X-Files

Last night I took over the sofa and made a girl nest with a plate of cheese and ice water and a small glass of wine with ice cubes and a huge wool blanket because it was fifty degrees and raining even though it's summer and a dumb show called "Girlfriends' Guide to Divorce" which L hates and I hogged the TV all night with impunity. The Ward made me macaroni and cheese. I rolled over. I texted with my friend. I rolled over again. I felt you inside, swimming back and forth like a goldfish. I felt your fins. It's a strange feeling, having a goldfish bowl for a belly, and I put my hand there and enjoyed the faintest flickering, which has only just solidified in the last couple of days to be undeniable. The puppy dozed on the floor by the radiator, oblivious.

After a few hours L balked at being disallowed from the sofa and climbed under the blanket with me. He rubbed my sore back and hips and we put on "The X-Files," a now-vintage 1990s science fiction show that we both enjoyed. In 1995 the internet was still all in DOS. It's weird that we will both remember a time before the internet and you never will.

I rolled onto my back and made L rest his hand on my tummy, as you were in peak fish, flipping your fins.

There was a muffled blip.

"Did you feel that?" I asked L.

"No," said L, but his expression was uncertain.

We watched a bit more X-Files. It was the one where a small town in New Hampshire is secretly controlled by Satanists, and Satan himself appears in the guise of a substitute teacher to punish them for their lack of faith.

Another muffled blip.

"What about that?" I asked.

L's eyes opened wide. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah!"

Late last night I texted your honorary Aunt J, who is expecting Mini two months before we are expecting you, to tell her the news.

"That little five cell embryo," she texted back.

"I don't know if he was five cells. They just told me he was grade B/C. And today, I'm 21 weeks."

"I'm going to call him Wonder Embryo," J said.

And this morning you are still there, swimming with your little goldfish fins. Every day, a little more.