Morning sickness was not something Kyndall had missed from her first pregnancy to this one. She had never lain awake in the night to ponder over the intense feeling of nausea and wish it would return. It was then, as it was now, a price to pay for the life growing inside her. But it was still horribly inconvenient to say the least.

Three months into the pregnancy she was finding it hard to keep anything down at all. Work was nearly impossible to get through without excusing herself once a period for reasons she had trouble naming. Anything could set her off, anything at all, and in a high school, even a private institution, that was a large liability. So far she was managing but she knew it was pretty much all down hill from here.

Tony was being an angel, helping her when he could. There was precious little for him to do but to pick up the slack when she needed to rest or could not bear to cook. Raw meat seemed to become her personal bane driving her to run for the bathroom just by sight. All the grocery shopping now fell to him too. She couldn’t risk it and had tried and failed once, one of the grocery store personnel looking at her like she was the devil as he mopped up the mess. Others had looked, too, judged, and her sense of vanity simply wouldn’t allow that again.

But here she was, belly swelling just a little so that only she could really tell. She was standing in front of a mirror in their room hoping to see a difference. Nearly naked, her body looked much the same but with just a little curve to her normally flat belly as if she was particularly full from a meal she’d just eaten. Kyndall remembered being as big as a house and how lucky she was to have stretch marks elude her. Something told her she might not be as lucky now that she was older.

“So you’re the one causing the fuss.” She whispered, smoothing her hands over the bump. “You could take it easy on me once in a while you know.” She looked critically at her tummy, trying to determine "Are you a boy or a girl?"

She turned left and then right and stuck out her stomach to remind her of how it would look. Tony would find it enchanting, she was sure, but she knew better. The swollen ankles, the constant backaches, and every single person in the world wanting to reach out and touch it like being pregnant automatically meant her stomach was now public property for anyone to touch. Children were tolerated with gentle patience. By the eighth month her look usually prevented adults from trying but there was always one or two brave souls.

Of course, by the eighth month she hardly felt like she “glowed” as people were so keen of telling her.

But that was still a long way off yet. One step at a time and all that. For right now it was only a bump and this perpetual feeling like she’d eaten something bad. But that would pass for the most part in a few months. She could look forward to that. She slipped her nightgown overhead and dreamed of that day.