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Skip to 36 week appointment. Baby is projected to be 99%in both height and weight. Makes sense based on his parents

Eight weeks pass like seasons changing. The belly is enormous now — a taut, dark dome of stretched tribal ink and skin that sits high and heavy on her torso, the patterns distorted into abstract shapes that no longer look like the designs Jess drew. The baby moves constantly. He rolls. He kicks. He pushes his feet against the wall of her uterus hard enough that Lena can see the outline of a heel through the skin. The crew has stopped pretending not to watch. During lunch Marco eats his sandwich and watches the belly shift and says nothing and Frank says "that kid is doing construction in there" and Lena says "he's framing" and the laugh is the lunch.

The thirty-six-week appointment is on a Tuesday in late November. The clinic is the same — the fish tank, the six chairs, the reinforced table that creaks under five hundred sixty-three pounds. Lena has gained twenty-two pounds in eight weeks. The blood pressure is one-twenty-two over seventy-four. Dr. Parekh takes the ultrasound wand and the screen lights up and the baby fills it. He is no longer a shape — he is a person. The skull is solid bone. The spine is straight. The legs are long — impossibly long, folded and refolded in the compact space. The fat pads on his cheeks are visible. He is fat and tall and healthy and he is out of room.

Dr. Parekh measures. She clicks and drags and measures again. She clicks a third time. The expression on her face is not concern — it is the focused recalibration of a doctor whose patient has exceeded every chart she owns.

"The growth projection is unusual," Dr. Parekh says.

"At thirty-six weeks he's measuring above the ninety-ninth percentile in both height and weight. The estimated weight at birth is between eleven and thirteen pounds. The femur length is off the chart — he's going to be very tall."

Lena looks at the screen. The boy is tall because Lena is six-three and Aleki was six-six and the math is the math. The boy is heavy because Lena is five hundred sixty-three pounds and the body builds what the body knows. The baby is building himself out of the materials available and the materials are abundance.

"Does that change anything?" Lena says. "The delivery."

"It changes the conversation. A baby above ten pounds is macrosomic. Above twelve, we need to talk about options. Your pelvis is wide — that helps. But I won't pretend the size isn't a factor. We'll monitor weekly from here. If he keeps growing at this rate, we may schedule at thirty-nine weeks rather than waiting for labor."

Lena looks at the screen. The boy is thirty-six weeks old and he is ninety-ninth percentile in everything and his heart is beating at one-thirty-eight and January is five weeks away and the structure is holding and the structure is enormous.