By Georgia Chehade
I used to think it took 9 months to grow a baby, but it’s actually 40 weeks divided into 3 trimesters of 13 weeks each. I tracked my baby’s progress with an app that measured growth with fruit: this week, baby is the size of an apple.
The center of a black hole is known as a singularity, a place of infinite density and zero volume—boundlessness and nothingness, like an unborn child.
My hopes for baby grew exponentially—volume expanding while density remained the same. After week 40, the fruits stopped. Baby is the size of a fully formed baby. I started counting down instead of up. Two more days and life will change forever. One more?
Then, I learned that one pregnancy, or 41 weeks, 3 days, 13 hours, and 24 minutes, does not equal a living baby, but does equal a life. When my daughter was stillborn, density disappeared, infinite volume remained.
Zero and infinity represent extremes but share properties where operations with them yield themselves, like x + ∞ = ∞. Does something remain when boundlessness becomes nothingness?
I didn’t count on anything during my second pregnancy but still fixated on numbers. I traded fruit for weekly ultrasounds, where measurements came as low percentiles. I willed my body to borrow from itself to make the doubling possible.
When my son was born and blinked into the light of chance, I reached the limits of my understanding. None, minus one, plus one somehow equals infinity.
Georgia Chehade is a multi-genre writer living in the Pacific Northwest. Her obsessions include going for walks in the woods with her toddler and writing about the way grief and joy intermingle in her life. She is working on a memoir about how the stillbirth of her first child redefined her fraught relationship with her mother. Formerly a secondary school teacher, she now facilitates community writing groups and workshops.
Image by Jul L. G. courtesy of Pexels
Beautiful essay to mark the grief and joy.
How beautifully you convey the pain, grief and hope. “When my son was born and blinked into the light of chance,” lovely.
wow
Absolutely beautiful. You had me from the start, but when you wrote about the stillbirth, my heart clenched. My 37 year old daughter recently gave birth to her first child (a son) through IVF. I held my own breath during her entire pregnancy–as I am sure she did, as well.
Thank you for this beautiful piece.
My goodness this is gorgeous. Read and reread. Exquisite.
Beautiful, thank you.
Oh, this is fantastic crafting of such hot and difficult material! I would love to read more of you.
That was beautiful!!
I, too, had a stillborn baby a long, long time ago. I, too, had exponential expectations from the moment the word “pregnant ” was part of our household.
I am so happy that you have your toddler. ❤️❤️
Heartbreaking and beautiful 💜
A beautiful, moving piece. I will look forward to reading your memoir.
Breathtaking and beautiful
So concise, so complete. Thank you!
This was so perfectly balanced, in the spiritual and scientific measure and everything in between. Thank you, Georgia.