At 34 weeks pregnant, I came home from a hospital shift and discovered that my husband had given nearly my entire maternity wardrobe to his pregnant sister. Two old T-shirts were left on the bed. When I asked where everything else had gone, Nick said, “You’re almost done being pregnant. Tara needs those clothes more.”
I was thirty years old, a nurse in Des Moines, Iowa, and expecting my first child with Nick. We had chosen the name Nora. I still had six weeks or so to go, and I was working full shifts at the hospital.
The missing clothes were not things I had stopped wearing. My maternity scrubs, comfortable trousers, leggings, blouses, cardigans, soft dresses, and nursing pajamas were gone. Even the new outfits I had bought for after delivery had disappeared.
I stood in front of the closet for a while, looking at the empty hangers. Then I went downstairs and found Nick in the kitchen making a sandwich.
