As a matter of fact I did kiss my mother with this mouth.

First my mother was here for a week.  To those of you who have expressed worry that I swear in front of my child like I swear on this blog, I will assure you that I don't even do so in front of my mother.  In fact, I can't even think a swear word in front of her.  In fact, I can't even think one while she's in the same state.  It happens as soon as she crosses the border, and it's weird: Somewhere between impulse and speech, each "fucking hell" effortlessly morphs into "laaaand o' Goshen."  Every last "goddamn it" turns into "well, I swanny."  Before you know it I'm do-declaring and heavens-to-Betsying and tarrrrnationing with the best of 'em.  Which is all well and good when you're hunched over the butter churn in your line-dried pinafore, but it does lead to a certain undesirable incoherence of style, if "style" is the right word for what I do in my posts.

And then!  Once she'd left, I sat down to write, a glorious stream of liberated profanity flowing from my fingertips.  But not ten minutes in, my computer suddenly shut off.  The long version of the story involves rending of clothing, gnashing of teeth, and frantic shaking of the backup drive to see if I could hear my data rattling around in there.  (It sounded a lot like a handful of nickels in a coffee can.)  Also weeping, anxious dry heaving, and hesitant prodding with a stick I found in the yard.  And then slinking away for a few days, then returning for a surprise attack, the last resort: plugging the machine's power cable into a different outlet.  And success.

So that is why I haven't been around.  I've been tongue-tied, out of an insurmountable inhibition about posting when in the bosom of my family, and computerless, out of an inability to apply a complex solution like "try another plug, jackass" to the simplest of problems.

Although a riveting passage about why I haven't been writing is indeed a tough act to follow — nothing people enjoy more than reading interminable blog posts about why there haven't been blog posts — I will try.  I am rounding the bend of 24 weeks, sailing into what promises to be the most unnerving part of this pregnancy so far.

The term you hear is "cusp of viability," that time between when a baby born early might possibly survive and when he would reasonably be expected to.  Some 23-weekers survive; most don't.  At 25 weeks, depending on whose numbers you believe, about half will, give or take.  And so on; the outcomes get better as a baby's gestation lengthens.  Last time around, I told myself that if I could just make it to 30 weeks, we would be in the clear.  I almost did, and we eventually were, but little of it was easy and none of it was certain.  Nevertheless, by 28 weeks the survival rate is around 90%.

This is a scary time for me.  I didn't worry much before now, because if something did go wrong — any of the unspecified somethings a pregnant woman doesn't dare to conjure — there was little to be done, and I'm relatively good at accepting the inevitable.  But if something went wrong now, everything would be done, and anything could happen, and that is downright terrifying.

That neurosis admitted, I can say that I don't spend every minute expecting things to go wrong, at least not quite yet.  If pre-eclampsia or HELLP is in my future, well, that's where it is — not today, and probably not soon, since if it recurs in subsequent pregnancies it tends to happen later in gestation.  (Egad, I must be feeling good if "tends to" reassures me.)  Gestational diabetes, although annoying,  would only complicate an early delivery, and not cause it.  And although my placenta is currently a mere 2.5 centimeters from my cervix, that's nothing like the complete previa I had last time, "virtually certain," according to my MFM, to migrate before delivery.

So not every minute do I expect things to go wrong; just one out of every, oh, fifteen minutes or so.  I still fear the fluke, the opposite of "tends to," because that's what's always gotten me before.  The stomach ache I had Friday night scared me, leading me to stand in front of the mirror and draw imaginary lines on my torso to determine if it was, in fact, upper right quadrant pain.  (It was, squarely within the invisible dotted lines, but better the following morning, with no repeats since.)  When I wake up with swollen hands and feet, I swear off added sodium for two days just to make sure that's the culprit, a staggering sacrifice for someone who copiously salts everything, often before tasting.  (You...you don't salt your toothpaste?  Oh, my stars.)  And I think about ways we could still be blindsided by complications we don't expect, and don't even know to fear.

But the scary part is background.  We're aware of certain possibilities, and are working to reduce their likelihood, to the extent that we can.  So far, all signs have been good, although I do dread Friday's obstetrician-mandated eye exam, because I hate that better-one better-two bullshit...I mean horsefeathers.  And the baby, whom I think of as Snowball II when I'm feeling optimistic and the Widowmaker when I'm not, is moving, and growing, and staying, for the moment, precisely where he belongs.

And for the moment, I feel, too, that I am exactly where I'm supposed to be.  Which is, by cracky, a jo-fired sight better than working that butter churn like a round-shouldered motherfucking champ.