Yesterday I learned that the ninth month of my pregnancy will be a truncated one. In two or three weeks, a C-section will be scheduled and I will give birth. The doctors agree that the 7-cm intramural uterine fibroid that I’d had surgically removed in 2017 didn’t bode well for a spontaneous birth. There could be the risk of rupture. I have been living with this possibility for some weeks now and it has helped me mentally prepare for the stillness that the procedure will perhaps demand of me. It still feels unreal, though. I am still unable to fathom that this being that I have been nursing within my body, this child of flesh and bones and a potential full spectrum of emotions will, before the end of this month, become sovereign, in that it will still depend on me for nourishment but will be capable of breathing independently. I am wrapping my head around the implications of this gesture.

I had read in an excellent feminist book, Like a Mother by Angela Garbes, that all forms of delivery must be considered natural, that the division we tend to create is a false one. I have been thinking of how there are so many ways by which to become a mother, and how prioritising one form over another limits our collective imagination. All forms should be considered legitimate, from adoption to surrogacy to IVF to C-section to spontaneous delivery. This is not to diminish the value of reproductive labour but to expand our conception of what mothering is and can be, and how the act can be made accessible to those who are reproductively challenged.