Common House Magazine

inspired by ​​Carmen Maria Machado’s In the Dream House

Baby Fever as Diagnosis

tokophobia

noun [ U ]    MEDICAL    specialised (also tocophobia)

UK   /ˌtɒk.əˈfəʊ.bi.ə/ US   /ˌtoʊ.kəˈfoʊ.bi.ə/

an abnormal (= not normal) fear of becoming pregnant and giving birth¹

Primary is a morbid fear of childbirth in a woman, who has no previous experience of pregnancy. 

Secondary is morbid fear of childbirth developing after a traumatic obstetric event in a previous pregnancy. 

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¹Cambridge Dictionary. “Tokophobia.” @CambridgeWords, 23 Oct. 2024, dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/tokophobia#google_vignette. Accessed 1 Aug. 2025.

²Bhatia, Manjeet Singh, and Anurag Jhanjee. “Tokophobia: A Dread of Pregnancy.” Industrial Psychiatry Journal, vol. 21, no. 2, 2012, p. 158, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3830168/#sec1-1title, https://doi.org/10.4103/0972-6748.119649.

Baby Fever as Memory Palace

And suddenly—

You find yourself falling back into the plush peach carpeting of your university dorm, as its hairs envelop your body—limb after limb. They cross-stitch over your eyelids and return you to what could have been your final resting place had the cashier at Safeway not answered your mother’s cries when her water broke in the bathroom stall.

You are back now, in the fattening, vitamin-rich universe that had anointed your brachymetatarsia³ and the continental patches patterned between your inner thighs. An umbilical cord has somehow reattached itself to your thin-film stomach and as you try to stretch beyond her slick muscle and constricting veins, you feel her heartbeat echo above your scalp. Your spirit has come and gone so many times before that she has wondered how—or even if—you would ever return again. 

But, you are back now. Though the room is small, you are smaller and your naked knees kiss the delicate tissue forming above your brow—pudgy & soft—hoping to one day become the cartilage that carries the weight of your worries. When you turn once more, her outer-dome ripples to state your presence in faint proclamation. You have travelled across red sand and sea, quietly hidden beneath a flesh shield and ankara prints. On this journey, you have never been anything less than love.

You are love—without expectation and without purpose. You are simply anticipated. 

And soon, you will outgrow this room, and they will lay your host—scalpel in hand—upon a butcher-block slab and cut open an exit route fifteen centimetres across her round surface, an offer of liberation by forceps beneath a fluorescent dawn.

Then, you will break free and wake up to find yourself standing behind a mechanical cash register at a local Lammle’s Western Wear—a ten-hour shift having passed like molasses—with what could be a throatlatch or a cheekpiece, or just the reins gripped in your left hand.

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³According to the National Library of Medicine, brachymetatarsia “is a congenital malformation or developmental disorder characterised by a reduction in the length of one or more metatarsals,” which simply means that two of your toes on your right foot are misaligned and oddly formed, as if created by elves with no sense of proportion. For most of your childhood, you wonder which fairy godmother bestowed such a curse upon your body. And soon, you realise that your feet are simply a mirror of your mother's, as if she had begged God to give you a corporeal tattoo that says, “Yes, that child right there—with her toes tucked into each other like fleshy pretzels—yes, that one is mine.”

Baby Fever as Confession 

Every new mother that I have ever met believes their baby to be the most brilliant creature God has ever allowed down to earth—unwillingly, I presume.

I am not a member of that parish, nor a believer in their creed. However, I am not without manners. I have been trained in the art of suspended disbelief and know the proper parameters when it comes to the wonders of womanhood. Who am I to doubt the musings of the only beings one-step removed from the Creator?

Still, I remain tied to the opposite tree in observation as they balance their miniatures upon their hips like outfitted colostomy bags, salivating in bright pink and teal onesies. What astonishes me most is just how gruesome the ordeal had to have been before the product came to be. It is not that I am void of passion or the “woman’s ethic;” I’d like to think myself filled with them both. But it just doesn’t sit right in my mind like it should in my body. Hours, even days, heaving between contractions as the stripped-down hospital walls begin to cave in and you are full and forever overwhelmed by the entity borrowing your body. From that point on, you do not belong to you—you have relinquished the deed to your house and must deal with the ruthless tenant as your partner paces manically at your side or in the hallway or even at Saturday Night Football, as if they were the ones tasked with making life from scratch. From that point on, nothing will ever be the same. 

As I’ve confessed, I am not a believer.

Last August, my older sister (who is not actually my sister, but the daughter my father’s old friend handed to him before escaping to the American Midwest) gave birth to her first child and I went to visit. She named her Luna. We had not known that she would be the one to stay after several difficult miscarriages, yet in that moment, I could agree to her title as ọrụ ebube. Giving birth to her first child at thirty-eight had not been the cards that Ora would have dealt for herself. For over six years, she had led a career in news broadcasting in British Columbia before returning to the Prairies to launch a handful of artsy businesses. I thought of her as the most powerful and unyielding of women—unshifting in every sense of the word. And this had not changed. Yet still, growing up, it slightly conflicted me just how much she desired a child, despite everything she had accomplished.

As I’ve confessed, I am not a believer.

Luna was born in the beginning of July—a Cancer—like her mother. Her father, Thiago, was a Cuban immigrant who made mediocre music. I met him for the first time that day. They were not married yet, but hoped to bring Luna to meet his parents in Havana when she was cleared to fly, and I had a suspicion that they would elope and have an intimate ceremony beneath a banyan tree. As Ora hesitantly placed Luna’s warm body in the cradle of my arms, she began to coo in haphazard delight. At that moment, I assumed there must be something special about me—something reassuring in my spirit—to invite affection from the tiny stranger. However, I stopped short as I turned to see my sister staring, as if she had just realised that she was responsible for this—for creating this piece of pink cloud—as though Luna had only just materialised now. 

Thiago sat across from me, a monk in the moment, observing just how simple learning to love yourself can be when you are looking from the outside in.

“Isn’t she the best thing I have ever done?” Ora whispered.

I did not answer. 

As I’ve confessed, I am not sure if I am a believer.

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⁴Translates to “the miracle” in the Igbo language

Baby Fever as Parallel Universe

In another universe, I am as I am meant to be.

When I wake up in the morning—head peeking below sage sheets—there is only me and you. Your father has already left for work, leaving a bouquet of magnolia flowers in the indented space that once was his sleeping body. There is also a note—reminding me of the doctor’s orders: bedrest and nothing more. I am only to be your sanctuary—stationary, yet fulfilled. And in this universe, that is all I have ever wanted to be. After feeling each petal, the soft velvet between my fingers, I rock back and forth, using the momentum of you to carry us forward. Our feet touch the ground—each toe coiling in the soft cowhide as we stretch to begin the day together. The sun shyly peeks out from behind the sheer curtains, ready to catch your early kick in its brilliant ray, and in the background, there is the faint chirping of the neighbourhood robin in the birdhouse I built with my brothers when I was eight.

In this universe, there is a longing within me to be everything woman—from the mouths of my foremothers—and offer a part of myself to the world entirely. In this universe, I am as certain as death and taxes that you are my only desire, and I would cease to be, without your heartbeat echoing with mine. In this universe, I am willing to test fate, to watch my body be unwrapped like a gift, undressed as you wail from my loins like a chorister in Sunday’s chorus.

And when your cry rings clear, cutting through the nightfall, in this universe I harmonise with you—our voices oscillating until they simply become one.