37 Weeks of Your Heart Beating Beside Mine

Mother-to-be here, writing to you from the trenches, baby. Two days before 37 weeks, I told your grandparents, “I’m going to go into that doctor’s room tomorrow and say I’m coming every week from now on, I want to fill out my birth plan, I want to know when I must come to hospital, what signs to look for, can I still bath…”

With three weeks to go, it didn’t make sense that Dr A hadn’t connected me to a machine or a big healing tree with supernatural powers because everyone was telling me that you could come at any moment.

Whenever we’d go into Dr A’s office, she’d be there on the other side of the desk, with her colourful nails dazzling me or her heels carrying her across the floor to check my urine discreetly around a corner. She always seemed two months behind me in terms of urgency, but each appointment I’d ask, “Do the weekly appointments start yet? Do the weekly appointments start yet?”

Most of pregnancy has just been you, me, and a lot of blind faith and kick monitoring, waiting for that window that the ultrasound appointments bring each month, letting me hear your heartbeat pulsing loudly, and view your amniotic fluid levels and cord positioning to make sure you’re ok in there.

But we’re out of months.

One day before 37 weeks, we visited Dr A finally and this time her hands and their dazzling nail art passed me a consent form, maybe it was an indemnity form, but she started to talk about the delivery and I grew very hot and dizzy. I started fanning myself with my written list of prepared questions as she spoke about vaginal tearing and hematomas and shoulder dystocia, where there are only five minutes to get the baby out alive. I stripped off one jersey as she spoke of morphine injections and vacuums and forceps instruments.

It was all coming… the birth plan was being discussed, as I had wanted, and I was fainting and waiting for it all to be over. I signed a form and said, “Let’s get this ultrasound done now,” needing to be horizontal and thinking about dolphins.

There you were, your head still neatly upside down in my pelvis, though not very descended, your mouth still kissing your placenta. How is it you’ve remained in the same position while swimming lengths and widths across the pool of my belly? All I could think was, what an angel you are. Doing everything right, happy-go-lucky already.

Of course Dr A felt this belly of ours and your feet against my ribs and the blasphemous expressions began as she realised you’re even bigger than bigger… “Yes,” I said in reply, “exactly.” Then the head measuring and more blasphemy. A full term head on a near term body weighing an estimated 3,4 kgs. “Yip,” I said, before pointing out that the top of your skull resembled a Halloween pumpkin. Mom could see the pumpkin too, but she was largely adamant on telling Dr A that, “Yes, a Caesarean I think will be best.”

We’re scared about this five minute rule, you see. About your head coming out and your shoulders getting stuck. Dr A attempted to calm us by saying, “Well, that’s only if the head can come out at all. Because that’s one huge head.”

“Still, I think it might be ok. Let’s see in two weeks how he’s grown,” she added, and I thought of those forceps and the vacuum and your potential cone head and mostly about the fact that I can’t even listen to talk of these things without sweating and dropping lower in my chair. How am I going to do the whole thing?

Somewhere during the appointment I innocently said I’d like to try go for as long as possible with no pain relievers. Dr A seemed to not hear, so I said it again, and she nodded, smiling. “I approve everything beforehand so the drugs will be there if you want them,” she said, having delivered hundreds of babies from hundreds of mothers hoping to experience the full force of child birth until the moment the pain hits.

The day before 37 weeks, we found out that Ziggy, our poker face black and white feline, was knocked over. Hit and run.

In the face of sadness, other worries completely fade. A great eclipse that resets everything. When we get over not seeing her when we arrive at the gate or watching her curled up in the tiniest fur ball on the couch, bolting up trees in seconds and falling at the feet of a catnip plant, things will even out again. But the eclipse reminds me of sadness others might be feeling at other times, and how fortunate I’ve been to have had the most joyous, all-consuming ride with you this year. Your heart beating and growing beside my heart.

So now we wait for the next appointment at 39 weeks, grateful for every week we’ve survived. You’re healthy and happy and oblivious to the people outside counting the sleeps, furiously finishing work duties, buying heaters for your nursery and watching videos of labour myths. Three more weeks, baby. May you stay happy-go-lucky and at peace and may the cabinet of Dr A’s pain relievers remain on stand by for our big day.