alive and kickin'

I'm convinced I've been feeling the baby move since Sunday night. I thought I had previously, but it always turned out to be, uh, just my own gut. But this is really low (where the baby seems to be, judging from the location of the heartbeat during my last checkup, and my bladder situation), and seems to fit the general parameters of 'baby, not me.'

I get excited each time I think it's happening, and put my hand on my lower abdomen, hoping to feel the movement from 'outside.' But I never seem to. Alas, too much padding is in the way.

Last Thursday, I got a very exciting phone message. I've been a little embarrassed to talk about it on the blog, because it feels like I'm putting more value on certain ("healthy") kinds of people than others, and I certainly don't mean to. But any complications I can do without, I'm happy to. So I'll just report that I did opt to have the triple screen (blood test), and the results were resoundingly negative. Which means they were good. 1 in 460 for Downs syndrome, 1 in 5,000 for some other thing (trisomy something or other?), and negative for spina bifida.

I gave the hugest sigh of relief after hearing that. For some reason, I was convinced I'd be dealing with a situation like that. So-called 'healthy' kids are their own kind of handful, but ... is it wrong to feel good about that?

One more week until we (might) find out the gender. I can't give solid reasons for feeling this way, but I'll be shocked if it's not a boy.