I dreamed that I caught a bus or a tram up a steep hairpin hill, rather lovely floral setting, touristic like Japan or Switzerland and the vehicle was crowded - I only meant to go up a stop or two but there were no stops, I had  to go all the way. Trying to lift Nic's indistinct black bag off as well as my ownand managing it at the last minute.  Something about Dolly Parton, she was up there, suited the setting well. It was a university residence?

I dreamed last night that I was in an English lit class - a senior high school class - run by Neil. I had been coming to classes very erratically, I was preoccupied with other things, and actually felt like the work was boring, I couldn't concentrate, couldn't get engaged. I came to class late one day and it was after a test that I'd done with the others. I thought I wasn't going to pass because I really wasn't doing the work. I came into the classroom and was very surprised to see my test response, which I'd done as visual art, blown up very large and displayed on the walls of the classroom. It was a collage or collages of swans or flamingoes with long snaky necks, arranged in repeated images so the pattern of the lines was dominant, with a really eerie but beautiful background. I'd done them in soft colour, black and white with soft pink but they were copied only in black and white, multiple huge copies around the classroom with other students' works smaller. They still looked good in black and white. The other kids were saying the teacher had put them up because they were the best test response. I was shocked because I hadn't been a good student but it turned out I was able to do them because I was disengaged from the classwork and readings, was able to do my own thing and come in at a tangent.

I want to write, but there is something about coming here and there is nobody here, no one to read - I want to talk to someone sympatico, I suppose, where there suddenly just are things to say, and a tone or mood of speaking that makes everything all right, that is like a river going on and on, with its steady lack of intention.

The nausea seems to be lifting, day by day. Baby so much bigger in the scan today. And not bouncing, just waving arms and legs around like seaweed in current.

For a month or more it's been periodic bouts of bleeding, and trips to the doctor or hospital about twice a week for checks and scans and shots. Thank god for insurance but my cover will run out sometime.

Right now there's a thirteen week foetus, growing. It looks peaceful in the still photos. It has its ankles crossed, thin legs against the wall, and there's a shadow like the eyelash line across the eye. In the active scans, though, it's quite busy. It flexes its back sharply and jerks and bounces like a bean. It moves its thin arms up to its head and down again. An almost invisible hand goes to the mouth, as though it's sucking its thumb. Once I saw it turn its head away from the scanner and back again. Its heart beats fast, at about double the rate of mine.

Next to the amniotic sac, against a thin line of chorion that seems, in places, to fade into nothing, is a dark mass. That's the sub-chorionic bleed. It was about 6.5 x 4.5 x 2cm at last measure, and it curves around the chorion like an embrace. It's the other life I'm carrying: the life of a possible miscarriage, instead of a baby.

I take hormone tablets and I sleep a lot. If I don't remember to eat all the time, or can't summon the will, I start to retch and gag and get dizzy. Once I've eaten I retch and try not to throw up, and my insides ache as though I'm digesting a whole crocodile. I'm on leave; I don't work beyond the occasional email, don't read anything except news on the internet, I don't write and I don't think.

The other day my hip seized up and I had a couple of days of intense pain, from above my sacrum to my left knee, that made me feel sick. So I gingerly, gingerly tried to stretch things out. Scared to move the wrong way and maybe break that line of chorion. Eyes closed and focusing very closely on the muscles and the space, what felt okay and was relieving the pain, not going close to anything that might be too much. It worked and the pain's mostly gone, I'm okay now.

Around the 11 week mark, at a very risky time, I thought I was feeling the baby move. I was sure of it. Now I don't feel that, though I know everything's okay for now in there. I don't know if I was right about the feeling, but it felt like contact. Now it feels like the growing work is all necessarily unconscious, happening in inevitability and full absorption. 

There was a tree with a branch hanging low. it was sort of broken off at the end. I climbed up it and found myself in the heart of the tree. ants, dirt, view, I didn't spend very long there, maybe it was exploratory or maybe I didn't feel much but came back down again, and felt pleased that I had managed that. It seemed special. Neil and Dermot were coming along the road, and Neil invited me to that evening's events with Dermot. As we walked along I had nothing to contribute to their conversation and was silent, not knowing the writers they were talking about. I realised that the tree access was normal and expected for them, not special, and many others did it habitually and proficiently.

We got to the house where we were spending the evening and I went to the kitchen for something - I don't think I was expecting dinner but Dermot's wife (actually Derek's wife) said "Oh, you're not included in the dinner."

So I went away, to another room, which was mine - in the same house, but actually somehow in a rented flat, shared student flat. There was a piano in the room and bits of vegetables/ sushi or snacks out that I could nibble on. Nothing like 'dinner' but enough for me.