Breaking Dawn Chapter 07 – The Mystical Pregnancy

Previously: Insta-pregnancy symptoms.
—

Catherine: Yet another chapter begins with Bella’s fake psychic dreams. I’m not gonna recap this one and waste your precious time. Just imagine heavy-handed descriptions about dark “ruby eyes” and another vampire child and you’ve got the gist of it. Or just read the rest of these recaps and then go back and imagine that Bella had a dream that vaguely predicted the plot of the story for reasons that are never explained and never come up again.

You done? Good.

So she wakes up and Edward isn’t there. Apparently the room is also “steamy hot,” which sounds like a description that a toddler would give. Edward has left her a note saying that he only wanted to screw her and he’s done now—oh no, sorry, apparently the note says that he went out to hunt and he’ll be back soon and more unnecessary smoopy stuff about how he luvs her. Gross.

Kirsti: Honestly, the grossest part for me is that it’s addressed to “Mrs. Cullen.” I know they’re on their honeymoon blah blah whatever, but it’s like she’s completely lost her entire identity (what little identity she had, anyway) now that Edward’s put a ring on it.

Catherine: It’s around 1 am, but Bella can’t spend five minutes alone without Edward so she gets up and goes to find something to eat. And she decides to make fried chicken? At 1 in the morning. This may the most relateable thing she has ever done. Also she eats it out of the pan and burns her mouth in the process. She’s seriously me right now. (K: Me too. Except that I’d make a grilled cheese sandwich at 1am.) (M: Bowl of cereal for me always.) Except she suddenly realizes that something is off about the chicken and the smell is making her want to barf.

Wow. Like. What could be happening here?! What is this alluding to?? I’m an idiot and I can understand foreshadowing even when it’s being telegraphed so hard that it feels like it’s being shoved down my throat.

Annie: 

Catherine: Me too, gif baby.

Bella falls asleep again and wakes up to Edward returning from devastating the local ecosystem. (M: A+) He realizes that she’s sweating a gross amount. She suddenly hops up and borks up all the fried chicken she didn’t eat in the bathroom. Bella assumes that she has food poisoning but right after throwing up she says she feels a lot better and that she’s hungry again. Lol, okay girl. Food poisoning.

Edward cooks her some eggs while they watch CNN together. Because they’re so worldly, I guess?

“I got bored with the news and twisted around to kiss him. Just like this morning, a sharp pain hit my stomach when I moved. I lurched away from him, my hand tight over my mouth.”

Yeah. She kisses him and it makes her throw up. Maybe the best part of the whole series right here, guys. Glad I got to recap it.

K: LOLOLOLOLOL. BEST.

Catherine: Unintentional brilliance.

Edward suggests that they go back to Rio so they can see a doctor but Bella doesn’t like going to the doctor because remember how she has that fear of blood that she had in the first book but it went away for the whole middle of the series? Oh wait, she mentions that doctors mean needles. So I guess it’s a fear of needles now. That how phobias work. Good writing, Stephenie.

Bella goes into her suitcase to find some Pepto-Bismol and comes across something else that she describes as a “small blue box” that makes her count. Edward is freaking out and keeps asking her what’s wrong and why she’s suddenly doing math. Horrified, she tells him that her period is 5 days late and she thinks she might be vampregnant.

“The dreams.” I mumbled to myself in a flat voice. “Sleeping so much. The crying. All that food.”

Alright, let’s investigate this.

Bella is 5 days late. She’s fucking a vampire. Yeah, 5 days. But also, VAMPIRE. I feel like I wouldn’t jump straight to pregnant here. Am I the only one?

K: I mean, my brain ALWAYS jumps straight to pregnant when I’m like 1 day late and it’s been that way since I was 12. Even if it’s physically impossible, my brain always goes “Okay but that one time, God decided to get a girl pregnant by magic, sooooooooo?????” 

Annie: I was almost two weeks late and had all the symptoms, yet my first thought was ‘Oh, man. I’m really stressed with these uni finals and life, maybe I should take a meditation class?’. Even though that was probably 50% denial, I certainly wasn’t ‘OMG, I MUST BE PREGNANT!’ But this is Stephenie’s universe where werewolves wear bags of pants strapped to their legs and the vampires sparkle in the sun, so…

Mari: I can’t rightly tell you what the hell I would be thinking if I were fucking a vampire. Sorry, can’t. 

I WILL say that a offshoot of purity culture is of course “if you have sex you will get pregnant or die.” I can imagine that she jumped there because what else does sex do? IT GETS YOU PREGNANT.

Catherine: There are lots of reasons your period can be late or even not come at all. Especially when you’re 18 years old and you’ve been under a mountain of stress from killer vampires and weddings and shit. Even though Bella notes that she has “never been late a day in her life” she’s only had a few years of periods to test that. I mean, she’s only 18.

Also, in the normal human world, 17 days (the amount of time that has passed since their wedding night) isn’t nearly enough time to tell that you’re pregnant. (A: Has it been that long? Ugh.) (C: I know, seems longer.) And also also, she has no evidence what so ever that he can get her pregnant and every evidence that he can’t. BECAUSE HE’S FUCKING DEAD! HIS JIZZ IS NON-OPERATIONAL.

But shit, we already know I’m wrong. So fuck me. I just think it’s weird that she jumped to that conclusion so quickly. Especially since she’s usually such a fucking idiot.

K: I don’t want to defend Bella Swan because it makes me feel icky but SOME OF US ARE ANXIOUS AND PARANOID AND ALWAYS JUMP TO THE WORST POSSIBLE CONCLUSION… (Seriously, if my brain could stop assuming that people are late because they got killed in a car accident, that’d be AWESOME.)

Catherine: Lol, Bella being capable of figuring things out. Hilar. 

Bella gets up and looks in the mirror and to her credit (I guess) she does think that this makes no sense and she shouldn’t be able to tell that she’s pregnant already.

“And I most definitely would not have a small but defined bump sticking out between my hips.”

Yeah, she already has that Heidi Klum baby bump going. I guess science just has to fuck off for this book. Sorry, science.

K: Yeah, but it’s a MAAAAAAAAAGIC baby, Catherine. Science need not apply. Also, everything about this smacks of “don’t have sex until you’re married because you’ll get insta-pregnant, teens” and it’s gross.

Annie: Forever the motto for this series, ladies and gents:

Mari: But the ring is supposed to protect her what is happening with science right now?

Catherine: Bella gets to the whole “how can a vampire get me preggers” thing and in a looooong explanation that lasts pages and has many run-on sentences (and many asides that contain useless information) she remembers when she was doing research after she began to suspect that Edward was a vampire all those many, many months ago.

She remembers reading about the mythical Incubus and how their whole thing is to impregnate unsuspecting ladies. Okay but? Edward is a vampire. Not an Incubus. Those are two different things.

An Incubus is supposed to be a former angel that was so thirsty that God cast him out of Heaven because he needed to just chill. Vampires are former humans who are turned into vampires. There hasn’t been any indication that Edward is anything but a vampire up until this point in the series.

K: I think we’re supposed to think that all the reports of Incubi and Succubi over the years have actually just been vampires?? Except that makes no sense, because we get page after page later on telling us that there’s never been a human/vampire pregnancy before, but here Bella’s all “INCUBI GOT WOMEN PREGNANT ALL THE TIME, THEY WERE CLEARLY VAMPIRES”. Like…WTF, Steph??

Annie: Outlining plots and chapters is hard, guys, okay? You have to plan ahead and do research and stuff. Plus, sex is for procreating. Not enjoying. You cannot have sex to have sex, you may only have sex to make babies. That’s just how sex works.

Catherine: Is this just evidence that Meyer wanted Edward to get Bella pregnant and had to come up with some slapdash explanation for how it could possibly happen so she Googled “vampire pregnancy” and came across Incubi on like, the 3rd page? Yes. I submit that head canon to the court. (K: Seconded.) (A: Thirded.)

Mari: Basically, this is Stephenie literally saying, “these other mythical creatures do it!” Thas it. That’s all she’s got and that’s all she needs and THAS IT.

Catherine: Also, Incubi look like this:

So, not exactly sparkling pinnacles of manhood or whatever Edward has most recently been described as.

But! In googling them myself just now I came across this tidbit:

“Other clues were even more obvious—the Incubus often proved to be a nasty lover, with a sexual organ that was painfully large, freezing cold, made of iron, or even double-pronged.”

SO. MAYBE MEYER DID PLAN THIS??? Literally two of those options fit Edward. Explain that away.

Annie: Now I’m trying to picture what Edward’s vampenis looks like. THANKS, CATHERINE.

Catherine: If I have to suffer so do you! Anyway, back to the story.

Bella starts trying to rationalize how this could possibly happen. She thinks about Esme and Rosalie, who’ve been fucking their husbands like sailors on leave, obviously (but not Alice for some reason?) (K: Alice and Jasper aren’t married, from memory?? So no sexytimes for them.) (C: Oh right, makes PERFECT sense.)  and they’ve never gotten pregnant.

“Except that…well, there was a difference. Of course Rosalie could not conceive a child, because she was frozen in that state in which she passed from human to inhuman. Totally unchanging. And human women’s bodies had to change to bear children. The constant change of a monthly cycle for one thing, and then the bigger changes needed to accommodate a growing child. Rosalie’s body couldn’t change. But mine could. Mine did.”

An adult woman wrote this. (K: Gross.)

“And human men—well, they pretty much stayed the same from puberty to death. I remembered a random bit of trivia, gleaned from who knows where: Charlie Chaplin was in his seventies when he fathered his youngest child.”

Congrats to everyone who was waiting for her to inexplicably throw in a Charlie Chaplin reference into this vampire young adult novel. That’s… you’re weirdos, but you were right this time so congrats.

“Of course, how would anyone know if vampire men could father children, when their partners were not able? What vampire on earth would have the restraint necessary to test the theory with a human woman? Or the inclination? I could think of only one.”

Okay, 1: He didn’t have the inclination. He didn’t know this was gonna happen. You have successfully trapped him, friend. He’s got money, too, so good job.

2. Oh wow you really have taken this special snowflake thing to stunning heights in this book. She thinks Edward is the ONLY vampire who could fall in love and have sex with a human woman without killing her. Ever. She thinks he’s the ONLY one capable of this kind of restraint. Wow.

K: Also, you literally just said like two pages ago that Incubi were able to father children and you theorised that Incubi are vampires. GIRL. THE FUCK.

Annie: This feels like a fever dream. How convenient is it that Bella is suddenly an expert on supernatural breeding? That she even knows how pregnancy works for humans, let alone how it works when you’re an Incubus? I call bullshit. Meyer is just trying to write herself out of the plot hole she’s dug.

Mari: I’m still stuck up in “men are always the same” BS up there. I just wish she’d shut up and get on with her stupid pregnancy. Honestly, the people who made it this far without questioning any of your bullshit are probably just going to accept vamp pregnancy anyway.

Catherine: EXACTLY. 

Bella is obviously in shock. She wants to go to Edward but she can’t even move. But then THEN the pro-life commercial begins, so it’s okay.

“What happened to change everything was that a soft little nudge bumped my hand—from inside my body.”

My God. My fucking God. I would kill that thing with a flamethrower. She’s been pregnant for two weeks and it’s NUDGING her? (A: Excuse me, that was an in-utero fist bump, friend.) NOPE.  FUCK that. That is fucked. NO ONE would think that was cute. Babies change your brain, Meyer but this isn’t that. This reads more like she’s infected with an alien parasite that is turning her into a host.

Wait….

K: This is about the point where this book started reminding me of an episode of The X-Files. You know, someone gets infected by an alien parasite and you see it moving under their skin shortly before they go insane and kill everyone? Yeah. That. 

Mari: Hey and that reminds ME of that this is truly a great example of that terrible trope, the mystical pregnancy. Check out the video here or this video by Feminist Frequency:

STOP PUNISHING WOMEN (IN AND OUT OF FICTION) FOR THEIR SEXUALITY. Thank you.

Catherine: Welp. This is all my worst fucking nightmare. Thanks for the examples, guys.

Edward’s cell phone starts ringing and he’s too catatonic to do anything about it so Bella comes over and answers it for him. It’s Alice, who has obviously had some type of vision about what’s going on. She doesn’t say what it is, but she sounds nervous and Bella worries that if Alice had seen her with a “green-eyed, angel-faced child” she would have said something.

Probably because it’s not so much ‘green-eyed’ as it is ‘green-skinned’ and not so much ‘angel-faced’ as it is ‘a reptilian creature from the slime planet currently orbiting Alpha Centuri A’.

But let’s give her the benefit of the doubt here. At least she’s starting to freak out a little b–

“While I waited through the split second it took for Carlisle to speak, the vision I’d imagined for Alice danced behind my lids. A tiny, beautiful little baby, even more beautiful than the boy in my dream—a tiny Edward in my arms. Warmth shot through my veins, chasing the ice away.”

Oh. Never mind. She’s back to cult brain.

K: -________-

Annie: 

Catherine: Bella tells Carlisle that she thinks she might be pregnant. Carlisle doesn’t immediately call her a moron, because I guess he’s too nice or something. Instead he starts asking her questions about when her last period was and what she’s feeling and other doctor stuff. When she gets to the part where the alien moved inside of her Edward finally wakes the fuck up and asks to talk to Carlisle. (M: Eff you. Bella should be speaking to the doctor…) He talks to him for a bit and then when he hangs up Bella asks him what Carlisle said.

Edward tells her that Carlisle thinks that she’s pregnant.

“The words sent a warm shiver down my spine. The little nudger fluttered inside me.”

Lol. This message is so fucking gross. I hate everything in the world right now. Fuck.

So Edward tells her that they are going home and after a section break Edward is booking flights (on the phone? In 2008?) and packing. Also apparently he is exuding “violent energy” so he’s totally ready to be a dad. This is a great time to bring a child into your lives. Consider no other perfectly valid options, please.

Bella goes into the kitchen and stares out at the beach and thinks about how she doesn’t want to leave.

“Someone nudged me.
“I know,” I said, “I don’t want to leave either.”
I stared out the window for a moment, but the nudger didn’t respond.”

Yes, she has now progressed to talking to the baby and she has given it a cutsey nickname. I’m packing too so I can get the fuck out of this book.

K: Same. Also, The Nudger sounds like a street urchin from a Dickens book.

Annie: And I’m sorry. Is she having two-way communication with this vampbaby? She talks and it responds by nudging her? Can someone please, please explain to SMeyer this isn’t how it works?

Mari: I think we are beyond that now.

Catherine: Bella is confused about why Edward is so angry. She doesn’t think anything is wrong here. Yeah, it’s surprising and astonishing but not wrong, she thinks, because she is a fucking idiot.

How great would it be if this thing turned out to be a tapeworm instead? Like, she’s naming it, talking to it and then she goes to an actual human doctor and it’s a fucking tapeworm? That would be worth the $20 of my parents’ money that I probably paid for this book ten years ago.

K: I just remembered that whole genderbent version of Twilight that SMeyer published for the 10th anniversary and that made me realise that LITERALLY NOTHING THAT HAPPENS IN THIS BOOK COULD HAPPEN IN A GENDERBENT VERSION AND NOW I’M MAD BECAUSE THIS BOOK EXISTS.

Catherine: Everything just ends up back at that. This is a flow chart where we always end up mad that this book exists. Bella assumes that Edward is only worried for the baby, because again, idiot.

“He must be so worried about the baby. I hadn’t gotten around to freaking out yet. My brain worked slower than his—it was still stuck marveling over the picture it had conjured up before: the tiny child with Edward’s eyes—green, as his had been when he was human—lying fair and beautiful in my arms. I hoped he would have Edward’s face exactly, with no interference from mine.”

Everyone brace yourselves, because it’s about to get so much worse.

Annie: Not possible… Right? Please? 

Mari: In that paragraph alone: Bella is slower, uglier, and had inferior DNA. THIS IS SUCH A HAPPY TIME.

Catherine: Without recapping the absolute drippy nonsense of Bella falling head over heels in love with a baby that she just fucking met an hour ago, she thinks some things. I’m gonna list them. Because lists help quell my outlet-less rage.

1. She loves this baby. All the sudden she super loves it wow. She loves something as much as she loves Edward? Wow that’s cray.
2. She finally understands why Rosalie was so resentful over having her ability to have children ripped away from her because Bella’s been pregnant for like… maybe even an hour and a half now and it’s so WOW she loves babies whoa.
3. Now that she’s pregnant she decided she wants kids. And she wants to take back telling Edward that she was fine with not having them.
4. She thinks it’s the same as how she didn’t realize she would like being married until after she was already married. Like brainwashing? Yeah, like that.
5. She puts her hand on her stomach and cries a lot.
6. I long for the sweet release of death.

K: A+ list. I wholeheartedly agree with point 6.

Annie: Ditto what K said.

Catherine: That list covers like, 4 pages. Edward comes into the room when she’s crying and assumes that she is crying because she’s scared. He tells her that it’s gonna be okay and they’re gonna “take care” of it. She’s like, what do you mean? And he tells her that they’re going to get the “thing” out of her before it can do any damage.

K: As much as I despise this pregnancy plot, YOU CANNOT FORCE SOMEBODY TO GET AN ABORTION, EDWARD. WOMEN HAVE AGENCY OVER THEIR OWN BODIES, YOU ASSHAT. 

Catherine: Of course, Bella freaks out. She mentally realizes that Edward wants to kill the baby and starts having dark visions about not being about to protect her baby. As she is thinking this, there’s a knock at the door and Edward realizes that he forget to tell the housekeeper not to come today. He comes back in with the woman, Kaure who is insisting that she leave the food that she made for them.

“If he had been less tense, less furious, I knew he would have rolled his eyes. “It’s an excuse—she wants to make sure I haven’t killed you yet.” His voice was ice cold at the end.”

Um….yet?

K: Yeeeeah, saying that with an “ice cold” voice really doesn’t help, Eddie.

Catherine: It’s so unsettling. This nice woman risks angering someone she suspects to be a vampire to bring Bella food and Edward snaps at her and scares her. Catch.

The smell of the food makes Bella blow chunks again and she puts her hands over her stomach to protect her baby when Edward goes to hug her afterward. Kaure sees this and gasps. Because hands-over-the-stomach is the universal sign of pregnant, I guess. Or, again, she might have a motherfucking parasite. But anyway, Kaure starts yelling at Edward but Bella can’t understand what she’s saying because of the language barrier.

My favorite character, Kaure literally starts shaking her fist at Edward and screaming at him. Edward moves toward her and Bella thinks that she has to hold him back but I’m thinking Kaure would win that fight anyway.

But when Edward starts talking to her it’s in a “pleading” tone that surprises Bella. Now they go from speaking to Portuguese to something else, Bella can’t tell what it is but she knows it a different language and the woman seems surprised that he knows it. Edward pleads with her about something and Kaure makes a pregnant gesture in front of her own stomach so Bella realizes that this woman’s oh-so-quaint brown people legends must include vampregnancies.

Finally Edward asks her something and she slowly shakes her head, steps up and lays her hand over Bella’s and says “Morte” and leaves the room. Bella says that even she knew what that meant. But like, everyone fucking knows what that means. This baby is gonna murder you, girl. (K: Just in case that wasn’t obvious already from the fact that you’re five minutes pregnant and it’s already nudging you every two seconds.)

Edward goes catatonic again after Kaure leaves until Bella starts to go to the bathroom and then he gets all clingy. He tells her that there’s no reason to listen to Kaure and her silly nonsense and obvi it’s just an old legend and when in their lives have old legends even turned out to be true OH WAIT. ALL THE TIME, YOU SAY?

Edward leaves to start putting the bags on the boat and Bella is grateful to have some time alone so she can make a phone call. She acts like she’s in Mission: Impossible while she hides from her husband to call Rosalie.

Before leaving the room, Edward says “We’ll get to Carlisle in just a few hours, really. This will all be over soon.”

And like, I hate that this is one big pro-life commercial but I ALSO hate that Edward is acting like he gets to make this decision for her because he doesn’t; it is still her body. Edward is acting like he thinks he’s a damn Texas congressman right now and Meyer created this situation where I’m supposed to root for this warped teenager to keep a baby that is literally killing her and I HATE this fucking book so much.

K: AGREED. 

Annie: You don’t have to be pro-life to be onboard with a woman choosing to keep her baby. That’s the whole pro-choice thing. It isn’t pro-abortion. It’s pro-a-woman’s-body-is-hers-so-she-gets-to-make-the-decisions. If Bella wants to keep the cute little mini-murderer growing inside her, then that is her choice. And her husband can’t force her to do otherwise.

And yet, I still feel super, super gross about all of this. Please pass the brain bleach.

Mari: Stephenie backs her way into all the messages she wants to share in the most disgusting ways. From ‘be loves you forever because he wants to kill you but he doesn’t” all the way to “baby might murder you but keep it because how awful is it that  your husband keeps yelling about getting rid of it.” 

Catherine: That is the most accurate thing that can be said about these books.

 

Next time on Breaking Dawn: Not the sweet release of death in Chapter 08.