Provoked? Response? Coincidence?

Am I a horrible mother-to-be for (lightly) poking my stomach every once in a while to solicit a movement from my baby girl?  I don't do it very often, but it's so amazing (and reassuring) to feel her move around.  So yes, I admit that I've been known to jiggle my belly from time to time.  Like I said, I don't do it often...and I figure that I'm not applying any more pressure than my doctor when she performs an ultrasound, so I should be okay...right?  (But if you do know of any reason why this would be harmful, please let me know...okay?).

I do feel selfish for provoking her with my pokes and jiggles.  I can only imagine that she is a sleeping soundly...and is then suddenly interrupted--by her own mother, of all people!  I try to just soak up any unsolicited movement that I can get from her when she is active (like right now), and try to keep my hands still when she is inactive.

Which brings me to this morning.  I woke up a little bit before the alarm, so I had the chance to just lie in bed for a bit.  As they've done for the last 23 weeks, my hands gravitated towards my belly.  But this time, I promise that I wasn't poking or jiggling--just relaxing and waking up.  And yet, she immediately began to move around.  My hand was just lightly resting on my belly--I wasn't applying any sort of pressure.  I previously read somewhere (it was a while back--so don't ask me where) that mothers should touch their belly, as it increases the bond between mother and child and can be soothing for the baby.  So what do you think?  What this an early-morning response from our baby girl?  Or do you think it was just coincidence that she started to move around as I was waking up?  I'm totally aware that perhaps she was moving before I woke up--and perhaps she even woke me up this time (maybe she's getting her "revenge" for the times when I interrupt her beauty sleep).  Or, on the other side of the coin, I recognize that her hearing is fairly well developed by this point in the pregnancy, so maybe she awoke to the internal sounds of my body waking up and started moving around just as I was moving my hand to my belly to steal a few minutes with just her and my thoughts before facing the day.

So although I'm guilty of intentionally provoking her on previous occassions, I'm going to mark this morning's experience down as either a response or a coincidence.  Either way, it was a perfect start to my day.

Today's blessing was getting the call (well, yesterday) that our furniture for the nursery has arrived!  It's still a little bit scary to move it all in, but I'm mostly excited.  And it came in just in time.  My husband is (supposed to be) leaving for two weeks on Sunday for his Army Reserves commitment, and it would be really hard for me to know that our furniture was waiting to be picked up on the other side of town.  Instead, we'll be able to get it all home and inside, and now that I have the projector, I'll have a project on which I can work while he's gone to make the time fly by.  And yes, I'll be sure to post pictures of the nursery once we have it all put together.