Week 10, Day 2. Monday. Brooklyn. Baby is the size of a prune. A productive day, a client deadline, and one sentence on the internet that stopped me in my tracks.
Calm Sunday is over. The little engine in my chest is back, but today it's pointed at the right things — work, mostly. I have a client logo redesign due Friday and I woke up at 7:14 with the kind of energy I haven't had since week 8.
Apparently this is what week 10 feels like when it's not unraveling.
I'll take it.
8:42 AM, the deadline
Coffee. Decaf. Fine. (I've been making peace with this.) Laptop open at the kitchen counter because Jake has a meeting in the actual office space and I don't feel like fighting him for the desk. The client wants something "warm but corporate," which is two words that don't belong in the same brief, but here we are.
I worked for three solid hours. Three. That hasn't happened in a month.
Around 11:15 my brain hit a wall and I needed a five-minute break, which — let's be honest — turned into a forty-minute break.
11:30 AM, the rabbit hole
I opened a tab and typed what's happening at 10 weeks pregnant just out of curiosity. I do this every couple of days. Not in a panic spiral way (anymore). More like — I just want to know who I'm carrying.
I scrolled past the usual stuff. Prune-sized, yes I know. Heart rate, organs, blah blah. I was about to close the tab.
And then I read this sentence:
Tiny fingernails are starting to form on the tips of your baby's fingers.
11:47 AM, fingernails
I read it three times.
Fingernails.
Fingernails.
Let me just sit with this for a second. The baby is — I checked — about the size of a prune. Three centimeters. Three. The fingers themselves only just separated last week, like they were webbed before that, and now there are fingernails forming on them. On something I cannot feel, I cannot see, that I'm still kind of in disbelief about most days.
It's so small.
Why does that wreck me. Why does that wreck me so much.
I just sat there at the kitchen counter with my decaf going cold and looked at my own hands. My own fingernails. The chip in the polish on my left thumb. And inside me a person I have never met is, right at this exact moment, growing fingernails.
What.
12:15 PM, telling Jake
I Slack'd him. (He's literally one room away. We do this.)
Em: jake
Em: the baby has fingernails
Em: JAKE
Jake: what
Jake: wait WHAT
Jake: already?
Em: apparently they start forming at 10 weeks
Jake: em it's a prune
Em: i KNOW
Jake: a prune. with fingernails.
Em: a fancy prune
He came out of the office two minutes later just to look at me with his eyebrows up. Then he made me a fresh decaf and went back in. He didn't say anything. He didn't have to.
3:30 PM, back to work (sort of)
I tried to focus on the logo. I really did. Warm but corporate, warm but corporate.
But I kept catching myself looking at my hands while I typed. The way my fingernails are catching the light. The half-moons at the base of each one. The fact that I can't actually remember when I learned that those are called lunulae — but I know it. It's in there.
And now somebody else's lunulae are starting to exist somewhere inside me.
Productive Em. Logo redesign. Focus.
I got two more hours of real work in before 5:30. Not bad. The brief actually started to make sense — the corporate part wants safety, the warm part wants a softer letterform. I'll send a draft tomorrow.
8:00 PM, dinner
Jake made pasta. (He's been carrying a lot of dinners lately. I notice. I haven't said it yet.) I asked him at the table:
"Did you know they have fingernails?"
"You told me, Em."
"I know. I'm just — saying it again. They have fingernails."
"Are you going to tell me every body part as it shows up this whole week?"
I thought about it.
"Yes."
He put his fork down and he laughed — really laughed, the one where his shoulders shake — and then he said "okay" and picked his fork back up.
Okay.
11:00 PM, what I'm sitting with
- The fact that something the size of a prune has fingernails
- The fact that I cried a little reading a sentence on a UK pregnancy website
- The way Jake looked at me when he came out of the office
- That I worked five productive hours today, which felt like a small miracle
- That my brain didn't spiral once. Not once. Just one quiet stop, one small wonder, one tiny fact that changed the shape of the whole day
I keep saying it to myself in bed: fingernails, fingernails, fingernails.
It's the smallest, weirdest, most extraordinary thing I have ever heard.
—
Goodnight, prune.
And goodnight, prune's tiny tiny hands.