*P* Being here

These are the things I would love to believe mean something:
- half-waking, trying to get comfortable in bed and thinking, "ow, boobs!".
- extreme 'right now or I'll eat your head' hunger mixed in with queasiness.
- having to get up in the night to pee.

Is my hope playing tricks on me? Meanwhile, I just continue to hum my vague little 'who knows, who knows' song.


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Sydney is so thick with 'before' memories. They are heavy on the ground, mostly still undisturbed because I have spent so little time here since 27 December 2009. The sight of kids in the school uniforms from Snacky & Snazzy's old school, the shops where I bought ordinary, inconsequential things, the road that led to our house - all of these things can't fade into the background until my brain has trotted through its 'last time I saw x, Haloumi was here' routine.

Today, I returned to one of my favorite Sydney spots - the women's baths at Coogee:


Image from here.

The last time I was there, my haloumi-filled belly stuck out obscenely between my bikini top and bottom. I greeted other swimmers with my stretchmarks. That belly was remarkable - everyone remarked on it, speculated on Haloumi's gender and wished me well.

I first swam in this rockpool nearly ten years ago, when I was doing a temporary work placement in Sydney. And when I discovered it, I thought (or kind of *knew*) that would swim here when I was pregnant. Even in the pre-El Prima days, I was so hungry to have a baby, that that moment in the rockpool was one of the things that propelled me most strongly to move to Sydney.

I had so many unpregnant swims here over the years - some involving mildly athletic laps, some snorkelling and marvelling at the starfish, shellfish and once even an octopus under the surface, some splashy and noisy with El Prima's girls, some quiet and contemplative with no one else in the water. And so many beautiful pregnant swims with Haloumi - contemplating the sea snails and feeling her kick almost in time with me.

I've seen it in a storm, with the waves crashing over the rock wall, I've seen the surface sparkle with a beating sun, and I've eyed off the greeny-blue depths when it was far too cold to swim.

And now, who knows? I'm egging on this tiny potential, hoping it is in the right spot, hoping it isn't ectopic, molar, blighted, all kinds of words for 'lost already'. To swim there today felt like an act of love - towards my tentative self and this little question-mark of cells.