Some thoughts on words

The language of pregnancy is slightly odd when you think about it. I don't mean the technical terms and the endless mystical abbreviations, but the everyday words. Take 'conceive' for example. 'Conceiving' a child makes it sound like you just thought something up. That which you create when you conceive something - a concept - is practically the opposite of a child, surely. A concept has no physical manifestation; a child is the most amazing physical thing that human beings can create. Why is creating LIFE described with a word that can be equally well applied to dreaming up a project, a scheme, an artwork, a joke, an argument, a sonnet, a dress design? Not that these things aren't valuable, but it's a category error somehow. I did write a poem about this a while ago in fact, but at the time a child WAS only an idea to me. Little did I know...

Or 'expecting'. Why do we 'expect' a baby like we expect a letter, or a phone call? I suppose the word contains the sense of something that SHOULD happen at some future date, but might not. Which is an accurate, although rather pessimistic, way of describing pregnancy I suppose. Maybe 'I'm having a baby' sounds too definite for some people, too much like tempting fate. Or too much like the present tense.

Weeks: 15