Countdown to birth - moving day!

For eight months he has floated in his private ocean. This morning he wakes, opens his eyes, yawns and kicks vigorously several times. His umbilical cord drifts by his questing fingers. He plays with it briefly, brings his hands up to his mouth and sucks his thumb. Over his mother’s heartbeat and the gurgles of her digestive tract, he can hear her talking. Interested, he stops sucking to listen. She begins to walk, and the motion rocks him gently back to sleep.

He rests against the texture of the silken pillow of his placenta, to which he is moored by his umbilical cord like a boat to a jetty. He drinks some of his amniotic fluid, which resembles seawater. The swallowing triggers a bout of hiccups, which his mother feels as a series of small rhythmic jumping motions. The hiccups stop and he settles himself into his favourite position – bottom tucked under his mother’s ribs, back along her left side – for another nap.

A radio startles him awake. He blinks and grimaces at the new sensation, but then becomes interested in the music. He turns his head to bring his ear closer to the outside world. He notices the pressure of the book his mother is resting on her belly. He kicks at it. Her laugh comes to him as a dull, echoing rumble. She pats the spot he kicked, and entering into the spirit of the game, he kicks back. They play several rounds before he loses interest and falls asleep.

He is roused by a heavy jolt. His mother has tripped and fallen heavily on one hip. He is much too well cushioned to experience any injury, but her pain and the fear that she may have hurt him floods both their bodies with adrenaline and other stress-related hormones. He cries and kicks vigorously, a cry never heard because there is no air to make sound. As she recovers, the stress hormones ebb away, and he calms down too.

For the past few months, he has been feeling his little home tighten round him, as if his mother were hugging him. Today hugs are coming more frequently and growing stronger. The rhythmic massage continues and there is growing pressure round his head.

Suddenly that pressure is released as his head is born. The rest of his body emerges. Assaulted by the light, cold and lack of constriction, he lets out a wail, arms and legs flailing, eyes tightly shut.

His distress is short-lived. He finds himself lying on a warm, soft surface gently rising and falling beneath him. Hands are stroking and cradling him. Eyes still shut, he can hear his mother’s soothing familiar heartbeat, as well as her familiar voice, much closer and clearer than it ever was. His body relaxes. After a while he begins to blink, and finally opens his eyes, looking about him with a wide, shiny-eyed gaze. Above him, just within his limited ability to focus, is a human face. Fascinated, he struggles to keep his wandering eyes on it, frowning from his efforts. Then he realises that the voice he knows so well is coming from that face, and his own face flowers into an expression of wonder. His mother smiles down at him. "Welcome to the world, little man" she says softly.