Thanks again to those who helped me brainstorm about the topic previously. The resulting post, A Plea to SFF Writers for Variety in Pregnancy and Childbirth Depictions, is now up at Tor.com. Please direct substantive comment there.
(Also, I managed to write an entire post about pregnancy and childbirth without referring to the pregnant person as female, so thank you, people who talk about trans stuff, it does make a difference. (Though, on re-reading, there is an embedded assumption behind one physical-symptom example, so I did not achieve complete neutrality, vex.))