Carolyn Pierce saw that one advantage she'd lost by going off the Pill was that they had regulated her periods strictly by the calendar. Now, the calendar told her that her period was due. Her body didn't particularly agree. Well, better safe than sorry. She inserted a Tampax and went out of the bathroom in her nightgown. When she took out the Tampax that morning, it was dry. She repeated the process the next night with the same result. Well, this had happened before, although this time a pregnancy was something she wanted. It was something Bill wanted, too, and -- since it was far from certain -- she shouldn't tell him of her suspicions. It might get his hopes up. Still, messy sheets were a small risk and continuation of sex was a great reward. She didn't insert the Tampax, and she brought her hairbrush out with her when she came out of the bathroom in only her robe and slippers.

"Want to brush my hair tonight?" Bill had the quirk of loving to brush her hair. It was one of many weirdnesses about him, and perhaps the most pleasant.

"Delighted." And he brushed it thoroughly, until there was no snarl left. She adjusted the air conditioner before they went to bed. A slightly warmer room would be more comfortable tonight. She pulled the sheet down to the foot of the bed, dropped her robe, and came to bed naked.

"Darling," he said. Mr. Foreplay was notably present that night. She flew twice before she asked for him, and once more at a reasonably mutual climax.

"I've missed you," he said when they were in their final spoon with the lamp turned off. He spoke as if the separation had been a continent, rather than her nightie.

"Sorry." It was the closest she would ever come to telling him that the precautions hadn't been necessary.

"Don't be." Bill could be awfully understanding at times. He could be totally unsympathetic at other times. The understanding times were more commonly post-coital.

The next month, when the calendar told her she needed a Tampax and her body disagreed, she went with her body. A few (dry) days later, she called her ob-gyn.

"Dr. Gabel's office."

"I was a patient of the doctor once before. I think I might be pregnant, and want an appointment."

"Yes ma'am, and your name."

"I was Carolyn Nolan for my last appointment, but I'm Carolyn Pierce now." She spelled both names. The nurse, or receptionist, gave her an appointment on a Wednesday.

She went in, took a jar to the bathroom and returned it nearly full of her urine, sat and waited. Then she was taken to an examining room and handed a gown. She stripped and put on the (totally inadequate) gown. She waited some more. Dr. Gabel finally came in. He gave her a thorough physical, although not gynecological, examination.

"Now, you say you think you might be pregnant. We'll send the sample to a lab to get more certain results, but why do you think so?"

"I've missed two periods."

"Ever happen before?" Which wasn't a particularly precise question. In her case, its ambiguity split on the facts.

"One period, yes. Two, no."

"Any great weight change over the last two months."

"Four pounds." And, if she were pregnant, should she stick to her diet?

"We gave you a prescription for birth-control pills. Have you been taking them?"

"I went off them four months ago."

"Why? Were they unsatisfactory?"

"We decided to have a baby."

"Very good." He gestured her up on the examining table. This time, the examination was quite intimately gynecological. He stepped back and gestured for her to extricate herself from the stirrups and sit up.

"Well, we have a sample that we'll send to the lab. That will give us more certain findings. Everything I've seen, however, and everything you've told me is consistent with your being pregnant. Let's assume now that you are. Do you have any questions?"

No more than two million, but he wasn't going to answer that many, and she couldn't really articulate them, anyway, but -- if she could ask it -- there was one that applied to tonight.

"Well, I wonder what changes I'll have to make in relations with my husband." Carolyn, brave Carolyn, frank Carolyn, afraid to say "sex" to a doctor -- one who had, after all, prescribed her contraceptive pills.

"Well, that's a simple question, but I'm going to use it as an opportunity for a long answer. You're the end of a million-year evolutionary string. That's a direct female line with 50,00 ancestors. Some were tall, some short; some were strong, some weak; some were pretty, some ugly. They had only one thing in common. Every single one of them managed to deliver a baby who survived.

"Things can go wrong, and we'll take reasonable precautions that they don't in your case, but you have that record on your side. Don't worry too much. Your baby is, at this moment, the size of a pea. It's floating in a sac of water. This sac, not particularly fragile in itself, is surrounded by a large mass of muscle, the uterus. In nine months, the muscle will have to stretch out to contain a much greater volume, but -- even stretched out -- it will be a strong wall of muscle. Right now, it's incredibly thick and strong. And it is within you, surrounded by the ribs, abdominal muscles, and pelvic floor.

"Anything physical which can hurt your baby will hurt you first. As your pregnancy advances, some sexual activity will become physically uncomfortable for you. At that time, abandon that activity. Until then, it's perfectly safe for your fetus. Now, there are a few exceptions to this."

"What?" He seemed to want that question. He'd been watching her as he spoke, judging how much of what he said was penetrating.

"The first one is risk. If you make love on top of a step ladder fifty times without discomfort and fall off the fifty-first time, the fall will hurt you, and is likely to hurt your child.

"The second one is experimentation. If you use the woman-on-top position once a week, one of these days it will cause you discomfort. If you stop then, it won't endanger your fetus. If you try the experiment in your ninth month, I'll guarantee that it will cause you discomfort. It might well endanger your fetus, too. Use a little common sense about experimentation. Some time, you might find the rear-entry position the only one that's the least bit comfortable.

"These two exceptions aren't common risks, really. Most people have common sense about such things. Still, doctors like to have advised their patients instead of assuming that they know things. The third one is more serious. All that wrapping and protection doesn't protect against chemicals. If you have something in your bloodstream, it will reach your fetus. I'd advise cutting back on alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine. If you use something stronger, you should cut it right out."

"What's a safe level." She was thinking of her cigarettes.

"There really isn't one. I've seen babies born with an addiction to cocaine. You don't see born alcoholics, but fetal alcohol syndrome is a serious diagnostic condition of children. If you're a social drinker, 'No thanks, I'm pregnant,' almost always works."

"So much to worry about." And he told her not to worry.

"Well, yes. And, as I said, we'll take reasonable precautions. But did you drive here?"

"Yes."

"Well, we lose one hell of a lot more women to traffic accidents than we do to childbirth and the complications of pregnancy these days. Let me worry about the complications. Come back at reasonable intervals -- there is a set schedule, and she'll give you the next appointment when you leave. Really, though, do you remember what my waiting room looked like when you came through?"

"Yes." It had been crowded with women, many of them obviously pregnant.

"Well, You'd see the same number, but different individuals if you came back in two hours or tomorrow. It's been like that for most of the last two decades. Some of the tests we'll do and some of the precautions we'll take is to detect or avoid problems I haven't seen in all that time.

"And, Of course, we don't really know yet. Once again, other things can cause amenstruation. Some of them are serious. About that, though..."

"Yes." The man seldom stopped talking. When he did, the silence seemed portentous.

"If you're not home when the office calls with your results, the message on your machine will be to please call the office. Some of our patients want to keep their pregnancy secret, some of them only for a day or two. You're our patient, and you deserve confidentiality. So don't assume anything from that message; it's the same whatever the lab results."

In the event, however, she was home when the office called.

"Pierce residence." If it was good enough for Gladys, why not? "Carolyn Pierce speaking."

"Mrs. Pierce? This is Dr, Gabel's office."

"Yes. Do you have the results?"

"Yes, ma'am you're pregnant. Shall we confirm the tentative appointment?"

"Thank you. Please do." Her tone must have conveyed her feelings.

"Congratulations." When they got off the phone, she almost called Bill, but the news deserved more ceremony than that. She went shopping, despite having tentatively scheduled dinner out that night. Lamb chops? it was really the season. On the other hand, eating someone's baby, even an ewe's seemed to spoil the occasion. She got a pot roast, and cooked it slowly. Sundaes for dessert -- comfortable as the apartment, aside from her office, was -- it was beastly hot out, and ice cream was appropriate. While the roast was cooking, she took her typewriter into the bedroom and wrote a chapter draft on her dissertation sitting at her dresser. The research wasn't finished, but she had some tentative conclusions. Besides, today was not the day to go out on more research.

When Bill got home, her welcome-home kiss lasted longer than usual.

"Would you mind eating in tonight?"

He took a deep sniff. "Eating that? Yes, no, I mean fine." His agreement was clear if his wording wasn't. He shed his suit coat and they had an even longer kiss. After dinner, she joined him on the sofa to watch TV. They cuddled, and she rose when an ending commercial came on.

"I'm making an early night of it," she told him. "Want to brush my hair?" He switched off the set, followed her bathroom time with his, and came out in a robe to brush her hair. He didn't have much use for bath robes in warm weather. She suspected this one was intended to conceal an erection. He brushed her hair thoroughly, and followed her to bed.

"Is this a special day?" he asked. She hadn't been particularly subtle about it, and it was nice of Bill to wait this long to ask.

"Well, the doctor says I'm pregnant."

"Darling!" He moved to kiss her stomach, he began up near the ribs where he was near a good deal of partially-digested pot roast -- and far from any fetus. It took her a moment to figure out that he was kissing their future baby. He went around a circle though, and ended right above her delta. That was closer to where her uterus was now. He kissed, if with a closed mouth, her delta while climbing between her legs.

Then her began on the insides of her thighs. She'd been aroused from the beginning of her planning of tonight. With these kisses, her arousal spiraled higher. She held herself back, though; she knew where his lips were headed. She was close when he parted her lips with his fingers. She could feel his breath on her cleft. When he licked up her cleft the sensation was delightful.

And when he licked her cleft, she flew. Quite involuntarily, she rose against his mouth. He went back to kissing her thigh, the top of it this time, when she relaxed. He worked back to her clit. This time he was sucking it gently when she flew.

After the third time, she pulled him up her body.

"Oh, Carolyn." He drove into her, spread her, filled her. Then he stopped, his face was serious above hers. "Is this safe?" Huh? He was worrying about the baby.

"Perfectly safe." The doctor had said that anything dangerous would make her feel uncomfortable, and this felt glorious. He started a slow, steady, forceful pace. He filled her each time, rubbed along the top of her tunnel as he withdrew, and gazed into her eyes as she got close again. When she flew, he turned them both.

"Oh, Carolyn." He made one more stroke with them lying on their sides. Then, "Carolyn!" He pushed harder against her and throbbed within her. "Gah... Love." They lay together, breathing raggedly. The parts which weren't pressed against Bill cooled slowly.

"You okay?" he asked.

"Mostly." The weight on her right thigh was putting the leg to sleep. "Can we get into another position?"

"Sure." He moved off her, turned off the lamp, and reached down to the foot of the bed. "Want the sheet?"

"Yeah." He brought it up and tucked it around her when they were in the spoon. The gesture was somehow as cherishing as it was practical. Was this a special response to the news, or was it an omen? Bill had always been a bit protective, sometimes overly protective for an independent woman. Would he be a cherishing husband for the length of her pregnancy? Did she want that? Well she was entitled to pickles and ice cream when the urge hit her -- she couldn't imagine the urge hitting her -- she'd willingly trade that for the sort of sex she'd got tonight.

She hugged Bill's arm as she drifted off to sleep.