Written by Amil Niazi
Illustrations by Hana Iqbal

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It’s your second pregnancy. Still, something about the experience, the takeover of self by a foreign entity feels different, alarming, overwhelming. You’re still compelled to seek out information, to download an app that tells you what’s happening inside of you every week and describes your baby’s size in terms of fruit. 

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You find that your uterus contains apple seeds and raisins and oranges and bananas and—inexplicably—a head of romaine lettuce. The shapes sometimes make no sense. One week, you’ll have a pomegranate, the next, an avocado. Isn’t a pomegranate larger than an avocado? Who is holding the fruit up next to a fetus? And are they—maybe—in California where avocados get pretty big? 

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Sometimes, you skip ahead just to see what’s coming. You get to a large cantaloupe and quickly close the app. 

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They use fruit to talk about the baby. When they talk about you—if they ever talk about you—it’s about the beautiful state of womanhood you’ve entered. 

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“Wow, you’re glowing,” the app will say, followed by a sponsored link for maternity leggings that look like regular leggings but cost much more. But you don’t feel like you’re glowing. For weeks, nausea has been howling at you like a hungry wolf. Your daily ritual involves rushing to the toilet. Not to vomit but to pee. 

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You don’t vomit in the toilet anymore, not since your first pregnancy. It feels too undignified. The toilet is reserved for puking, for something you earn through alcohol, not conception. You are an adult woman carrying life. You throw up in the sink. 

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Sometimes, in the chaos of your body’s physical revolt, you vomit in the sink while you’re sitting on the toilet. You don’t glow when this is happening. But you do sweat, you often cry. You feel transformed by the act of vomiting. 

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You don't want people to think you don't want it. You've never wanted anything more.

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You sometimes think this act—purging—is the most important thing that's happening to you. That has ever happened to you. Your body is not your own. Even though you know it’s gross, you always tell your husband what you’ve just thrown up. 

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“Whole chunks of orange. Yes, all the pomegranate seeds, completely undigested.”

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You add each regurgitated food to a growing list of things you can’t eat anymore. Once you’ve seen it come up, you can’t stomach it going down. He can’t always keep track. For example, dumplings. You have to keep reminding him that you can’t eat them anymore. Even though—yes, you did once love dumplings. But your body is not your own anymore. 

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There comes a day, one that you weren’t sure would arrive, when the morning ritual is less violent. Less profound. You still wake up before the sun, before the sleeping toddler and the sleeping husband. You have to eat to quell the feeling that could threaten your new peace. 

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But at least the sink is just a sink again. A place to wash your face and look into the mirror, waiting for your reflection to glow. The app tells you that you’ve made it. 

You’re in the honeymoon period, the hallowed second trimester. At this stage, some women talk about their bodies in terms of nature and life and femininity. And you agree that it’s natural and full of life. But you hear the words in Werner Herzog’s accent. You think about how your body’s not your own. You think about the teeming, wriggling, carnality of nature, of its ability to overwhelm its surroundings, to swallow everything around it. You don’t tell anyone this is how you feel. You buy stretchy pants that are like regular pants, except they come from a different, more expensive section of the store with swollen-bellied mannequins. 

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You don’t want people to think you don’t want it. You’ve never wanted anything more. But you want the destination, not the journey. For some people, pregnancy connects them to themselves, roots them in their bodies. Every day, you feel like you slip away from yours. Like you’re always lurking just below your own feet. Your new, bigger feet. You wanted this. Badly. How dare you complain about it, you imagine the others thinking. 

This week, the app says the baby is a Belgian endive. That it’s growing a waxy layer and gulping amniotic fluid. You close the app. You consider deleting it, but worry that you will lose your tether to reality if you do. That you’ll forget that you aren’t just molting into something new, something permanently changed, that you are still yourself. You need the fruit to remind you that this is temporary.

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You decide to add endives to the list of food you can’t eat.

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Amil Niazi is an author and freelance writer. Her work has appeared in The New York Times, The Guardian, The Washington Post and more. She has a monthly column in New York Magazine’s The Cut on parenting called, “The Hard Part.” Her book, “Losing My Ambition” is slated for release spring 2025.

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