Phantom Limb

I first felt the baby move late last night, right when I was falling asleep. Because I haven’t been able to hear an accurate description prior to this that didn’t involve vague mentions of “gas bubbles,” evoking delicate little carbonated beverages swimming around your midsection, I feel compelled to clear things up. Uh, not so much with the delicate. You know what it’s really like? I’ll tell you. You know when you’ve got a gas bubble — and by “bubble” I mean a large wad of gas, not some tiny champagne bubble shit — working its way down your intestines, culminating in what you imagine to be a giant, Mason jar-sized fart? (Stop it. You all do. I know you do.) It feels precisely like that, except the mondo fart never comes, and it never really moves down your intestines. It just sort of pokes you, and I spent the first 200... [read full story]