Do you know that by now you're fully formed? I've read that numerous times, in numerous books, yet each time I find it hard to believe. We know you're there - mostly through the many changes that your mother is going through, but at this stage most of those aren't visible. So we're highly aware of your presence and it's already affecting significant changes in our lives, but from the outside it's hard to see those changes.

From the inside, from your perspective, I doubt that you can see much change taking place. After all, your eyes and other organs may be fully formed by now, but they're hardly functional, and even if they were, there wouldn't be too much to see, and nothing in your experience to compare it to. In other words - that's all you've ever known.

Your mother gets to have all the excitement. A few weeks ago she caught a first glimpse of you - a dot on an ultrasound screen. And this week she heard your heartbeat, amplified through a special stethoscope. You had a steady and loud heartbeat of 140 per minute, and your mother was elated. It was sort of like SETI (Search for Extra-terrestrial Intelligence). We've received real and tangible signals from beyond an unknown barrier. They came from another world. Except that in this case that world isn't in space, but inside your mother.