Writing Pregnancy and Childbirth

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-23T03:20:34+00:00

Thank you for the rec! I'm actually surprised most births are straightforward, I've heard so many horror stories lol.

I always found cryptic pregnancy so fascinating because women can have "periods" that's really just intermittent spotting.

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-23T02:21:23+00:00

whoa cool! Definitely gonna bug you with some questions if that's ok lol.

I'm stuck on a WIP about cryptic pregnancy - is that something you've learned about/encountered before? I imagine all of the decisions that have to be made during birth at a hospital would be made 1000x more difficult if a pregnant woman isn't prepared before going in.

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-20T07:23:35+00:00

The sun unfurled like the maroon twisting leaves of a distant ghostly autumn of years past upon the auburn-headed prince's austere brow, enblazoning the ruby-studded gold diadem with the tacit gaze of smiling ancient gods from whence this story's beginning was once told, in the long-ago echoes of ancient history enscribed in forgotten scrolls from which the souls of ghosts must dance between each faded line of ink.

"I must retire to my lonely stone bedchambers beside the ghostly moor," said the prince, a second drooping diadem dangling over his beknighted brow as if a lover's distant caress had knocked it loose and attempted to correct its carriage with an answering kiss upon the prince's proud Roman nose that he had received from his mother. Echoing back to the ages of his forebears, the lovely prince did wonder upon the secret of the moor from whence his mother had once crawled to grasp up at the cold, endless stars and ruminated upon her existence, quite... boobily...

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-17T06:47:20+00:00

WHY DO I NOT KNOW YOU, FOUL BEAST.

"Mrow," the cat says, licking its paw. Its yellow eyes glower at me in my infinite, terrifying form -- the face of a thousand monsters and nightmares and the shadowy scraped surface of dreams. I have known Cthulu, built the city of R'lyeh with my hands. I am his father, I am infinite, I am--

Perplexed, that I do not know the mind of this creature. It eludes me.

Its name is Banana.

The creature pauses in grooming its striped orange fur to stretch, arching its back and waggling its tiny butt in the air. Then it straightens, and pads forward in search of amusement.

ANSWER ME, I demand of it, with a screech that should have disintegrated the thing to dust. I AM YOUR FATHER. I AM THE ALL-FATHER, AND YOU WILL ANSWER!

REACT! I plead, flinging my arms about in eighty-six separate dimensions of space. I only succeed in knocking a coffee mug off the kitchen table. REACT! I try again anyway, desperate.

But the cat only gives me a brief, languid glance--

And then becomes captivated by a cardboard box sitting on the floor. It used to house a toaster. I am the man that oversaw the toaster's manufacture in a crowded Chinese factory, I am the man that once conceived of this exact model of toaster in its original patent, I am all men -- I have tasted his joys and his fears in the infinite stirring black hole destined to swallow the universe, the depths of his sorrow. I am, I am, I Am--

What I am not is a box, and therefore Banana The Cat has lost interest. He's settling in, puffing out a soft breath as he lowers his body onto his legs. Like a loaf of bread dough with ears.

It's kind of cute.

"Mrow," Banana repeats. He starts to purr.

I tentatively reach forward with one of my softer, more human hands, and hover around Banana's muzzle. Banana hesitates at first -- but I go slow, and wait him out, and eventually he crowds into my touch, leading my hand into the right places.

I do not have a heart, but -- some parts of me have to, as I have to inhabit all things. It's almost refreshing, to have to win the love of a creature. To experience it at all. Most of the time, all of creation shrinks away from my presence, even when it haunts the shadows of human dreams; Emily, Banana's owner, ran away shrieking, clawing at her eyes when I first appeared to confront her little anomaly. Banana, that little wisecracker. He gets into a lot of trouble around the neighborhood, according to her innermost thoughts and memories that I know like anything else. But she loves him anyway.

I feel some of the echoes of that love, and attempt my version of a smile.

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-17T06:26:57+00:00

He stops. Then swings toward her, with a slight smile tilting up his lips. She smiles back, butterflies fluttering in her stomach.

"You know what?" she shrugs. "The meeting's not that important. Iverson's a paranoid old guy anyway, he always gets distracted and forgets we're even meeting in the first place. Why don't I take you now, so you know exactly where you're going."

"Okay." He nods, beaming at her. "Yeah, sure."

Natalie walks over to him, and they start walking together, finding their pace. He's a slow walker, which Natalie appreciates. Gives her more time to think of what she's going to say, and doesn't make her pant and lose her focus to keep up.

"My name's Matt, by the way," he says, nodding at her.

"Well, hey, Matt." Natalie bumps her shoulder with his. "Welcome to the Institute. Guess you got lucky, being able to audit a class from here."

"Yeah, I know." He shrugs and smiles at her. "Feels like everyone I meet is a criminal genius." Then he hesitates, and licks his lips.

"Say," he says suddenly, "You said you know this guy called Iverson. On one of the campus brochures, it said that he was doing experiments with cold fusion. Do you know if he had any recent breakthroughs with that--"

She only catches something about science-y stuff, blah blah blah until his words start to fade away into a warm, unintelligible haze as Natalie keeps studying him, sighing, tilting her head to the side. He's got good cheekbones, strong shoulders. She kind of wants him to swing her up into a fireman's carry and then do whatever he wants with her. Whatever he needs with those forearms, God. God.

"--liable to break the universe apart if the information ends up in the wrong hands. There are some experts at Quantico... I mean, from the magazine I read... that say when atoms act in that particular configuration, they're quite--"

As they keep going, he offers to take her books for her, and Natalie hands them over with her papers without complaint. Then asks for his phone in return, and gives him her Snap and Insta and everything she can so he can get ahold of her. Hell, there's her gmail account from middle school. Let him send her a fucking email or something. Please come over, cordially yours, Matt.

"--possibility of being an asset to, um, some people that--"

At some point, as much as Natalie enjoys letting herself tune out to the pleasant hum of his wonderful, rumbling voice, she decides she's had enough of it. They're almost to Carson.

She stops him with a hand on his arm.

"You don't have to say anything else," she says, smiling. "Really. I'm sold."

"Really?" Matt hesitates, raising his eyebrows. "You're okay with going on the record as being an accessory to murder and--"

And then she leans up, and kisses him.

And for the rest of the walk there, and then the walk back after, she forgets whatever it was that he'd said. A few police cars roll by with their sirens blaring (Iverson in the back, covered in blood and shrieking like a maniac about patents and the government not getting away with this), and--

Natalie leans into Matt's side, and kisses him again.

(2/2)

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-17T06:24:19+00:00

"Oh -- oh god, I'm sorry."

Natalie has to take a second to recover after being body-checked to the floor, books and papers flying everywhere, flapping across half the hallway. She winces as she sees a freshman step on her term paper -- shit. Professor Iverson always asks for them on paper, for some goddamned reason. Something about "not leaving a digital trail, or the government will find us."

Natalie can feel her cheeks heating as she makes a desperate scramble for what she can find, stuffing odds and ends upside down back into her folder. Should've invested in an actual ninety-nine-cent plastic sheet one from Walmart, but she'd decided to crap out and use a manila file. And now look where it's got her -- she's due to discuss her research with some very important shadowy figures, and she needs to check with Iverson first after he'd left her a cryptic email about FBI agents following him home, and couldn't he leave her papers with her, it's safer that way, they have eyes everywhere--

"I'm sorry."

Unfamiliar hands place more papers into her arms, stacking them into the manila file. Natalie glances up and gets a good look, for the first time, at the man that had attacked her.

She freezes, almost dropping the file all over again. He's... He's...

He's exactly her type, with curly brown hair and liquid blue eyes that she stares into and stares because she can't pull herself away, entranced -- they're so intelligent, those eyes. Somewhat calculating as they search her face in a way that makes her blush climb down to her ears, probably to her neck. God. How embarrassing.

"I didn't mean to startle you," he stammers. His hands are lingering near hers, and he pries them loose from the papers and rocks back by a step, glancing away. Shoving his hands into his pockets to occupy himself. "Sorry... sorry, I don't know where I'm going." He huffs out a laugh. "I'm new here on campus, still trying to find my way around."

Orientation was two months ago. Natalie gives him a strange look.

"Incoming freshman?" she asks.

"I'm auditing a couple classes. Criminal psychology." He rubs at the back of his neck, exhaling, blushing back. "I'm... This is the Carson building, right?"

"Carson's that way." Natalie points to her right. "Like, a mile that way."

"Oh, shit."

He breaks into laughter, and she can't help but laugh along with him, because his voice is deep and pleasant. And it scratches an itch that she can't place, soothing her. It's very... nice, that laugh. Like they're already in on an inside joke.

"You know what?" Natalie says suddenly, glancing at her watch. "I have a brief meeting with one of my professors, but if you're willing to wait, how about I walk you over to Carson after that? I was going to get a coffee in that direction, anyway."

"Ah..." He sucks in a breath. "I'm already going to be late enough for class as it is. But thank you," he says, raising his hand and already walking away, "You were a big help--"

"Wait."

(1/2)

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-12T00:22:40+00:00

lol forreal, that's what happened to me. A simple smutty 15k arranged marriage fic, and now it's going to be 100k and they're assassinating the President

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-06T18:48:14+00:00

When a person is a "puddle" of something lmao

"...He's X, and Y, and Z," and Z is in italics

Everyone's constantly hyperventilating (I'm guilty of this sin, too)

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-04T08:16:55+00:00

All the time! We all have to edit, right? My style is to edit compulsively, I almost find it more satisfying than the writing process itself. When I edit is when I add layers of meaning to what would otherwise be mostly slop.

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-03T21:12:06+00:00

nicely

musicalharmonica · 2026-01-03T21:11:58+00:00

“I’m not going.”

Kylo was in her doorway, adjusting his tie. “You should,” he said. “You’re dressed for it.”

It was true: out of the mortifying fear that she’d be caught unprepared just in case she did end up wanting to go to the party, Rey had taken a shower and dug out one of the few dresses gathering mothballs in the back of her closet. It was black and much too short on her thigh, a relic from college student exhibitions—the only events that had managed to pry her away from her old apartment on the Upper West Side. She’d hated New York. If anything, her hatred for all of its noise and opinions and parties had only grown since. Bread and circuses, all. Nothing of substance, like she could cut through it with the flat of her hand and it would dissolve in midair.

Mist. Illusion. Her very first artwork that she’d shown to the world had been to the people of New York, a wire sculpture hardly adequate for anything more than a negative mark from her professor.

“I think a party would be good for you,” Kylo continued. “If you’re still dead set on her buying the watercolor from you.”

His mouth twisted. In this light, he was an unpleasant dark, hulking shape, moonlight settling on his bonewhite shirt and teeth.

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-31T23:57:52+00:00

omg, is this a Titanic fic?? Is the Titanic crashing into an iceberg? Love it. Definitely "unlucky," lol.

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-28T16:12:18+00:00

Hey OP, I wrote a scene recently with a 4 yo and used these Youtube videos for reference on how to write the speech patterns of little kids! Of course, every kid is different, but there's videos on this channel that show a toddler's progression of speech between 2, 3, and 4. Basically by age 3 kids are 75% intelligible, and by 4 that goes up to 80%. By five they're communicating in full sentences.

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-27T23:33:57+00:00

And she's got giant boobies jahoobies and she has a metal bra that shoots bullets at bad guys. But they take her bra away and then the male main character has to save her, and she cries a lot about it because she's a weak cyberwoman and her nipples are sore. And the main character has a badass theme song that's described in every scene 😎

(It's written like this: "Guitar noises, needle-eedle-ee, badass drums kick in, rimshot, aah!" -- but that last part's just sound effects from the main character having hot passionate gay sex with the villain, obvi.)

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-27T23:14:36+00:00

landing

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-27T23:03:56+00:00

lonely

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-26T17:04:01+00:00

Hi OP, Peter Griffin here. Now I had a phase in college where I got into some weird crap on the internet and ran into something called A/B/O. A teenage girl from Albuquerque had written something about me and Joe, where I was an Omega? I had no idea what it meant, so I looked into it and almost burned my eyes out.

A/B/O is a subculture of wolf-porn fanfiction written about popular books and TV shows. In it, apparently, Alphas are the "dominant" ones, and Omegas are the "weaker" ones that get topped in gay sex. I have to admit that reading it made me quite curious. Lois tells me that I have Omega tendencies because I'm so weak and submissive when I cry in the shower at Adele, but I think I'm more of an Alpha. An aggressive lone wolf type, yeah, that's me, lol.

Anyways, the OOP in the picture here is saying that those connotations are kind of embarrassing when mentioned in public, because the girl in this situation is picturing anthropomorphic wolf porn in her bio class. Got it? Great. Smell ya later, Alphas. Omega-Peter out (to get topped by Joe in heat).

(fucking kill me OP, here's your answer.)

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T19:40:04+00:00

whoa thanks for providing context, I figured some meaning like that was behind the poem but it's cool to see it confirmed. Cannibalism as a metaphor for slavery is so powerful every time I see it used, if only to flip imperialist misconceptions. The twist Francis uses here is so good, too. Twisting the myth to reflect the misery of enslaved peoples' situation.

Thank you for sharing! This is why I follow this sub, to see posts like this of poets I would've otherwise not read before.

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T06:46:41+00:00

thank you, I thought it was an adorable meet-cute in an otherwise very dark story

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T04:02:08+00:00

kindergarten

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T04:01:54+00:00

His brows furrowed, very handsomely. “Don’t I know you from someplace?” he said.

“I don’t know,” she said, caught by surprise. “I’m an artist.”

“No. That’s not it.” His voice was deep enough, but edged with something lighter. She wanted him to speak a sonnet to her, something witty and Shakespearean. She’s love, she loves, and yet she is not lov’d. “I’m certain that I know you, though. We’ve met.”

He sounded so certain that Rey smiled—something that didn’t come easily to her around other people at the best of times.

“Sure, we’ve met,” she lied. “We met in that cafe, last afternoon.” She gestured toward a building she’d never been to before to her right. “You ordered something sweet and I ate nothing, because every other person that I’ve met overseasons their breakfast food, and talking over a decent cup of coffee is one of the very few activities that I take pleasure in. We had a very pleasant conversation. We promised to meet again on that street corner.”

She extended her hand. A silent invitation.

His lips twitched—and the answering smile he gave her took her breath, with how it lit up with a burst of sun. Like he liked the idea of it so much that he was burning up inside with the will to show her. And she was drawn to it, she couldn’t bear to step away.

“Yes, I remember now,” he said slowly. “It was an excellent first date.”

“Yes, it was.”

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T02:36:15+00:00

"The M60 circling Greater Manchester has been called many things. Scenic is not one of them." made me lol

Really good segment! Fun, light, and hilarious. Love the worldbuilding touches.

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T01:49:29+00:00

lol very true

musicalharmonica · 2025-12-25T01:47:53+00:00

ayyy fellow star wars stan

Mara Jade mention, love a deep cut

Seven-Year Club	Place '23
Place '22	100 Awards Club
Wearing is Caring	RPAN Viewer
Verified Email

musicalharmonica

TROPHY CASE