By the quick’ning in my tum, something kickin’ this way comes

Well, it’s 99 percent official. The baby is definitely moving around in there. (I think.)

It’s been happening since about Week 12. I’d be sitting in the car or lying in bed, and I’d feel a little flutter in the general vicinity of the uterus. If I happened to be listening to the baby’s heartbeat on my fetal monitor, this tickling feeling would be accompanied by a distinct plunking noise in my headset.

At first, I chalked it up to gas, but this week it’s been picking up and feeling more definite. Unless gas normally commences within minutes of ingesting sugar or caffeine (yes, I have been naughty and had a few small caffeine drinks here and there in the second trimester), it is most definitely the baby experiencing a brief burst of energy. Also, I have noticed that, unlike gas, the bubbling kicks up a few notches if I poke at my belly.

If that’s not enough, I know the baby has been hanging out a few inches southwest of my belly button for as long as I’ve been monitoring its heartbeats, and that, coincidentally, is where I’ve been feeling the fluttering. Now, theoretically, it could be that the baby and the gas are coincidentally situated in the same region. Yesterday, however, Chris and I ran over a dead deer on the highway and when the car bounced, I came down hard on my right side. The heartbeat moved over to the southeast for a few hours, and so did the “gas bubbles.” Then, when the coast was clear, everything moved back to that old, familiar southwest portion of my abdomen.

Now despite all this, and the fact that the baby’s movements are expected to be felt between weeks 16 and 20, I am still not quite sure it’s not just intestinal rumblings.

But I’m 99 percent certain that little Pele is not only living up to his reputation as the namesake of the volcano deity, but also living up to expectations as the namesake of the Brazilian soccer star.