Sonja’s pregnancy

Sonja’s pregnancy gives Ove and Sonja a shared future to prepare for, turning their private hopes into plans for a house, a family, and the practical work of welcoming a child. It also exposes Ove’s uncertainty about fatherhood and, after a bus accident in Spain, becomes the source of a loss that shapes their grief and the life they must continue together.

The decision to build a family

After Ernest’s burial, Sonja and Ove drove back along the small roads. In the first town they passed, Sonja got out to meet someone while Ove waited in the Saab without demanding to know what she was doing or how long it would take. When she returned, she took his hand and told him she thought they should buy a house of their own. Ove asked what the point would be. Sonja answered by moving his hand down to her belly: their child, she explained, should grow up in a house.

Ove took time to absorb the news. He looked at her stomach, adjusted the car’s controls and mirrors, and then agreed to the practical consequence he could immediately grasp: they would need a Saab station wagon. His response does not erase the moment’s emotional weight; it shows how he meets a new, overwhelming prospect by translating it into a concrete decision. Pregnancy changes the question from whether the two of them need a home to what sort of home and vehicle a growing family will require.

Preparing for parenthood

As the pregnancy continued, Sonja played music for her belly, believing it made the child move. Ove sat across the room and pretended to watch television. Inwardly, he worried about what would happen when the baby arrived, including whether a child might dislike him because music meant so little to him. He was not simply afraid of the birth; he did not know how to prepare for the role of a father. He even asked for a manual, reasoning that other things came with instructions.

Ove doubted his ability to be a good parent. He did not particularly like children and felt he had not been good at being a child himself. Sonja suggested that he speak with Rune, whose wife, Anita, was expecting a child too. Ove did not understand why their situations were supposed to be the same, but the shared prospect gave him and Rune an excuse to retreat to Ove’s shed while the women talked. At first the men stood there in silence, picking at things on the workbench. They eventually agreed they should do something useful, and worked together on drawings, measurements, and straight corners.

By the time Sonja and Anita were in their fourth month, Ove and Rune had installed two light-blue cribs in the prepared nurseries in their respective row houses. Ove suggested that the crib could be sanded and painted pink if the baby were a girl. The remark reveals how his unease coexisted with participation: he was still approaching fatherhood through materials and tasks, but he was helping make a place for the child. Sonja then asked him to ask her to marry him. They married simply at the Town Hall, with Rune and Anita as their only guests; neither Sonja nor Ove had family to attend. The pregnancy thus coincides with a widening of their domestic life into a close four-person circle, even as Ove and Rune continue to express companionship more through doing than talking.

Pregnancy in Spain

During the couple’s time in Spain, pregnancy affected the shape of their days. Sonja slept for much of the day and explained her midday rest as a way of adopting local customs; Ove suspected that the explanation also suited her own preferences. She was already sleeping sixteen hours out of twenty-four. While she rested, Ove went walking, noticing and criticizing the construction of the stone houses in the village. The contrast is characteristic of the couple: Sonja makes room for a different pace, while Ove occupies himself by examining how things are built.

The pregnancy also made the child present to Ove in a way no preparation could. On the bus, Sonja moved his hand to her belly, and he felt the baby kick. It was the first and last time he felt the child move. Ove then stood up to go to the bathroom; while he was moving down the aisle, the bus crashed. The sequence fixes an ordinary gesture of anticipated parenthood—the child’s movement beneath his hand—immediately before the accident changes what their future can contain.

Loss and its aftermath

Sonja woke on the tenth day after the accident, saw Ove, and slipped her hand into his. When she woke again, Ove insisted on telling her what had happened himself. He recounted the bus’s collision and then told her that their child would not be born. Sonja wept, and the news became a profound shared grief. For Ove, the timing of the accident became inseparable from self-blame: he believed he would never forgive himself for having left his seat at that moment and for not being there to protect Sonja and the child.

The pregnancy’s end does not conclude their story as a couple. After the period of grief, Sonja said she wanted to begin physiotherapy and urged Ove to understand that they had to continue living. Her decision marks a change from the future they had been preparing for to the difficult work of building a life after the loss. The child remains part of their shared history, remembered not through a life they get to raise but through the plans they made, the crib they prepared, Ove’s single felt kick, and the sorrow they faced together.

Narrative significance

The pregnancy is both a practical and emotional turning point. It draws Ove into tasks he can measure—choosing a larger car, building cribs, making room in a house—while revealing fears that no manual or careful preparation can settle. The two cribs also place the couple’s anticipation beside Rune and Anita’s: impending parenthood creates a bond between the men even when Ove cannot make sense of Sonja’s suggestion that they share the same situation.

The accident abruptly overturns those preparations. The child’s movement, experienced once by Ove, gives the pregnancy a brief, tangible presence before its future is taken away. Its loss exposes the limits of his practical way of responding to life: he can build and prepare, but he cannot undo what happened or escape the guilt he attaches to it. Sonja’s later choice to begin physiotherapy does not diminish the grief; it establishes that grief and renewed effort can coexist. In this way, the pregnancy marks both a future the couple will not have and the beginning of their deliberate attempt to move forward together.