Daddy’s Diary: Baby Starts To Kick

Being a mother is probably the happiest experience for a woman! The fact that she is now the recipient of a new life brings her immense happiness and a bit of apprehension, because every mother wants a safe delivery so that her little one can come out of the womb healthy to experience the wonderful world. Other than that, pregnancy brings its own wonders with it. Physical changes and emotional fluctuations are inevitable. But what acts as a silver lining to the delight are moments like the mother feeling a baby kick inside a womb that most expectant mothers describe as a “soul communication.” And even parents have their moments of inexplicable euphoria when they feel the baby kick!

A man can never come close to what a woman with a life inside her womb feels like! When I heard my wife was pregnant I was so excited and got to work organizing the best environment for our little one who is already growing inside my wife’s womb with every passing word. The countless anecdotes shared by my friends and their wives made me curious as to what that kicking sensation of a baby would feel like, for both a man and a woman. Can that soft piece of life inside the womb feel what a mother feels when she feels the kick? If even I feel the kick, my baby will know that I am her father. My mind was spinning with countless thoughts and I felt bubbles of joy bursting inside me.

During her pregnancy period, my wife was curious to experience baby kick! She often said that since a life was growing inside of her, she needed a sign from the Universe that she was doing well. Also, being metaphysically inclined, she wanted to connect with our little one even before delivery. So sometimes before sleeping at night she would lie down and have to talk to the lump waiting to feel the kick. We followed this bedtime ritual for a while and stopped, as nothing happened. And then one day when she was at the office, my wife called in her utter euphoria and she shared that she felt our baby kick. She could feel her happiness overflowing from her and secretly wanted to experience what she did.

My wife had started to feel our baby since the eleventh week of her pregnancy. First, I thought, it might be anticipatory imagination. But as my wife tells me now, it was not like that and that Ria, our little girl, did begin to communicate with her. There were times when she experienced minimized fetal movement and she had bouts of worry, wondering if all was well with our little one. And as she navigated through her pregnancy, I could see it in her eyes, how she wanted me to feel like kicking our baby.

And one fine day, on a winter night in the 20th week of her pregnancy while we were sleeping, my wife remembers that she suddenly felt that our baby was kicking too often. She secretly woke up and did not inform me about it. She kept her hand on the baby’s bump and was silently feeling the baby’s kicks and responding with a loving thought. Then one day in week 21, she felt a little nauseous at night.

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

Now that we have our little Ria by our side, I can only go back to that winter night in December when I first felt her communicate with me. Getting to experience your baby kick is a surreal experience that can only be felt deeply, never fully expressed.