Last night at work, I got my water down from the shelf where it's stored and started to take a drink. I try so hard to be conscientious about fluid intake. I passed out at the grocery store once during this pregnancy already, and the only thing anyone attributed it to that seemed plausible to me was dehydration. So I drink a lot of water.
As I drank my water, a woman approached me and said "You're killing your baby." And I stared at her and thought surely I had imagined it. But she said it again. She said "You're killing your baby, whenever you reach for something you're wrapping its cord around its neck and killing it. My sister killed her baby that way and you will too." My first thought was to crawl under the desk and cry, and refuse to come out until someone came and rescued me from this nightmare that is my journey to motherhood. Refuse to come out until someone agreed that this is enough, that this is enough pain, and agreed to just hand me my child alive and breathing.
I stared at the woman, and then I walked away. She was a patient. Her bed was in the hallway, in the center of the department. No matter where I went or what work I tried to do, she was there. And whenever she could catch my eye, she would start again "Don't forget. . ." and I would walk faster.