Dragon Soccer

We received an audience with Sarah Palin again today (read, the family practitioner who looks like Sarah Palin), and after waiting only 45 minutes, she joined us for Susanne’s latest exam. After a string of additional symptoms, like sudden, cataclysmic leg cramps, stubborn heartburn, and the mucous that accompanies late spring pollen bursts, Sarah Palin grabbed her fetal heartbeat monitor and pushed around searching for sound.

WHAM, responded the baby dragon, who I imagine had been sleeping peacefully just a scant few seconds earlier.

“Ooh,” said Sarah Palin as a reflex. “The baby just kicked the monitor.”

Susanne giggled.

It’s been a while since the whole quickening whatsafiggy thing occurred for Susanne. She tends to describe it as “fluttering,” but when pressed will agree that the concept of popping corn kernels isn’t a bad way to explain the sensation in her abdomen. For my part, I’m such a fan of kettle corn that I would love to think that there’s some relationship between it and my sweetheart, except I suppose the image gets gross pretty quickly. So forget it. Fluttering it is.

Sarah Palin moved the monitor around, trying to catch the future offspring at a new angle. Whack, responded the dragon, probably with a wing.

“Whoa,” Susanne mumbled.

“I don’t think they like my probing,” said Sarah Palin, Contessa of the Obvious.

We seemed to have progressed beyond simple fluttering to actual soccer moves if the force of impact moves a physician’s hand.

Perhaps Sarah Palin wore down the fetus, as is Sarah Palin’s way, I suppose, but finally the little beast quit struggling, and we got to hear the teensy heartbeat, whoosh-whooshing away. Sarah Palin seemed pleased, and put her machine away.

We identified some remedies for Susanne’s latest bodily inconveniences, and walked back to the car. There was a part of me that was pleased that for all of my belly talking and fiddling, the dragon has never shied away from me, but another part of me wanted to feel a little of what Susanne has been experiencing.

I made like a Doppler radar machine, and pushed at her lower belly.

Crashing back at me was the dragon, irate that nobody would let it rest quietly.

I got to feel the baby today. That makes for a freaking impressive day.