What I most remember of the summer of my pregnancy is lying in bed watching the swallows. I was nauseous, suffering weeks of morning sickness, with lethargic afternoons napping while the summer happened outside. But there were swallows nesting in the eaves above my bedroom window, and I watched them circle the treetops, then approach the house at high speed, at the last moment slowing and shooting into the tiny opening. They were making their nest and laying their eggs. We were both gestating.
Smells began to be unpleasant. I was aware of car fumes and ripe bins. Coffee tasted dirty, bananas made me gag. The supermarket was an onslaught of detergent and plastic and artificial fragrances. The only smell I found pleasant was that of the woods after rain: the fresh, earthy petrichor scent of rain on dry soil and grass.
Often I would rouse myself by evening and walk into the woods at the edge of town, along the river, up the old packhorse trails on the side of the valley, on to the moor tops. Outside and walking, I was calmed. There were swifts overhead and wagtails, dippers and herons on the river. I think I heard a nightingale. The ferns were bright and lush and I watched the sky change.
Sometimes I just went into the woods and cried. They were not tears of sorrow, but of the pain of change and of adjustment to the new ride I was on. In the lonely weeks of early pregnancy before we told people – when I didn’t look pregnant and found my sickness and preoccupation hard to explain – the natural world is where I could let it out.
I lie in the grass and watch bees visiting flowers and cobwebs in the sun. I make eye contact with deer. I pee in the undergrowth. I enjoy being an animal. Thinking can be overwhelming – this unexpected baby changes everything and the mysteries of life are happening inside my body – and I just need to be a wild beast, a physical being using my senses.
I feel seasick but the ocean is inside my body. There are swells and tides and currents, and I am a barometer. My body is a measuring instrument. I am alert to changes in air pressure and the pull of the moon. I monitor the meteorology of my health. My blood pressure is a little lower than before. I have heartburn, vertigo and muscular twinges. I imagine the shipping forecast of my pregnancy: “Fragile, increasing to tearful, occasionally horny.”
By August I began to feel my baby move: strange flickers, internal rolls. My sickness subsided. I continued to walk in the woods as summer passed its peak, increasingly encumbered and steadier on my feet. I turned slowly in bed like a cargo ship while, just above me, the swallows were still there, chicks hatched, noisy and shitting.
The next summer, this summer, the swallows have returned and I walk the same footpaths with my son strapped to my chest. He’s calmed by the familiar sounds of the rushing river, trees in the breeze, my heartbeat.
Amy Liptrot is an author. Her memoir, The Outrun, is published by Canongate
