Like a cough on a rainy day

I never really thought very much about hiccups before, until now. Why? Well, it appears that the babe inside seems to get the hiccups pretty regularly now and the sensation of someone hiccuping from the inside out is a strange one.

Perhaps the oddest part of the sensation is its rhythm. So far, the kicky one kicks and hits and punches and squirms and twists with abandon but certainly not in any rhythmic way. The hiccups, however, are rhythmically regular, though less violent than the other movements.

When it first happened, before I figured out what was going on, I was envisioning the baby suddenly needing to communicate with me or get my attention and resorting to soft, regular taps in hopes that I would start listening, like infant Morse code or the equivalent of knocking three times when one is trapped and wants to see if anyone is out there. Of course, I knew this was impossible and silly besides, but it's hard not to think such thoughts when these tiny mini-taps keep coming so evenly. (Plus, I think these thoughts are related to all the pregnancy anxiety dreams I keep having, dreams in which something goes wrong but no one will believe me, or the baby, for that matter.)

And don't get me started on how impossible it is to imagine someone who can't breathe, per se, getting the hiccups. This is an anatomical conundrum not for the likes of someone like me, who took psychology and geology as her natural sciences.

But I guess it's further evidence that this person is becoming more and more an individual (apparently right now an individual with some sort of epiglottal defect, just like the husband--umm, hooray??).