The mysterious noise

The first time I heard it, I kinda freaked out. I've read that with a few people, they hear a "snap" or "pop" when their water breaks. Well, one day I was sitting at my desk and the baby was practicing some intense karate moves, when I heard SNAP from my belly and then the baby got calm all of a sudden.

ACK!! What the HELL was that! Are you OK in there!?

So I thought, well, perhaps my water broke. That wouldn't have been good, as it was at like 34 weeks or something. So I laid down (because I've read that if your water breaks, and you lie down, it will usually leak everywhere. And then you know for sure). No leaking at all. So I went back about my business and after a few minutes, the baby resumed its karate practice.

Then, a couple of days later, this happened again. And a few days later, again. I'd say I hear this noise, associated with the baby moving fast and furiously, about every other day. It sounds sooooort of like a standard finger snap, or like a knuckle being popped. But not quite, and certainly a quieter.

At my last appointment, I got up the guts to tell my Certified Nurse Midwife (my favorite caregiver!) that the baby makes a snapping noise. She asked me to describe this, so I told her the pattern; baby is moving fast, noise seems to come from my upper belly, then the baby usually calms down for a few minutes. I have to say that I can talk about a lot of things- abscesses, discharge, poo, heinous rashes, etc without any hint of embarrassment and I was mortified to admit that I thought the baby was making a snapping noise. It sounds so crazy!

Much to my relief, she said I'm not the first person to notice this. She said in the last year, about two or three other pregnant women have 'fessed up to her that they think the baby is making a snapping noise. Her personal theory, as this is nowhere in the medical literature, is that it is the baby's hips cracking, just like a knuckle popping. It makes sense- the baby is moving fast and then it gets into just the wrong position and its little squishy undeveloped joints can't hold their position quite right and so POP you hear a little joint noise. Which probably either startles the baby or actually is uncomfortable, so then the baby chills out for few minutes to recover from the incident.

She said just in case this is it, she'll make a note on my chart to double check the baby's hips at birth (hip problems are common in newborns). It is fairly possible that because of all the time our baby spent in breech it has looser hip ligaments than usual. Our friend's baby that went to term in breech had to spend a month in a squishy-baby hip brace so I know vaguely the worst-case on hip looseness, and it isn't that big of a deal.

I haven't heard the noise in two or three days. I wonder if the baby is so tightly stuffed in there that now it can't even do whatever it does to make the noise. We'll see.