The longest, shortest, weirdest, most extraordinary wait of my life

Before I was pregnant I spent a lot of time imagining being pregnant. Especially in the months after our “decision” to have a baby, when we were reminded afresh that there is no such thing as a decision, only luck or chance – and even in that short window, we felt a glimmer of the magnitude of the potential rollercoaster ahead, one where life is relentlessly counted in months and cycles and losses and longing.

When it does happen, the identity shift is swift and immediate. On Friday, we eat a late dinner at Londo, drink a bottle of wine and get home giddy and laughing. On Sunday, I am pregnant. The transition takes approximately a minute, and I watch it happen in real time. Two pink lines emerge – definitive, longed for, but still shocking to the core. There in the bathroom, I go instant cold turkey on alcohol, sashimi, and my life as a person sans child.

For the first two months, I feel aggressively hungover every day. “You’re walking like you’re sick,” my colleague observes, as I stagger around the office hunched like I’m in pain, which I am.

It’s too early to tell anyone the news and so I’ve resorted to approaching each day like a grisly marathon of sorts, which commences with me slumped on the floor of the shower as I contemplate the grim prospect of standing, walking, working. I have no idea what to expect for the months ahead, so I’m saving my sick days in case it gets worse (a waste, as unbeknownst to me this is the absolute pits of it). Weirdly, I am extremely productive this way – like the sheer singlemindedness required to get through the day has turned me into some kind of dogged, steely machine.

How do women do this? I wonder repeatedly in desperation and awe. My mother, her mother, everyone’s mother. It’s so much bigger than I thought it was.

As the weeks progress, my body feels simultaneously totally out of control but also intensely purposeful. I (or rather, my brain) humbly take a back seat as something deep and primal takes over. The physicality of it all is staggering – seemingly no part of my body is left unchanged. Nausea courses through me, my sinuses swell, my ears are blocked and my own voice and breath echo weirdly around my skull. My skin is taut, itchy where it’s stretching.

At first I want to claw back some semblance of being in charge. I rub expensive body oil over my belly, I attempt to dress for my changing body. Later, I accidentally spill the entire bottle of body oil through my wash bag, which pools and then drips in a slow, greasy puddle over my drawers.

As I throw away various casualties (makeup brushes, a scrunchie, an open eye-shadow now turned to sludge) I can’t help but feel like it’s a sign. Pregnancy requires me to let go over and over again.

My friend is six weeks pregnant and she messages me: I’m hungry but I don’t feel like eating anything?

I feel a stab of recognition, and realise that, at 30 weeks, things have shifted; I am the experienced one. I feel like a veteran of pregnancy when I tell her that eating for pleasure will return. And yet – every day ahead of me is still a murky unknown. New symptoms arrive and I text another friend, now with a baby of her own: is this normal? Is this?

That’s how we do it: we tell each other how. I was prepped for the worst: unsolicited advice, strangers touching my stretching stomach and well-meaning friends sharing their birth horror stories. But none of that has really happened.

Everyone has been the opposite – the culture around pregnancy, particularly between women, reminds me of how community is supposed to feel. We take care of each other. We drop stuff in the mailbox.

And still, my body marches me toward a new version of myself. Mother, the potent identity that has both oppressed and empowered women across history. While my partner is physically unchanged, I am visibly relegated to a world of bodies, fluids, mashed food. I was expecting it, but it’s still harder than I imagined.

Writing about this feels inane, because what could possibly be added to a conversation that has been happening since the dawn of time? While these changes feel extraordinary and unique to me, they are also a symptom of the most fundamental human experience there is.

I walk around the city and see pregnancy and motherhood everywhere. The contrast makes my head spin: I am doing something huge, and I am also a speck. My world zooms inward and outward at the same time.

Now, I sit in meetings and feel the flex and kick of my baby, sometimes holding back a laugh at the sheer amazingness of it all. In the beginning, I wondered how anyone could possibly describe the experience as “magical”. Now, I already know I’ll miss this: an in-between time, one foot in each world. The longest, shortest, weirdest, most extraordinary wait of my life.

How do women do this? I wonder repeatedly in desperation and awe.