Ouch

Last night the baby was sitting in such a position that she had some sort of appendage -- a knee, a fist, a foot, I couldn't tell -- poking outwards, stuck between her body and the uterine wall. Every time she moved, she'd jab me in the same spot on the left side of my stomach. Hard.

I usually don't mind when she does this, but it was the same damn spot, every time, and after a few hours it really hurt. At one point Scott came home to see how I was and when he kissed me hello I responded, "Hey baby, how was your massage -- OH OWWWWW."

I went through a couple of tricks to try to move her, and when none of them worked I decided to take a stab at bouncing up and down on the giant blue exercise ball we bought a few weeks back for laboring purposes.

I wound up spending a good while on the ball, which I found conducive to rooting for the Dodgers while watching the game. Yelling "COME ON, ETHIER, WE NEED A CLUTCH HIT!" feels much more effective when you're bouncing enthusiastically up and down on a rubber sphere, gesturing wildly at the screen.

So did it work? Well...I'm not sure. She stopped jabbing me, I think because the motion of the bouncing eventually put her to sleep, so it worked in that regard. But today, everything feels different. My pelvis is KILLING ME. Like, every time I get up I groan in pain, killing me.

I figure this could be great news, or bad news. Great news if, as some of the birthing books say, all that bouncing on the exercise ball has helped the baby drop. This means that she's begun to move into position, her head settling downward toward the birth canal. It means increased pressure and discomfort, but it also means the body is preparing for labor, which, yay!

Or, option #2, what I've essentially done is spend two hours banging my child's head repeatedly into my pelvic bone for no reason, bruising us both. This would also explain the pain. It would also explain why she seemed to be hellbent on getting revenge on me last night, around 2:30 am, by SHOVING HER FOOT UNDERNEATH MY RIBCAGE and wiggling it around for approximately the next two hours. Physically it seems suspect that she would be able to do this if she has dropped, unless she's figured out a way to stretch out two feet in either direction inside me. Which I wouldn't put past her, come to think of it. The ultrasound technician has told me twice now that she has crazy long legs.

So...last night. An important first step toward labor, or a needlessly self-inflicted wound? Only time will tell.