In some ways, it wasn’t until we were walking out of the hospital and I thought “HOLY CRAP, they are just letting us stroll out of here with a BABY!”
For me, it was when the movement stopped being “little bubbles” and “Geez, you have the hiccups again? And your foot poking out is cute, but could you please take your nap early because mommy has a meeting.” By the time she was born, I knew her daily routine pretty well.
A good friend referred to this as “When will this child’s parents be home? I’m tired of babysitting!”
You need this. Seriously. On my second pregnancy, I didn’t put on much weight, and the style of maternity jeans I’d bought first time round had been revamped to be total shite, so I just bought these and wore my normal jeans for the whole pregnancy.
My two are 16 and 9, and I still get this feeling sometimes. 
For my first, when I first heard her heartbeat was when it felt real. With the second, I knew just a week or so after conceiving that I was pregnant (which was strange), and it felt real almost immediately.
What does not feel real to me is that my kids will be adults one day - and one pretty darn soon. I’m almost sure that this whole growing up and leaving home idea is some sort of elaborate joke. I mean, they’ve been here their whole lives.
I was sick from the beginning and had every pregnancy problem you can have without going on bed rest from projectile vomiting, non stop nose running; migraines, insomnia, heart burn, gestational diabetes, etc.
When she started kicking and I could feel different parts of her body it was a lot more real.
But still the first thing I said when they put her in my arms was “oh, it’s a real baby.”
Either when I felt baby moving or when I started puking my guts out. Both were pretty good signs that it was all real and a baby was on the way.
When the morning (which in my case, was always in the late afternoon) sickness started.
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Anterior placenta? That can stop you from feeling most of the movement. Mine was, too, though a little off to one side. I could feel her when she faced one direction but not any other.
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You know, it’s possible. I’ll ask when I’m in for a check-up this week. Now that you mention it, I guess I really wasn’t paying attention to the placenta part of the scan
I just figured the critter wasn’t really inclined to move much, and it still has plenty of space to flail around in there if it wants to (I’m tall and have a wide skeleton, apparently).
Oh well. It’s been a weird ride so far.
Thank you all who took the time to respond, I’m quite heartened by the variety of experiences.
For my first baby, it was when I felt him move somewhere around 20 weeks. It had been a long day and I ate a late and really good dinner, and pow, there was no mistaking his excitement at finally getting his meal! Feeling him move inside me made him much more real to me than the ultrasound pictures ever did. (He had a heart defect, so I had a LOT of ultrasounds. I had one where they managed to zoom over his face, so I saw his alien-looking eye sockets. I really didn’t want any more ultrasounds after that one!)
For my second baby, it’s weird but I think I’m already feeling it move at 12 weeks. It feels different, though, not like the powerful kicks I remember from nine months with my first, but more like little flutters and sometimes like it’s flipping. I hope it enjoys the space while it lasts! I’m also getting huge already, even though with my first I wasn’t really showing until 20 weeks.
But I agree with what several others have already said - it didn’t really become real until we finally got to take our baby home.
Like you, I had a pretty problem-free pregnancy so it didn’t feel completely real at first. But hearing his heartbeat - that was amazing and delightful. Boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom-boom! It was so incredibly fast and it sounded so…determined, somehow. I burst out laughing.
The nurse was annoyed; she kept saying “stop, I can’t hear the heartbeat if you keep laughing like that!” But I couldn’t stop.
If anything, the disappearance of morning sickness made it feel less real for me, especially after a previous miscarriage. Am I still pregnant? My prenatal appointment was a relief because the heartbeat reassured me I wasn’t imagining all this. Maternity clothes and an impossible-to-ignore bump is making it feel more real at 16 weeks, but it’s all still mostly theoretical. This could be happening to someone else, you know? Not to me. Are we sure this is my body?
It felt very real when I had my first trimester screening a few weeks ago and saw an actual baby in there, dancing and bouncing. But the reality only lasted as long as I could see the kid. Walked out the door and it all felt surreal again. I think that until this kid is kicking me in the spleen on a daily basis, I’m going to keep wondering if I’m dreaming.
I didn’t realize there were so many pregnant Dopers! We should form a club.
Yeah, way better than my due date club on Babycenter. Although they are occasionally hilarious. They are REALLY INTO Ramzi and peeing into baking soda and wedding rings on strings. Like not as a fun diversion. As a deadly serious pursuit. I picture them wearing red headbands ala The Deer Hunter dangling their wedding rings.
Peeing into baking soda? Why?
I was on a group on ivillage ten years ago and a lot of us are still in contact on Facebook. I would try to find a group you like if you can because these women have been the greatest source of parenting help to me. Our kids are all going through the same thing at the same time and it has just been amazing to have that resource.
Yeah, the July birth club over there is insane. Two months ago women were 6-8 weeks along and shoving their guts out desperate for encouragement about how gorgeous their “bumps” were. Not to mention the desperate pleas to help with this or that issue and then completely ignoring all the legitimate reasonable advice. I’m sure half of the folks on there are trolls. Maybe I’ve been spoiled by years on the SDMB, but is it really so much to ask that someone use punctuation occasionally? And make an effort to spell? Maybe break up a block of text into paragraphs?
I just can’t take the crazy anymore. I try to inject some sense into things here and there, and a few other like-minded normals are helping, but we’re little Dutch boys trying to plug a dam.
I found a great group on altdotlife - a much smaller group, with only a half dozen of us or so per trimester, but they’re sane. And rational. They could be Dopers.
If the baking soda fizzes it’s supposed to be a boy. (There’s also a thing with Drano that I absolutely refuse to look up.)
It is, I admit, a great comfort to me that none of these women are pooping either.
I don’t think it was “real” to my wife until she heard the little Torqueling cry for the first time, a few seconds after she was born.
It gets worse. Mommy boards will drive any rational woman INSANE. Either find real friends who are pregnant, or come here to chat. Mommy boards are the female parent version of The Free Republic.
I think mine became real in stages, but my whole thing was so weird that it really doesn’t compare - since we spent years being infertile only to get pregnant when our son was on his way home to us from Korea. So in some ways, she wasn’t real until she was born - we were too busy with her brother turning real - in other ways she was way to real the moment I said “I think that maybe…”
Of course, I was also sitting on the couch crying yesterday because there was this big thread on my Babycenter birth club with all these people who are going to be alone in the delivery room. I guess I’m just spoiled and sheltered, because I can’t imagine being in a place where there’s nobody to go with you. No family, no friends, no SO, no friendly neighbors or coworkers or anybody? It was so sad, especially because none of them seemed to think it was particularly unusual or remarkable. If any of them lived nearby I’d go and sit with them myself, even if they are a pack of stupid ninnies.
ETA - of course I also cried yesterday because I took a left instead of a right in Target and went past the baby clothes and they were so little. Maybe I’m not a great barometer right now.
Oh gods, the roller coaster of tears! I had a meltdown on the way to visit a daycare center last week. I could not handle the fact that I haven’t even met this kid yet and I’m deciding where to dump him or her when I go back to work. Guilt and sadness and anger at the maternity leave situation: tears. My husband was confused but attempted to be supportive. Is there a useful guide out there on how to survive your wife’s pregnancy? I’m afraid I may send him into hiding if this keeps up.