Baby Kicks

When You Feel Them You'll usually first detect your baby's movements (known as quickening) between 16 and 22 weeks. It may only be a tiny quiver, but it's tremendously exciting. With those first baby kicks, your baby changes from being someone you can only imagine to an actual person already making himself known!

What They Feel Like Some moms-to-be feel a "butterfly kiss" (like eyelashes rubbing against your belly), and others describe the sensation as popcorn popping or ginger ale bubbling. But the movement is subtle, so many women miss it, or they can't tell whether it's the baby or indigestion!

"Patients sometimes complain of gas pains or of a tingle in their bladder," says William Schweizer, M.D., clinical associate professor of obstetrics and gynecology at New York University Langone Medical Center, in New York City. The bladder is attached to the uterus, so that twinge you feel may be the baby moving.

What's Happening Here's a surprise: Those first flutters aren't actual kicks; they're the whole baby flipping around, Dr. Schweizer explains. Even though at, say, 17 weeks your little passenger can kick, he's only about 5 inches long, so the amniotic fluid he's swimming in buffers his small movements and you feel only the full flops. If you get a sonogram now, you'll see that your baby is plenty active. In addition to turning, he's flexing and punting, even waving and sucking his thumb!