clutching my book like a rolled newspaper. (“But what grows lives and is alive only through the feeling of its contact with other mysterious worlds.”) Deana panicked in the scanner, pressed the call button for the nurse, and came out crying. I put down my book, unopened and bent, and walked to Deana, kissed her forehead, gave her water. (“Water the earth with the tears of your joy and love those tears.”) The nurse consoled her and, once Deana was calm, sent her back in the scanner. (“Treasure this ecstasy, however senseless it may seem to men.”) A few days later, we went back to the maternal fetal diagnostic center to talk about the MRI results. “You know how I told you I’ve only been wrong once in the past thirty years?” the doctor said. We nodded. “Well, I lied. I’ve been wrong many times. This is one of those times. Your baby’s going to be fine. Big, but fine.” Deana got an automated call a day or so later telling us her C-section was scheduled for September 8th, for us to be at the hospital by 5 AM with our paperwork. “Is there any chance I’ll go into labor on my own?” Deana asked her obstetrician at the next appointment, two weeks before the 8th. “None. And in fact you don’t want to. You’ll still need a C-section no matter what, and if you do go into labor, go straight to the hospital. But you won’t. She’s not coming on her own.” Deana nodded, I nodded, and the doctor continued: “We’re almost there, kiddo. You’re almost there. I’ll see you next week. How’s the 6th? We can talk details about the C-section then. Just get some rest. You’re pregnant with a toddler. This baby might come out walking.” [Water] In the predawn hours of September 2nd, I woke to Deana banging on our bedroom wall from the bathroom, yelling at me to get up. “I’m up, I’m up,” I said. I knew. She yelled at me to come to the bathroom. The scene I recall in the bathroom is one of the many, many reasons I get confused by the sentimental cloud that hovers over much of the common discourse on pregnancy. I once wrote an essay, for example, about the birth of my first child, my son, which included a realistic, concrete description of Deana as she began her labor, and I took it to a manuscript critique group. “What is going on?” one reviewer commented on that particular scene. “Shouldn’t this be a tender moment? She seems far too grumpy.” Saying that my wife’s “water broke” that morning of the 2nd would be a
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Martin