Thirty-Nine Weeks
We're not to forty weeks yet, but it feels like time.
Even my maternity shirts aren't staying down over the bump anymore. At the grocery store, we're starting to see expiration dates on dairy past the baby's due date.
By butcher shop metrics, baby is big for a chicken but small for a turkey. It feels like it: a rotisserie strapped to my front. Its sharp little pelvis presses hard above my belly button, nearly all the time. If I push back, the little bones connect and pressure reaches down into the pelvis.
We do the final-prep laundry, throwing in the new muslins, the tiny onesies. I hang them to dry between Robert's giant socks. Folding them is the first time I feel like three people live here: a pile for each of us. We don't have room for a nursery, but I make a space on the shelf.
It surprises me how often I still worry if it's doing okay in there. This is an active fetus, fully formed, and even so— an hour or so of belly quiet switches on my vigilance.
There is a sort of deep grief latent in pregnancy: what if something goes wrong with this unobservable child? We are told, again and again, that the fetus's best protection is the mother's intuition. I should notice the patterns of my body, the movements of the unborn baby.
Separation of this signal from noise is often the only chance we have to intervene in case of trouble. But it all changes, every day. The fetus changes position and shape inside my ever-growing belly. Pangs like cramps and shooting pains and weird swellings are probably normal, possibly signs of progress, though I might normally call a doctor for many of the symptoms I currently live with.
It's too heavy an honor, this untrained role of protector. No one else can know these patterns so intimately, and no one else has invested so much. But there is always the fear: what if I have carried this creature so far, only to miss a critical step?
I can't even tell the most basic-seeming thing: whether I'm in labor or not. There are too many strange twangs and twinges.
Most labor starts at night, while cuddled and relaxed. When my calves sieze and cramp in bed, I'm pretty sure that's not labor. But when my abdomen does the same thing, at midnight, at two, at four in the morning? Or do I just need to pee?
Fetal hiccups ripple rhythmically across my belly while the sounds of a Halloweekend party thump down from a neighbor's apartment.
I lever my bloated body sideways from rest, hobble on sore, swollen feet to the stairs. Clutching the banister with aching hands, I descend sideways, one stair at a time, waiting for my hips to wake up on the way to the bathroom.
Most of the time, I feel good. Once I'm up, my limbs cooperate. Compression socks reliably reduce my feet. The core works in an upright position.
One thing about London: there are a lot of women seeking friends. I've joined a dinner club, where we rotate cooking for each other, and another group whose premise is to take long walks to patisseries. So I go on long walks, eat pastries, stay out until eleven talking and laughing over homemade meals.
I talk to teachers, nurses, activists, women thirty years into their careers and women leaving their hometowns for the first time. Some friends are transient, and some stick around. Both are nice: the one-time friendships remind me every time how simple it can be to bond over a few hours of conversation.
I accept invitations, but with an asterisk. I could still be pregnant three more weeks, but at this point it's more likely I won't be.
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