Time passed and limbs formed, eye sockets moulded, nails grew. Hey you.

The baby began to take space and pushed aside and around my organs like it was rearranging furniture. The baby was certainly moving in. I can’t say it was pleasant on the first floor, if we asked my pelvis. I kept wondering: If the baby was getting bigger, was I naturally getting smaller? If I had named the baby, was it aware of me – the person I was before they arrived? Was I even of value before they moved in?

I didn’t understand what was happening but where could I have gone to talk about it? Society felt too real to fathom my surreal state.

Once the baby’s arrival was evident to the outside world, I began to carry the smugness of pregnancy. I treaded lightly around the friends who couldn’t have children but wanted to or ignored the protruding bump around friends who weren’t sure if they wanted to become parents. And yet the metamorphosis of the body remained a trip. Certain days or weeks, I wanted to run away as much as I wanted to run towards the expansion, the grotesque, the (forever) largeness of it all. The baby told me their appetite and I listened. The baby was my future, and yet they tapped into my past like a magician. I was reminded of my childhood and every memory of parental neglect suggested to me that I may not be strong enough to pull through. Something darker was asking to be evoked.

“Becoming a mother made me monstrous – and pulled up dark and difficult memories”