Dear Science Babies,

Pregnancy is a strange experience. Why, only this morning, I saw a drop of clear fluid on my nipple. I thought maybe I had gotten a little water on myself somehow, but further experimentation revealed that this liquid had come from my very own breast. I couldn’t have been more surprised if one of the cats had started wearing spats. A bit of research reveals that this is normal (the nipple liquid, not feline spat-wearing). “Normal,” that is, for the neverending circus of oddity that is pregnancy.
Another curious development has been my feelings for the two of you. Today I was imagining Worst-Case Scenarios, something I do from time to time. Since I have been pregnant, these Worst-Case Scenarios have dealt with your demise. Now, don’t go getting all upset and rending my bladder—I do not enjoy these imaginings. I consider these possibilities only as a way of managing my anxiety, by planning my responses to fictitious catastrophes (don’t let anyone tell you your mother doesn’t know how to have a good time). Considering this particular Worst-Case in the past, I have wondered whether I would have the courage after such a tragedy to try IVF again, in the hopes of conceiving another child.
But this time I found myself getting angry at the very idea, angry and despairing. I don’t want “another child,” any other child. I want the babies I have now, the ones I have seen growing and bouncing inside me, the ones whose hearts I have heard galloping through the crackly speaker of my doppler, whose heads gleamed roundly on the ultrasound Wednesday night. I want you, both of you, and only you. The knowledge that I have so little control over whether you make it safely into the world wakes me up at night, or would, if I weren’t already up to go to the bathroom.
The point is, you have started to be real little people to me, more than the sum of this pregnancy. I cannot pinpoint the moment this happened, and I am not certain of the mechanism that brought it about. It is part of the mysterious alchemy of gestation, I suppose, along with nipple liquid and the fact that I threw up this morning despite being sixteen weeks along and on two separate anti-nausea medications (we’ll talk about that later, don’t think we won’t). I think it is both the most dangerous and most miraculous part, probably. More miraculous even than a cat in spats.

No fighting, and keep your sweet, bony heads off my cervix.
Love,
Your Mother