Hearing The Party.

Last week I went to one of the Celebration of Light fireworks displays and the Vancouver Pride Parade with Baby in tow.

According to the baby books she can hear noises outside the womb (J and I talking, car horns, dog barks, the TV). It is rare that I feel her actually react to a specific sound so I was interested to find out if she would respond to the loud bangs of the fireworks.

Sure enough. For every bang I got a kick. Her response time was faster than the echoes off the downtown buildings. After a while I started to get a little paranoid that it was too much for her and so I spent the second half of the show holding patio cushions around my front to help absorb the sound. This was really amusing to everyone else.

The next day was Vancouver's Pride Parade and I took in the show with my aunt and my little cousin. It was great, lots of fun, but again with the kicking. I never thought about how loud a parade is. With the music pumping out of the floats, the cars honking and the crowd cheering Baby could definitely hear the parade even if she couldn't see it.

After all those funny sounds I wonder what she thinks of the world?

Shhhh. Can You Hear That?

I had lunch and a fun visit with a friend and her new baby the other day. And among the many things she packed up for us to use was a Graco Prenatal Heart Listener.

The hand-held device is similar to the Doppler equipment that a medical caregiver uses to hear the baby but it is not Doppler. It just magnifies the sounds within the womb when held to the tummy.

The instructions say that a woman must be in her third trimester before the heartbeat is strong enough to be picked up by the mic. I still have another week to go before I am in the third trimester and I haven't yet been able to find the heartbeat with the listener.

Still, I can hear fluids rushing through the placenta and when baby moves I can hear it. I'm hoping I will hear the heartbeat soon and can then use the listener to calm my fears when I don't feel movement for awhile.

In the meantime I've been checking on my own heartbeat and the heartbeat of my cat. We are both in good health.