Thirty-four weeks pregnant, and my body wasn’t mine anymore.
I turned onto my left side, then my right, sat up, lay back down, and repeated the sequence, while adjusting the pregnancy pillow. I got up to pee, an hourly occurrence, for the fourth time that night, waddled to the bathroom, and shuffled back, trying not to make the floor creak.
I hadn’t slept for more than 20 minutes.
Beside me, my husband, Ryan, let out a long, theatrical sigh and dragged a pillow over his head.
Our apartment was tiny: one bedroom, three flights up, the kind of place where even a whisper carried. There wasn’t a couch big enough for a grown adult, and the nursery corner was really just a bassinet crammed between the dresser and the closet.
I remembered when Ryan used to rub my feet during the first trimester. He’d bring me ginger tea and joke that our baby was already bossing us around.
That version of him felt like a story someone had once told me.
I remembered when Ryan used to rub my feet.
