Scientists had to sign a new NDA before seeing each new ultrasound of the baby you were carrying. You weren't, and would never, see them. Nor the baby. Not during delivery. Not after. Not ever. Too many tens of billions of dollars in potential patents in every cell.
Reason enough, you thought, for the dreams in which a formless voice coming from inside and around you, a voice you knew in your dreams was the baby's, told you dark things in grammarless detail. You never told any of the scientists about the dreams, in clear breach of your own contract, not as rebellion but following the unspoken request of the voice. Its unhappiness, after all, must have been yours. Its anger at a world that made a mockery of the idea that you had chosen to sign the contract. An anger you surely hadn't let yourself feel, nonetheless yours.
But the baby's kicks were slow and deliberate, like practice, like a promise, like the sharpening of a knife.
You wondered if the bleak anticipatory joy that grew inside you as the baby did should have been fear, if the baby was shaping your feelings as it was shaping your body, if that was the meaning of love.