Christmas passes and New Year’s looms. My bowel howls at the pressure put on it and I start to get new types of aches that could be cramps. At every one I wonder if it is a contraction, glance at the time, hold the date in mind: is it today? My mom calls each day, my gran, my mother-in-law. Now, now, now? they ask.
Ricky taps on my belly like a bongo drum. I’ve dropped so the top sounds hollow like a good melon at the shops. Out, baby, he demands, tap, tap, tapping. Get out, baby. He begins an enormous project on 9 January that will take him from us for six weeks. He wants some time with her, and I desperately want him to be around too. But there is nothing to do but eat spicy food and bounce on my birth ball. Everything is complete, as far as I know how, and I enter this murky waiting phase.
The whole of pregnancy is a time between, but waiting for labour is its pinnacle. I begin to see the appeal of a scheduled caesarean. Now my body is king. I am beholden to its mysteries and my whole life is suspended on its meniscus. When will this burgeoning spill over into birth?
It rains. I’ve been inside for days. We don’t do much. I bath, read, sleep, worry, watch Netflix. We have no plans. I drift and skid. One of these hazy days I fall into a deep and strange state while meditating, feeling a profound wave of gratitude for it all, for the baby and the pregnancy, for my body and this process unfolding in its own weird time. I speak to the girl, telling her that her dad wants time with her and to come. I feel just then an enormous pressure bearing down and wonder if my water will break or I’ll lose my mucus plug. It would make an excellent story. Neither happens, but I am plunged into a new calm, a state of grateful surrender and maybe something like joy.
I say to the girl: I’m ready. Are you ready? Come, come, small one. You can come now. We’re ready for you. Let us begin. I tell her we can take the plunge into our bodies together, her into hers and me into mine. Then I wait, sore, expectant, happy.
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