fuck them

for shitting on her entire life loudly in the hall before her door then walking in and injecting her with judgment and betamethasone, adjusting her straps and telling her the contractions were in her head.

fuck them for ignoring her until she was rapidly 6 cm and bolting like lightning toward the end, then talking calmly about their redecoration while she tried not to make noise because they scolded her every time they heard her as they prepped the sterile field for her impending tiny baby.

fuck them for telling her to calm herself down as the head descended past her coccyx then asking her to hold her knees together and help them have a controlled delivery once the doctor was in the room.

fuck them for not being ready and willing to catch that baby any way she was ready and able to push it, one deep, long grunt, into what should have been waiting, caring hands that should not have recoiled and so quickly injected the demerol only to have her doped to incoherence as she scrawled the parts of her name she could remember on the d&e informed consent.

fuck them for daring to risk perforation when they couldn't be bothered to care about her delivery in the first place.

and fuck them hard for looking down their tired, aged noses at the one woman in the room who remembered that she too was woman and aided the wifery of the other.

fuck them for saying it wasn't worth a thing.

placenta stew

yawn.

there's nothing left of me.

spread transparently over every inch from here to philadelphia, yet utterly undetectable.

the nestling has taken over, its brain my body's ultimate priority.

all else: mere crumblings, trifling trivialities that will scarcely leave their mark.

compared to this, all pales. this is the biggest thing there is, all 0.8 miniscule fractional ounces of it.

this, after all, is life. this is breath, pulsating red and swishy.

cygnet

arm buds and foot paddles again and the nestling is floating in its newly formed personal pool, doubling in size by day. yesterday an m & m, tomorrow a kiwi fruit. everyone is thrilled. he is ecstatic over the prospect of real daddyhood, daddyhood from the very beginning. but he still can't avert his eyes from her billowing breasts.

i can't take him anywhere. and i can't marry him until i can. i need someone with some degree of internal regulation, not someone who requires a personal policewoman...while i play the role well, the handcuffing process destroys my soul and the winged freedom our relationship should have. we should not be an empty cage, and it shouldn't be on me to repetitiously swallow the key.

so much to mull through, so many new challenges. 37 days and the nestling is beginning to swim. 7.5 more months before each of us will have to learn to navigate new water.