Survival has been my mode for so long that I just assumed it’s what life requires. Not that less is demanded of me now, but like a dog sniffing into the autumn wind, I’m sensing a change.

“No one can really spare a woman the process of labor,” the doula muses. Pale and dehydrated, she herself is hooked up to an IV in an overflowing labor ward, nearing the end of her own excruciating pregnancy.