I was scanned almost every day in the lead-up to Greta’s birth. It was Christmas time, and if I couldn’t do anything about the great deep sea of the unknown, I understood, at least, how to build a wall against the tide.
I threw myself at Christmas the way other people throw themselves at work, or wine, or the gym. Tinsel as tourniquet. If I could not control what was happening inside my body, I could control the fairy lights, the wrapping paper, the small ceremonies of a four-year-old’s December. Mila’s world was about to change forever. She didn’t know that yet. I didn’t fully know it either, not the shape of it, but I knew enough to want to give her one more perfect, unbroken thing before it did. So I gave her Christmas. It was the only gift I still had full authority to give.
We saw our perinatal medicine team more than we saw our own families that summer. Every doppler was logged, cross-referenced, discussed in a language I had not asked to become fluent in but now spoke well. My induction was not a date so much as a coordinate. Something to be plotted down to the hour, contingent on a baby who was, against every projection, still holding on. Neonatal retrieval was on standby. The surgical team was on standby. I was on standby, inside my own body, and had been, for months.
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