By the end of month six, I couldn’t go anywhere without someone staring like I was about to give birth right there in the middle of the grocery store. Strangers would do that awkward half-smile and ask, “Any day now?” and I’d have to fake-laugh and go, “Still got a few months, actually.” Then their faces would drop like I just told them I was carrying an elephant.

I get it. I was huge. But I also couldn’t help feeling like everyone thought I was doing something wrong. Like I was overeating or hiding twins or lying about how far along I really was. Even my aunt Lela, who I adore, pulled me aside at a family barbecue and whispered, “Sweetheart, are you sure it’s just one in there?”

Yes, Aunt Lela. I’m sure. The ultrasounds only ever showed one little jellybean in there, kicking around like he owned the place. My doctor said I had extra fluid, but nothing dangerous. Just… big. Really big.

But then it got weird.

At my prenatal yoga class, this woman named Trina wouldn’t stop eyeing my stomach. After class, she caught up to me in the parking lot and said, “You need to get checked again. I had a friend who looked like you, and—” She stopped herself. “Just… get another scan.”

I laughed it off at first, but that night I couldn’t sleep. Her voice kept replaying in my head. I ended up calling my OB the next morning, asking for a last-minute appointment. They squeezed me in two days later.

I wish I could say that calmed my nerves. But something happened during that visit I wasn’t expecting at all.

My doctor, Dr. Mahmoud, started the scan like usual, chatting with me about heartburn and cravings. But then he got quiet. Too quiet.

He squinted at the screen, moved the wand a little, then sat back and said, “Hold on. I want to bring in a colleague just to double check something.”

My heart did that awful thump-sink thing, and I blurted out, “Is everything okay?”

He smiled, but it felt forced. “I just want to be thorough. Won’t be long.”

Ten minutes later, another doctor came in—a woman named Dr. Klara who had a calm voice and tired eyes. They stared at the screen together, murmuring stuff I couldn’t make out.

Finally, Dr. Mahmoud turned to me and said, “So… this is a bit unusual. You’re still only carrying one baby, but there’s something else we need to look into. There’s a mass—probably benign—but it’s causing the uterus to stretch more than usual.”

A mass?

I felt my throat tighten. “Like a tumor?”

“It could be a fibroid,” he said gently. “They’re pretty common. Often harmless. But the size of it, paired with the excess fluid, is what’s making your belly look farther along.”

I nodded like I understood, but honestly, I was spinning.

I left that appointment clutching a printout and an appointment slip for a specialist. I sat in the car for twenty minutes, just breathing and trying not to cry.

The specialist confirmed it a few days later—one large fibroid, non-cancerous, but big enough to push my baby boy into a weird position and balloon my bump out like I was carrying triplets.

Suddenly, everything made more sense. The tightness. The way I couldn’t catch my breath after walking up one flight of stairs. Even the occasional jabs of pain I’d written off as normal pregnancy stuff.

But here’s the twist: the fibroid was also making it hard for them to monitor the baby properly. It was blocking some angles and affecting blood flow to one side of the placenta. They wanted to keep me under weekly observation. “Just precaution,” they said, but I knew it was more than that.

That was the start of a new routine—ultrasound, check-in, stress test, repeat. My belly kept growing like I was smuggling a beach ball. I stopped going to yoga. I started avoiding the grocery store altogether.

One evening, about seven weeks before my due date, I felt this deep, throbbing cramp that wouldn’t go away. I tried drinking water, lying on my left side, even walking around the house. Nothing helped.

I ended up in the hospital that night, and it turned out I was going into early labor.

Things got blurry after that—monitors beeping, nurses talking fast, my mom rushing in with her shoes half on. They managed to stop the labor that time, but they warned me: this baby might be coming sooner than expected.

For the next few weeks, I basically lived on the couch with a body pillow and a bag of frozen peas on my lower back.