Or, maybe, what she really wished was that she had a partner to go through all of this with her. Resting her hand on her belly, she wondered when she'd feel the baby move. Hopelessly eager, every pocket of gas, tweaked muscle, you name it – she braced and held her breath, hoping...
And wasn't that something she should share with the baby's father?
Fathers, an evil voice whispered in her mind.
Somehow she managed, with Josie's help, to get up on that torture table. Reclining on her back pushed her womb against her bladder, making her instantly homicidal.
“Oh, man, can't I pee? Please?”
“Just a few minutes,” the tech said, then explained the procedure. She hiked up her maternity shirt, a cute print from the Gap. Shopping for maternity clothing had turned out to be liberating, because the designers expected you to have breasts and a belly! Her shirt was covered with hippie swirls of pinks and turquoises, with lots of white thrown in. The panel on her maternity jeans was a pale blue, stretchy jersey added where the zipper and button normally would be.
She wanted to wear these clothes forever.
Maybe you will, if you can't lose the baby fat, that same voice said. Gah.
The cold gel made her kegels clench, helping keep in her urine but adding a sensory overload to that general region. The ultrasound wand the tech used went on the gel and soon she could see her little peanut, all bones and beating heart, floating upside down in an an enormous sea of black.
“There's the baby,” the tech said in a neutral voice, taking measurements. From the start, Laura had decided to have a low-technology birth, so this was the first ultrasound. Meeting her baby visually brought tears to her eyes, her heart swelling, and even Josie was overcome with emotion.
“Oh, Laura,” she whispered, voice choked. She squeezed her shoulder.
Her child. That womb pressing hard against all that water, making her eyes cross and her ribs ache, contained a little growing human being that was going to come out in twenty-one weeks and be her little, precious baby.
“Boy or girl?” Leave it to Josie to get to the point.
The tech laughed, obviously accustomed to the question. “First off, do you want to know?”
“Yes!” the women answered in unison.
“Then give me a few minutes to do the required measurements, and then I'll try to see. No guarantees – it's all about whether the fetus is in the right position, and what we can see with the machine.” Laura nodded and Josie seemed already to know that. The room was so tiny that Josie had to jockey for space with the tech. And it was getting warmer in here. Plus, she felt like an overstretched balloon that would burst if anyone breathed hard.
Loving warmth coursed through her. Baby. Her body, which she'd despised most of her life for its inadequacies, for letting her down time and again with men, was now ripe with purpose and growing a human being. How could she hate it right now? It was building, layer by layer, system by system, a whole 'nother human who would be part of the next generation.
She was a goddess!
Finally done with measurements, the tech stopped, frowned, and said, “Excuse me. I'll be right back.” The click of the closing door felt like a death sentence, the air sucked out of the room as Laura's entire body switched into panic mode.
“That can't be good? Why would he leave? Do you see anything?” Oh, God, no. Just no. Nothing could be wrong, right? She hadn't planned for anything to be wrong.
Josie peered at the screen. She shrugged. Non-chalant and cool, she made a questioning face and replied, “I don't see anything obvious, but I'm not an ultrasound tech.” Her hand on Laura's felt reassuring. “I'm sure it's nothing. Maybe all your talk about peeing made him need to go.”
“Don't make me laugh or I'll give you a golden shower, Josie.”
“Now you're turning me on.” The laugh did make her nearly pee, giving her a few fleeting seconds of amusement, shifting away from worry. A knock, then her midwife came in, followed by the tech.
Fuck.
“Sheri? What are you doing here. They said this was just a routine screening and I wouldn't see you.” What she wanted to say was Go away! Nothing's wrong Nothing can be wrong so go away and let me not hear what you're about to say! but something in her knew that wasn't the case. She gripped Josie's hand like she was drowning.
Josie gripped back.
Sheri's eyes were kind but guarded, wrinkles forming everywhere as she smiled. Somewhere in her sixties, she had a relaxed, natural look to her, with dark brown eyes, tanned skin and long, grey hair braided in a thick rope that stretched over her ass. Today she wore a loose, flowing jacket over a tank top and a long skirt, an outfit not unlike many in Laura's closet.
“The tech just asked me to take a quick look at something.” Her voice was smooth and practiced. Josie nodded, eyes on Laura, her professional nurse face in overdrive. They were all hiding something from Laura, and she did not like this one bit. Sheri introduced herself to Josie and they shook hands in a perfunctory way.
The midwife and tech put their heads together and murmured medical terms Laura strained to hear. She really was about to explode, her vagina starting to pulsate – and not the good kind of pulsating.
“I need to pee!” she whispered to Josie. How banal, to have such an insignificant need in the middle of what could be the worst news she'd ever heard in her life. Yet nature called.
The tech and Sheri pulled back, the tech leaving the room. Sheri's hand was warm and gentle on Laura's shoulder. “First, the baby is healthy according to our basic measurements.”
A huge, loud sigh poured out of Laura, like a yoga breath. “Thank God.”
“But it's a bit complicated.”
No!
“Right now, you're on the high end of amniotic fluid. There's a condition called polyhydramnios – it literally means excessive amniotic fluid. Your measurements show you are at the low end of having this condition, which means the fetus is just floating in all that fluid, like an overstuffed balloon.”