Progressive Weakness

I have been thinking a great deal about the study I linked to last week, about how the timing of childbirth is dictated not by the size of the baby's head, but by the limits of the mother's metabolic ability to sustain the growth of the baby. In my 39th week of pregnancy, I feel this growing limitation keenly. My energy levels and ability to move around are decreasing. It is harder this week to climb stairs than it was last week, because my ligaments are looser and achier. Climbing up into the driver's seat of the van is also becoming a more painful, onerous process because I'm having difficulty moving my legs around. (Thank God I have no reason to mount a horse -- I couldn't do it.) Each day my stomach muscles carry more strain as the baby grows, and I wonder, "How much longer can I do this?"

Doubtless there are other fast-moving conditions out there. Perhaps someone with a growing tumor feels measurably weaker each day until surgery. Or maybe someone with a degenerative disease can notice each day the deterioration of the affected body parts. I can barely type any more right now because I'm falling asleep, also an increasingly daily phenomenon. Pregnancy is not a disease, we are always told, but it is progressively debilitating. I'm almost done, of course, and even if I go past my due date, the doctor will . But each day it gets objectively harder. He grows, and I slow. He must increase, and I must decrease.