Seven months.
She noticed it on a Tuesday morning in the particular way she had started noticing the weeks, not as a countdown exactly but as a growing awareness of proximity, the future becoming less abstract and more specific with every passing day.
Seven months meant the pregnancy was visibly, undeniably present in every room she entered. It meant that getting up from a seated position required a moment of consideration that it hadn't required in October. It meant that the baby had opinions about sleeping positions and expressed them with the kind of confident physicality that suggested it had inherited something from both its parents.
It also meant approximately two months remaining, depending on timing, which Eleanor reminded her of at every weekly assessment with the particular quality of a healer who was simultaneously reassured by the pregnancy's progress and deeply attentive to what could still change.
