#;please feel free to send more about The Bakery™️ someone i beg

[wannabepapa]

thinking about working in this little shop, maybe a bakery or small diner, where part of your contract to work there is to go through a full term magical pregnancy. but they aren't going paying you when you're outside of work, so for reasons to do with labor laws or whatever, your pregnancy gets paused. you only grow when you're clocked in for work, meaning that a full nine months of pregnancy takes over two years to complete even when you're working full time (and most of the employees are only part-time). imagine coming right up on the end of a pregnancy, maybe overdue, and ready to be done, and you get a few weeks off for the holidays. Last year maybe you were at the end of the second trimester, big but not massive. Just a little inconvenient. this year you have to get all the way to the New Year with this cumbersome belly, stretched and exhausted, just waiting to go back to work and throw that little apron on so you can be unburdened.

The bakery is definitely the strangest place I have ever worked for. The pay was fantastic—more than I could have ever imagined getting in my entire lifetime! Really, there shouldn't be a reason why I was overcompensated for such an easy job. That was until I had finished with my training and officially hired.

The owner was a wizard—very old, very powerful being—that had only one condition for me to even be considered as a worker. They had a fruitful side hustle as surrogacy business (the place was merely a façade to keep the magickal government off their tail) and in order to be brought into the fold you would need to fulfill pregnancy contracts for the customers. Not only had the background check been meticulous in its contents but my medical history had been gone over with a fine toothed comb. If I were honest hearing that I was still being considered with my medical problems it blew my mind. Raising that concern the owner explained magical remedies that would heal any ailments that would otherwise cause pregnancy complications, meaning I would be the perfect surrogate for the babies. I didn't hesitate a moment while white knuckling the pen to sign the dotted lines.

I should have read the fine print.

———

There clearly was nothing standard about this operation. To quell any magickal suspicions these pregnancies were enhanced in very special ways. The fetuses were perfectly healthy and safe, the pregnancies were as normal as possible given one big circumstance. The pregnancies were elongated and you only progressed while you were on the clock.

As terrible as it sounds to an outsiders prospective, this is easier to handle. With the slow growth I was able to go about life normally for much longer without worrying that my secret would be revealed. Though the nausea and overall discomfort were murderous in the beginning my first trimester took six and a half months—I barely looked any different! Every scan I had showed a perfectly healthy pregnancy which meant more money being added onto my already cushy check. It all felt like a fever dream.

As the weeks turned into months of growth I had begun to realize I was enjoying this. As much as I had felt anxiety over passing nine months I was able to get into the groove of this magickal pregnancy. It was easier with my coworkers in the same predicament in so many different stages for us to all bond together. Though taking the mandatory holidays for Thanksgiving and Christmas were difficult—there was no extra growing and it felt like my skin was burning with power that was ready to burst forward. Stepping back into the bakery I swore up and down that I grew about four inches around the middle from this surge of pregnancy magick.

Now that I'm nearing the end of this pregnancy a whole two years later, I am more than ready to pop. The babe is very happy in here having parties every day of the week and even midnight (let's be honest here it's more like three am) dance battles to show off their moves. As much as this little nugget has brought happiness, excitement, and joy into these long years carrying I clearly need a break. My skin is stretched tightly across my womb with no trace of skin unmarred by red stretchmarks. I'm not angry about it since most were there before I got pregnant. What I will miss is having someone this close to me when I needed them and experience the craziness of pregnancy over an extended period of time.

What I really truly hate is that I'm stuck at home now until the fifth of January. It wouldn't be terrible if I wasn't on the cusp of labor with false contractions for the last three weeks or the equivalent of a bowling ball sitting heavily on my pelvis. The baby shows no signs of being ready to leave their warm home but I'm very certain that there will be a visit to the birthing center in the coming days after I start work again. I don't think I'll be the only one either. My one coworker has twins and he is very ready for those buns to be delivered as soon as possible.

Even with this bump in the road I can see myself doing this all over again. Possibly requesting to go part time for that pregnancy—to really relish in my slow growth and see how different it feels