Nicki
I can ’ t believe today is my baby shower. My baby shower. It’s surreal but it ’ s finally happening.
I’m going to be a mother. I’m going to have a baby.
Honestly, I feel like the last decade of my life has been low-key obsessed with the question of am I going to have a baby? Can I have a baby? When should I try to have a baby? One of the best things about having a baby seems to be finally knowing, yeah, you did, and being able to let go of all that questioning shit. Letting go of all the anxious energy is way more relaxing than this lukewarm bath at dawn, but my baby will poach in here if I don’t cool down.
I stayed at my parents’ house last night, and I was looking forward to the peace of the countryside and having a double bed all to myself. But the birds’ morning chorus here is louder than our dub-step loving neighbours. I’ve been up for an hour already, since 4am, alongside the ferocious sun. I yawn as I attempt to lower myself further into the water in a fruitless attempt to cool down. Comedic squeaks join the birdsong as my puffy flesh chafes against the bath. My bump icebergs out of the thin layer of unscented soap, and I pour water over it – finding relief for three whole minutes, which is good going for eight months pregnant. I close my eyes, cradle my stomach, and practise my hypno-birthing breathing. I feel my baby rustle under my stretched skin. I watched a TikTok video that says our fingerprints are created in the womb by the mother’s amniotic fluid moving around our hands. Every twist and turn of a pregnancy is etched onto a baby’s skin – a nine month house-share between mother and child turned into a glorious art on your baby’s palms. I cried watching it, and though I’m sure it’s not scientific fact, I need some magical thinking to get me through my third trimester in a hellish heatwave. And today I need to get through my baby shower, in a hellish heatwave, in my parents’ house made entirely of glass. A baby shower I didn’t even particularly want, or ask for, but has nevertheless been bestowed on me by Charlotte.
‘It’s going to be a perfect day,’ she keeps telling me over the phone, over messages, over carrier pigeon if she gets the chance. ‘ Perfect. ’
‘Honestly, I don’t need any gifts, yeah?’ I’ve tried pleading with her. ‘Will you tell everyone that? This isn’t a baby shower , just an opportunity to see everyone.’
‘You should still have a registry. People are going to buy you gifts, no matter what you say.’
‘No registry, Charlotte.’
‘I’ve set up a John Lewis one with a few standard pieces.’
‘Charlotte!’
‘It’s going to be perfect. Perfect.’
‘You really don’t need to do this. I know things have been hard for you . . .’
‘PERFECT.’
I’m not sure I know what a perfect baby shower entails. A really short one? That’s what I thought before I got pregnant myself. I used to begrudge baby showers lasting longer than two hours, but now that today’s is mine , I’m worried people will flake or won’t stay til the end.
I bet Steffi stays for ten minutes, max, if that.
It doesn’t help that Charlotte insisted my parents’ new home is the ‘perfect’ location despite being in the middle of nowhere. They’ve retired to this converted luxury barn, miles from a train station. Their countryside vista views are less impressive than normal since this heatwave turned every surrounding field into a post-apocalyptic wasteland. I’m worried people won’t be bothered to make the journey. Regardless, Charlotte’s coming over at the crack of dawn to ‘set up’.
‘8am isn’t too early is it?’ she asked.
‘It starts at eleven. What are you setting up, Charlotte? A petting zoo? This baby shower, it’s low-key, right?’
Charlotte lives her whole life in Soprano but I don’t want anyone to think I’m going to become one of those mothers. You know. The ones who refer to themselves as ‘mama’. I’ve warned Matt the following words are banned from our baby journey – ‘mama’, ‘baby bubble’, ‘newborn bliss’, and writing Instagram posts TO the baby, even though they’re pre-verbal and can’t legally get a social media account to read it until they’re twelve. Yet, Charlotte, bless her, is determined to turn my baby shower into my worst nightmare. ‘Don’t you worry, mama,’ she’d said. ‘It’s all in hand. Relax.’
My phone buzzes from where I left it on the bathmat but I ignore it. It can’t be anyone but Charlotte this early. I’m so tired after a sweaty night in this Grand Designs clusterfuck. It was already 25 degrees when I woke up this morning. I’m so huge and uncomfortable and permanently thirsty, and it’s been too goddamn hot for too goddamn long. I can only sleep in two- to four-hour bursts, waking to down pints of cold milk, run my wrists under the cold taps, and, of course, pee. It’s on my banned phrase list, but I’m now desperate to ‘meet my baby’ just so I can cease being a pregnant narwhale.
My baby . I still can’t believe it. I got here. Matt and I got here.
The baby wakes up and my stomach twists. I meet their movements with my hand.
‘Good morning,’ I coo. ‘Are you up too? Yes, I know, it’s much too hot.’
Sweat droplets glisten on my bump and slide down to merge with the bathwater. The back side of this barn conversion is solid glass, and everyone’s going to spend today sodden with sweat. But I push that worry from my mind and focus on connecting with this baby. My baby. On the day of my baby shower. It’s happening. Somehow, Matt and I overcame everything and did it – committed to each other in this huge way. Created life. Entwined our genes and blood and hereditary diseases and squashed them together into a living, breathing, human that we’re going to ‘meet’ in a month. It’s crazy. It’s beautiful. Thank God we made it through the dark times. Thank God we could have a baby, especially with everything Charlotte’s going through. I’m lucky. So lucky.
I sing gently to my bump and feel nothing but profound bliss – mixed with a pelvic girdle pain – until the heat of my body warms the water and makes it too uncomfortable.
I struggle out of the roll-top bath, swearing, and unable to comprehend my ginormous alien bodysuit. I wrap myself in a towel and pad back to the guest bedroom, hearing my dad’s snores muffled through my parents’ bedroom door. I let the air dry my skin, humming to myself, feeling my stomach still as the baby sleeps again, wondering if I can squeeze a nap in now before Mum wakes up and activates.
Then I remember my phone buzzing earlier. I heave myself off the bed and waddle back to the bathroom to retrieve it. It must be Charlotte. And yet, I feel a novel chill as I deep squat to get it off the floor, one that dances instinctively down my arm, leaving me to pause before unlocking it.
Then I see the message and my phone clatters back to the floor, the screen cracking open on the geometric tiling.