Dear diary

It’s still more’n three months to go and I'm already feeling a little antsy. Looked at myself in the mirror yesterday, and can’t believe how fat I'm getting! I know Simon says it ain't fat, it’s his kid growing in there, but I've been eating like a horse and I don’t reckon it’s all baby!

Jayne went and got me some strawberries a few days ago, and I've been makin’ ‘em last. Just one a day. Okay, maybe two. But they seem to taste better. Guess it’s something to do with bein’ pregnant, but don’t see how. But eating one, feeling the juice run down my throat, the sweet pulp burstin’ on my tongue is like … well, it ain’t as good as making out with Simon, but almost! He’s been watching me eat ‘em, too, and that was sweet after …

Been thinkin’ about what to do when I'm too big to get under the engine housing, and the rate I’m going it ain’t gonna be long. I had an idea about talking to Jayne, seeing as he likes taking his guns apart, but somehow the thought of his big hands all over my machinery ain’t exactly … well, it kinda makes me feel a mite queasy. I did ask the Cap’n, since he fixed her up good that time when the catalyser blew, but he said he had other things to do. Captainy things. And I can see that, I really do. Hank’d be good, a’course, but he’s flying Serenity, so can’t see how he can be in two places at once neither.

I did have an idea of asking Inara, but when I got over laughing so hard at just the picture in my mind of her in one of her beautiful dresses up to her elbows in the atmo scrubber I kinda gave up on that! In the end I spoke to Freya, and she said she’d be happy to help, leastways until she got too big.

I can’t believe she’s pregnant as well – Serenity’s gonna have lots of babies before we’re through! The Cap’n keeps going on about the smell of diapers, as if he knows something we don’t, but I think that’s just Jayne. But I been showing Freya where stuff is, and she don’t mind getting her hands greasy, ‘n’ I reckon we should be okay.

Four months or so and Frey’s gonna be in the position I’m in now, and I’ll have given birth, so should be able to get back to my baby. Serenity, I mean. Zoe said she was gonna get me a cradle thing to wear on my back so’s I don’t have to leave the little one behind but I weren’t too sure about this until Simon said his daughter was gonna have engine oil for blood anyway, so it probably wasn’t a bad idea.

Simon’s been a bit quiet lately, though. He’s had me in that infirmary almost every other day, and I don’t mean that in any other sense than doing tests and stuff. Don’t seem like he’s being that way with Freya, though he does spend a lot of time talking to her. If it were anything he’d tell me.

I ain't really jealous of Freya. I mean, I know she’s just friends with Simon, and she wouldn’t do anything to hurt us. ‘Sides, she ain’t got eyes for anyone but the Cap’n, though I heard ‘em fighting a while back. Must be her hormones too! But they always make up. Sometimes they make up so loudly that Jayne goes and sleeps in the cargo bay.

Simon’s just come back, and he’s looking at me while I write this. He’s got that look in his eye. The one I don’t mind at all. It’s better than the one he’s had for a while. And he’s brought me a strawberry! Aw, gotta love him. He’s tuchbdhs … sorry, that oughta be touching the back of my leg, running his thumb up behind my knee … sorry, but this is gonna habe to wasit a wheuiol …