This baby, even though it’s barely here—some half-dead, half-living thing—I feel it, and it’s something big. To me at least, in all my smallness, this baby is really something very big.”
-- Cora (Part I)

Importance: Cora learns how to like being a mother. She accepts the baby when she learns she is pregnant, but she is not sure that she is up to the task of raising a child. Her physical journey with Ruth is also an emotional one. Cora watches her baby grow inside of her belly and she develops a love for the child. She realizes how magical it is for her to grow a human inside of her, and Cora's relationship to motherhood is a sharp contrast from some of the failed mothers mentioned in this story.

Nothing stranger than pregnancy could happen to a body. Not drugs, not sex. An unknown that gets bigger every day...
-- Cora (Part III)