Erdrich, Louise, “The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year (Harper Collins 1995)

Whatever else I do, when it comes to pregnancy I am my physical self first, as are all of us women. We can pump gas, lift weights, head a corporation, lead nations, and tune pianos. Still, our bodies are rounded vases of skin and bones and blood that seem impossibly engineered for birth. I look down into my smooth, huge lap, feel my baby twist, and I can’t figure out how I’ll ever stretch wide enough. I fear I’ve made a ship inside a bottle. I’ll have to break. I’m not me. I feel myself becoming less a person than a place, inhabited, a foreign land (9).