes or more.
Therefore, as usual, I turned to the Internet looking for answers.
According to Sophia Levis, hiccups in the unborn baby are just a fetal reflex that is remarkably similar to our own. Only the more mature fetuses will hiccup, as hiccups rely on the development of the central nervous system. Some experts think that hiccups in utero are a response to fetal drinking or fetal breathing, which causes the flow of amniotic fluid in and out of the lungs, stimulating the diaphragm to contract.
Excitedly, I found one mother had already asked the same question on Yahoo Anwers. And fortunately, a member named “a6385u” gave us a pretty good answer:
Hiccups are not caused by air; they are caused by spasms of the diaphragm, which in turn are caused by pressure being forced on the nerve that supplies the diaphragm, the phrenic nerve. According to Wikipedia, “ultrasound scans have also shown that fetuses experience hiccups. Some hypotheses suggest that hiccups are a muscle exercise for the child’s respiratory system prior to birth, or that they prevent amniotic fluid from entering the lungs.” So, like in “born” persons, hiccups are not the result of air, but of muscles.
So there is nothing to worry about. I will just relax and enjoy this little entertainment from within.
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