Nana doesn't know when she started to lose herself. Just a few years ago, she was smart, driven, outspoken; she had her bit of selfishness, plans for travel and exploration and a life of her own. She wasn't ready for family then and she still isn't now, with a baby on the way. She's not ready to be cooped up at home, waiting obediently for a husband to come home. She's not ready to devote herself to caring for another human being. So how did she get to this point? With Iemitsu's mother holding her hand, talking her through all the wonders of childbirth and child rearing and how her son is going to be so beautiful. This is not what Nana wants. She's not ready to live for somebody else. And why does it feel like she's just woken up? Like someone has just taken her by the shoulders and shaken her out of a daze? There's a warmth gathering inside of her that's not hot enough for anger but it's there all the same and it makes her feel more than she has in over a year. It feels like she's been sitting in a cold room for far too long and she's finally received a little bit of heat, sensation returning to every part of her. And while it starts in her stomach, the place where the son she isn't ready for grows, Nana doesn't think that this is the glow of motherhood. This is something else and it's real and it's a godsend because now she can see again. So Nana lets Iemitsu's mother chatter at her and hold her hand and the other she cups over the curve of her stomach, where her baby has just recently started to move. She takes a moment to just be herself.
Nana has realized that it's harder to think, to feel like a person when Iemitsu is around. Something about him seems to wind up her thoughts on a spool and turn her head into mush so that everything is a little more dead. Like everything is coming from far away and she needs to fight not to just sink into a daze and smile vacantly. Iemitsu pulls something out of her that is vapid and cheerful and ditzy which Nana despises, something that is not her. And it gets worse the longer he spends near her or the closer he is. Sometimes, Nana will wake up, and she'll have lost hours after spending too long with him. It terrifies her, even when there's part of her mind that is still wrapped up in fuzzy wool, the part that finds the daze and oblivion that comes with Iemitsu's presence comforting. Nana presses her hands to her stomach then, to the steadily growing lump there which Iemitsu says is going to be name Tsunayoshi, and tries to bury herself in it's heat.