Grandma Ruth

January 1, 1918 to October 31, 2005

If you remember, Halloween fell on a Monday last year. I was at work as usual, hefting my new belly around, mostly just trying to distract myself while I waited for a phone call telling me that my beloved Grandma Ruth had passed. I was down a few cubes from my own and heard a phone ring around 3 pm. My next door cube neighbour knew I was waiting for a phone call so I figured she'd tell me if it was my phone. But it was my phone. I didn't get to it on time and whoever it was didn't leave a message. When I got home later, there was a message from my mom with the news. Grandma Ruth hadn't even been sick for a week and already she had died. Somehow, she was dead sounds just too harsh, even after a year.

Grandma Ruth had had surgery on the Friday before to remove a blockage caused by bowel cancer. But we knew by Saturday morning that she wasn't recovering as well as she had in 2004 when she'd had the same surgery a month or two before our wedding. Then, she was determined to be at our wedding, and I know her recovery was partly due to her determination. She made it to our wedding and was right in the centre of our photos.

SD and I had visited her on the Saturday, to say whatever we felt we needed to say, just in case. We had tickets for a musical in Toronto, Umoja, that night, and figured we may as well just take the extra few hours to get up to Peterborough. I'm so glad we did. I wore my favourite maternity shirt, which made me look like I'd swallowed a pumpkin – it seemed particularly apt, somehow. I thought if I showed off my belly and we talked about the baby it would give her the strength to fight back to health.

Unfortunately, a lot had happened since her last surgery. Sadly, her husband, Grandpa Jack, who gave Swee'pea his middle name, died on January 14, 2005, and although it had seemed to me that Grandpa's memory loss had become a burden to her, she had told me that she was lonely without him. They had been married for something like 67 years. Also, right after Grandpa died, a good friend of hers at the retirement home also died, leaving her to sit with a couple of grumpy old biddies at lunch. During the short time between Grandpa's death and hers, she often talked about the negative people she had to eat lunch with but she couldn't be bothered asking to sit elsewhere.

It's such a cliché but when we walked into the hospital room, I was shocked at the pale, shrunken, weak old lady on the bed. She had all kinds of tubes running into and out of various body parts, and she looked so tired, you could see that just raising her eyelids, figuring out where she was and forming her mouth around words took enormous effort. But she was happy to see us. I saw her eyes widen in glee at the sight of my pregnant belly, much larger than the last time I saw her.

I remember feeling like she was already partway to heaven. I had a sense that she was hallucinating, maybe watching spirits fly around, or eating a picnic in the park, like the image in the painting that hung in her dining room and now is in our house. It felt like she consciously had to pull herself back to earth, to this room, to us.

When I started talking about the baby and how I could feel it move every day, I could see in her eyes that she knew she wasn't going to meet this baby. Her eyes held a distance. I still felt hope, but just in case I told her of our plans to make one of the baby's names Jack if it was a boy. We'd been keeping this a secret from our families but I thought she would want to know. When we told her, she looked at SD and said something, nodding her head emphatically. Unfortunately she had an oxygen mask over her mouth, and the pain meds and her exhaustion made her slur, so we couldn't really understand what she was saying. But she continued to repeat herself, so it was obviously important to her, and I think she was saying something along the lines of, “Jack often said he liked you,” to SD. Either that, or she was saying that she'd seen Jack often around the hospital room.

She was even more exhausted now, and pretty much asleep. We decided to go to the show in Toronto, because Grandma wouldn't have wanted us to miss it. She loved music and dancing. I remember when I was a teenager, I played my music for her, songs like Suck my Kiss by the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Closer by Nine Inch Nails. And she just said enthusiastically, “I like the beat.”

* * *

When I was a kid, each summer I visited Grandma Ruth and Grandpa Jack. When I was really young, I visited with my older sister but when I was around 8, I started making the visit all by my big girl self. We got to ride the train, my mom accompanying me as far as Union Station, and my grandma would meet us there and take me the rest of the way to London.

I remember one time Grandma Ruth bought me one of those big bags of licorice for the train ride. And I ate the whole bag. It wasn't long before I was learning the licorice lesson the hard way, with my bowels cramping in the train's cramped bathroom, Grandma Ruth wondering outside if I would be able to escape the toilet long enough to get off at our stop. My brother learned the licorice lesson the hard way too, but without Grandma Ruth's help. He and his friend saved up their allowances and bought a huge amount of licorice. They tied each piece together until they had a licorice rope across the front yard, each boy on one end, and they ate until they reached the middle.

Another time, our train into Union Station was late and our connection to London was about to leave. She took my hand and pulled me at top speed through the station, and we made the train. She always had her lipstick with her, always a vibrant red, and it was on one of these train rides that she once made me believe she had a magic mirror in her wallet that I couldn't see. Later she confessed that she was just one of those special people who can put their lipstick on without a mirror. I felt special to discover that I was one of those people too. She was good at making me feel special.

Their apartment was on Wonderland Road, down the way from the Seven Dwarfs' Restaurant, which we always went to once each summer, because their friend owned it, and not far from Storybook Gardens, which we also went to every summer. Those 3 or 4 days I spent with them each summer were magic, and it really did seem like I was visiting some kind of Wonderland. The first thing we did when I arrived was go to to the grocery store to get all my favourite foods. I got Eggo waffles for breakfast, which my mom either didn't approve of or couldn't be bothered to buy. I could have had ice cream for breakfast every day if I'd wanted. And I have to say, this total indulgence really taught me to set my own limits after suffering more than one upset tummy while I was there.

My Grandma Ruth loved clothes and loved to shop. Every year, we always spent a day shopping at the Westmount Shopping Centre, which was within walking distance of their apartment. Writing that, I have just realized that that may have been my only experience of walking to a mall in my childhood (we lived in the country). Maybe that's where I formed my love of walking to shops. Anyways, my grandma had amazing stamina for shopping and I was always asking for mercy long before she was ready to stop. She bought me pretty much anything I wanted, much to my mom's horror. I remember when I was 12, I wanted a one-piece, leopard-print bathing suit, which had thigh holes cut up to the ribcage and a neckline that plunged to the belly button. And my grandma bought it for me. I think I only ended up wearing it once, as I soon realized that it wasn't very comfortable or practical. I think it rode up uncomfortably when I dove into the water. Later she bought me shirts that bared my midriff and skirts that went above my knees. Fairweathers was my favourite store then, and Sears was hers.

There was a pool at their apartment building, so we swam every day. My grandma loved to swim until she had her second stroke, and even did synchronized swimming, and she taught me some of the moves they did. She also belly danced for a while when she was younger. Though she confessed to me that she didn't like the music that much so she didn't stick with it.

I went through a time in my late teens and early twenties when I didn't want to visit Grandma and Grandpa anymore. Mostly because I'd started smoking, and I didn't want them to know about it; I knew they'd be disappointed in me. I also didn't want to deal with the nic fits. So my visits stopped and I only went with my parents for the occasional afternoon or an overnight.

In 2002, Grandma Ruth was in a car accident that left her in Intensive Care with a broken pelvis and other complications caused by her old body trying to cope with the trauma. We weren't sure if she was going to make it but she pulled through. Shortly after that, they moved to a retirement home in Peterborough so that my mom wouldn't have to drive three hours each way to care for them. I started visiting them more often then; we could combine visits to my parents, brother and grandparents. By this time, though, they were tired. They loved to see SD and I, but they didn't get out much anymore. Grandpa Jack's memory was failing and I don't think he ever really felt comfortable in the home; I don't think he could remember how to get around the building, so he was very dependent on Grandma Ruth. Knowing this, she didn't like to leave him; but she also didn't want to go out as much for herself. I think she suffered anxiety in cars after her accident (she was a passenger in the accident); she'd had two strokes before the broken pelvis, and I think she got tired a lot faster than she used to. Then in 2003 she started having intestinal complaints and because she had an incompetent doctor, it was summer 2004 before she was diagnosed with bowel cancer. Her doctor had just kept saying, “You're old. Of course you're not going to feel very well.”

When Grandpa Jack died, I thought she would get out more. I thought he had been holding her back. I thought this even when I was a kid. I remember once asking my mom if Grandma could come live with us when Grandpa died. As they aged, it got harder to see the indulgent loving vivacious socializers in the bent couple who seemed to live for Blue Jays' games and Lawrence Welk. Now anytime I happen to flip by Lawrence Welk, I start to cry, from all the times we drank tea and watched the show with my grandparents.

* * *

So that day in the hospital, we kissed her goodbye and we told her we loved her, and then we left. I cried all the way to Toronto, because I had a feeling that would be the last time I would see her. I was devastated at the thought that she wouldn't get to meet our little one. During the car ride though, I also realized that it would never be a good time for her to die. There would always be something I would want her to see; I would always want her in my life. And I got the sense in the hospital that she was ready to go, and who was I to want to keep her here in a failing body, missing the loved ones who'd gone before her? My brother told me after that he had asked her if she was scared, and she'd replied, “Scared of what?”

That night, with the thunderous drums and ecstatic songs of the musical, our little one kicked and prodded throughout, tattooing his own rhythm, which echoed our heartbeats, and spoke to me of the beauty of life and of the necessity of its end.

The next day Grandma Ruth started to lose her lucidity and didn't seem to have much awareness of where her physical body was. I was really glad we'd gone to visit her on Saturday because we'd talked about waiting to the next day. By Monday, my mom, her only child, felt that maybe Grandma needed some help to move on. Like she was a hot air balloon struggling to float but with one stubborn tether anchored to the ground. So she and my dad went out and bought a mini cd player and two cds of the big band music Grandma loved, to release that final tether and let her float away. She died within half an hour of them putting the music on in her hospital room.

For the rest of my pregnancy, I often had crying spells, missing Grandma Ruth, aching that she wouldn't meet this little one. But I took time to explain to the baby nestled in my womb, that my sadness had to nothing to do with him, that it was nothing to worry about, that I was just sad that he wouldn't meet his Great Grandmother. But, I said, “You still have lots of people waiting to meet you out here, who already love you, so you won't be lacking for love.”

The tears intensified in that not so delicious postpartum cocktail of one part crazy hormones, two parts severe sleep deprivation, one part miracle of life high, topped with a bit of near death labour and delivery (even if you didn't actually come near death) for colour. At times I even felt like I imagine Grandma Ruth did in the hospital room, dreamy, feeling her presence, and with a piece of me somewhere on its way to another dimension.

One of the many ladies' heads Grandma Ruth collected, which we divided among the family (this is one of ours), and the curve of a turquoise depression glass bowl she gave me years before she died. Somehow, I feel her spirit inhabits the dignity and elegance of these ladies' heads.

Grandma Ruth almost never had anything bad to say about anyone (well until she started having to eat lunch with grumpy gusses). She was an elegant woman who loved people, loved music, loved dancing, swimming, walking – anything her body could do – loved taking the train, loved nice clothes and shoes... she loved. She is remembered fondly by everyone who knew her.

It seems that autumn, especially late autumn, is a time for nostalgia, melancholy, and remembrance. It seems no accident that this is the season of the Mexican dia de los muertos, the more recent, Remembrance Day, and the more optimistic Thanksgiving. I think Her Bad Mother is onto something in her beautiful description of feeling low earlier this month:

The low of rainy days and slow melodies on trombone and falling leaves and gray sky and the earthy, musty smell of summer in decay. The low of fall, when the dark and the chill come too fast, when even the brightness of the crispest and brightest of days has a sort of stark, mournful edge. I've been feeling low, in that way. Morose.

It seems so appropriate that Grandma Ruth chose October 31 to die, on the eve of the dia de los muertos, a time of ghosts and spirits that is also a time when her loved ones can take advantage of the greying landscape and sky to be sad, but still feel warmth and cosiness against the bleakness of oncoming November.

More Random Notes

Edited to add just one more random note.

Municipal Politics

This morning we got a phone call with an automated message from Robert Munsch, the children's author, urging us to vote in the upcoming municipal election. You're preaching to the zealous new converts, Mr. Munsch.

In a related story, our lawn sign supporting our chosen mayoral candidate has disappeared from our yard, along with most of our neighbours'. I strongly suspect the old couple on the corner who still have their sign up for the conservative incumbent.

Neighbours

Speaking of neighbours, I am a total nosey parker. Sugar Daddy hates going for walks with me at dusk because I always take advantage of that time after people have turned on their lights but before they've closed their curtains to check out their wall colours and light fixtures, and whatever else I can see. It's terrible. I've nearly run into lamp posts I'm such a rubber necker.

Anyways this morning a neighbour I haven't seen before came outside to shake a small rug, and he had the one of the biggest mullets I've seen since Billy Ray Cyrus, although he couldn't hold a candle to Michael Bolton. God, I'm such a raging snob.

In other neighbourly news, our next door neighbour just bought a Toyota Matrix. And then there were three. We bought a Toyota Matrix in April when we discovered that Swee'pea would grow into a bigger, still rear facing seat, which would not fit in our poor little 20-year-old Jetta. Also, because our poor little 20-year-old Jetta, which I always meant to give a name but never did, was not very reliable. So we bought a Matrix, mostly because it's Sugar Daddy's favourite movie and we didn't discover any annoying little tics when we rented one for a weekend out of town when the PLTYOJ broke down. Our neighbours across the street bought a Matrix just over a year ago when their other car got totalled. Here a Matrix, there a Matrix, Everywhere a Matrix Matrix.

Our other next-door-neighbours are not as nice as the one with the Matrix. They have two very angry teenagers, who bellow at their parents and honk their horns on Sunday mornings. I know teenagers are angry by their very nature, but these two are Angry; the rage emanates from them like radioactivity and, yes, it scares me a little. And I'm not generally scared by teenagers. Anyways, they have a little Jack Russell and sometimes I see them when we're out for walks. And since Swee'pea was born they're much chattier. So yesterday I saw the woman and her dog while walking, and she exclaimed over how big Swee'pea is getting, and how cute he is, yadda yadda yadda. Then she tilts her head and looks coyly at me: "So, any plans for another one?" Wink wink nudge nudge.

Now, I don't have a lot of boundaries or issues with privacy, but I don't care to discuss this subject with peopple I'm barely acquainted with and don't particularly like. So I evaded the question, figuring she'd get the hint, and said, "Well, we'll just have to see..." And she looked all confused... but it was actually a very honest answer, because we haven't decided yet.

Don't Eat and Blog

I just flipped my fork and got pumpkin cheesecake square goodness all over the keyboard. I had to take a minute to lick up the big bits. I got the square at our local whole grain, organic, make-every-delicious-thing-they-sell-from-scratch-and-onsite bakery, which was crazy busy. They have new menu items every day, which they post on blackboards. It used to be when an item sold out, they just wiped it out. But now they've started putting a sold sticker on the item, which doesn't obscure the description at all, so I spent considerable time grieving for what yummy goodness was not going to meet my tummy today. Wah. But they had the pumpkin cheesecake squares still so it was all good.

Google Searches

When you find out what searches have brought people to your blog, do you ever want to reach out across the Internet and give them a hug or point them to information that might help? Over the last day or two, two searches have made me feel like doing this. Yesterday, someone came to my blog searching for "no amniotic fluid left." Obviously since the woman (I assume it's a woman 'cause Sugar Daddy has never done any research related to pregnancy or birth online... well, or at the library) has time to google, she's not in surgery, which is where I was when we discovered there was no fluid left. I don't think it's a good thing at all to discover when you're pregnant. So, I'll send her good baby wellness thoughts and hope for the best.

The other search was a couple of days ago. Her (again with the assumptions; see above) search was Help! I'm GBS positive. This was an issue that tormented me in the last few weeks of my pregnancy. So in case she searches again here's my experience and some of what I found out online. I won't go into the elementary stuff can you get that from a regular google search. But I discovered quite a bit of research that suggests that IV antibiotics in labour for GBS positive women wasn't alwas the best option. Though GBS infections went down in those cases, sometimes other life-threatening antibiotic-resistant infections went up. Also, there was some anecdotal evidence that the midwives' favourite induction technique, stretch and sweeps, seemed to increase neonatal infections. In the end, I decided not to do the stretch and sweep; I had my massage therapist massage some pressure point around my ankles and I went into labour with 12 hours. We decided to take the iv antibiotics. I had always been clear that if my water broke first, or I had any other risk factors, I would take the antibiotics. And not only did my water break very early in labour but I had meconium in it, another risk factor. And since I ended up with a fever during labour, and then a c-section, I was glad I got the antibiotics so early. And I never got a yeast infection, and neither did Swee'pea.

And a few people have found my blog looking for stuff about Al Purdy. This makes me happy. Happy that people are still looking for stuff about him, and happy that they can read the article that never got published.

It even partly makes up for the '"armpit rash" tight clothes' search that I'm in the top 10 results for.

Mr. Darcy Spammer

This is for Bubandpie... the other day we got spam from one Jamal Marin with the following text:

"i do, i do like him," she replied, with tears in her eyes, "i love him. indeed he has no improperdarcy mentioned his letter. "did it," said he, "did it soon make you think better of me? did you,

I keep wondering with spam like this, what purpose does it serve?!? There are no links to click on, no invitations to buy stock or confirm our banking/credit details...

In/Out

It occurred to me last night that as Swee'pea approaches his 9-month birthday, he approaches a more significant milestone. Soon he will have lived outside of the womb for as long as or longer than he was inside it. I remember when he was just a couple of months old, Sugar Daddy and I talking about the whole holding him while he sleeps thing and how he made his preferences quite clear. And SD observed that even though we'd been holding him in our arms for 2 or 3 whole months, he still had a longer history of being cradled in the womb.

Today Swee'pea has been in our airy world for 37 weeks 1 day. Officially, he was in the womb for 40 weeks 3 days, but there is that whole 2 weeks they count before any identifiable Swee'pea cells actually existed. So let's say he was in there for 38 weeks 3 days.

I have to say that time seems to have sped up since he made his way to the outside world. I remember when I was pregnant, the weeks crawled by, especially the weeks in the first trimester, the weeks before I could feel his reassuring movement every day. I found out I was pregnant at 4 weeks, or 2 weeks after conception. Which is a really long time to wait. During those early weeks I tracked his development online, and I worried. The number of amazing things that have to happen to make this whole baby is mind boggling and scary as hell to consider all the things that could not quite happen. I was keenly aware that the most critical development happens in the first trimester, and that life inside me felt SO vulnerable and fragile. The milestones were carved in my mind and I waited impatiently for them to pass: reduced risk of miscarriage at 12, 15 and 20 weeks; legally viable at 24 weeks; better chance of survival at 28 weeks; even better at 34; term at 37.

In those early weeks, I thought if we could just get past those milestones, I could stop worrying. That once I could hold my healthy baby in my arms, I could stop worrying. Of course, now I know that I will never stop worrying, that it is the yoke of parents everywhere to worry about their children.

Looking back, I loved being pregnant, once I could start to feel him move every day. I loved the companionship, I loved being my own walking affirmation of life at the two funerals I had to attend. I loved putting my hand on his bum, and I loved the way I looked. Except that I know I definitely didn't love the nausea in New Orleans at 8 weeks, when we couldn't find a single place that served a decent vegetarian dish (most didn't even serve any vegetarian dish, decent or otherwise), and I didn't love the rib pain that plagued me for the last few months. (You know how most newborns' limbs curl up in the position they were in in the womb? Well, Swee'pea's didn't curl. He'd apparently kept them straight, braced against the bottom of my ribcage.)

I guess I should say that I love the memory of being pregnant. At the time I thought it was the hardest thing ever: coping with the aches and pains of a body stretched to its limit, coping with the pressure of knowing that everything I chose to consume was also consumed by Swee'pea, trying to keep up with a body changing way too fast to keep up with. Now I know that that was the easiest part of my emerging motherhood.

Anyways, back to the milestone. I see on babycenter.com that separation anxiety hits its peak around 9 months. It seems so fitting that as Swee'pea crosses the equation of time in/time out, he becomes more aware of his status as his own separate being, a momentous and scary realization. Thinking about his history in the womb, even if he can't remember it consciously, and that he is only just beginning to understand that he and I are separate, makes me feel good about the choices we have made, that he has made us make, to hold him as much as he wants and to invite him into our warm bed.

Last night when I was contemplating Swee'pea's upcoming in/out milestone, I also started considering my development as a mother. Now, when his soother falls on the floor, I may wipe it off before I put it back in. I don't ache with anxiety every time he cries. I put him to my breast without a trace of resentment or ambivalence, knowing that the time left in this part of our relationship is short. But all this brought me to a question: when did I fully become a mother? Was I mother when I was pregnant? Was I a mother when, at 5 weeks pregnant, all my symptoms disappeared and I felt sure those precious few cells had died? Would I have still been a mother if those cells had died? Was I a mother when I laid on that table, after he was pulled from my body covered in shit, and ignored the silence? Or was it when I held him for the first time and finally stopped shaking? I really don't know.

What are your thoughts on when a mother becomes a mother? Any good links to other mothers' thoughts?

dreams

I remember when I was pregnant I didn't dream very much about the baby. Although I wanted to, I only had two dreams about the baby; one near the beginning of the pregnancy and one near the end, which I can't remember. Oh wait, there was also the one just after I found out I was pregnant. Somewhere around 15 or 20 weeks, I dreamed that I had the baby and it was a boy and although he was severely premature, he was already 8 pounds and didn't have to stay at the hospital at all. Unfortunately, I had no clothes for him. So my sister gave me Zoe's baby clothes, which were all pink. I didn't care about dressing him in pink though because he was clearly a miracle baby and I was just so pleased with him.

Towards the end of the pregnancy I had another dream but I can't remember now what happened in it. I do, however, remember one of Dave's dreams: the baby came out as an old man, which was slightly prophetic. Ezra definitely had that wizened, slightly atrophied look about him for the first few days. I remember when he was a few days old I witnessed/participated in my first diaper change (because of the c-section I couldn't get out of bed for a few days so Dave did all the early ones). I got a shock when I caught a glimpse of his bum; "He has an old man's bum," I laughed. When I told my mom about this surprise, she asked, "How do you know what an old man's bum looks like?" "From Sex and the City. There was an episode where Samantha gets together with a rich old man but she runs away when she sees his bum."

After he was born I often dreamed I was in labour again, and I dreamed a lot of my Grandma Ruth, who died when I was six months pregnant and for whom I still grieved, dying over and over again. These dreams often involved conversations with her as she was dying or when she came for visits from the afterlife. I think these dreams were necessary as I processed the fear from Ezra's birth.

In the evenings for the first two months or so, I would go to bed around 8 after Ezra nursed and Dave would stay up with Ezra. This way I could get a solid 2 or 3 hours of sleep. Dave would wake me when Ezra got hungry and I would struggle to consciousness, confused and disoriented. I could hear Ezra crying but I didn't understand why because I was dreaming I had just nursed him. I would even say to Dave, "But I just nursed him." And Dave would reply, "No, you've been dreaming."

When Ezra was around 4 months old, we started putting him in his crib in another room to sleep. But he was still waking a lot and he would often interrupt my dreams. I would nurse him back to sleep and the dream would stay wrapped around my head like a fog. I often found that during the next day, I would remember my dreams as he nursed.

Since we've given up on the crib and sleep with Ezra all the time, the dreams don't revisit me when I nurse. I think this is because when mum and baby sleep together, their sleep cycles synchronize (say that ten times fast). So now when he's in a light sleep about to wake up, so am I, and it's much less disruptive. I suspect this is partly why my mood has elevated so much.

tags: dreams, baby

When I Was Pregnant

After a trip to the library this afternoon, I have just started reading Mother Shock: Loving Every (Other) Minute of It by Andrea J. Buchanan, on the recommendation of this blogger. It's great so far and she is a fantastic writer. Anyways, her description of her miscarriage and first weeks of her second pregnancy started me remembering the early weeks of my pregnancy with Ezra.

We were trying to make a baby and I had a notion that I was ovulating. Exctly two weeks after that idea, I couldn't resist taking a test. I'd been having twinges and my breasts seemed more sore than they usually are before my period. So the night before Ishra's belly dance student recital, at which I was performing two or three times (can't remember now), I stopped at the drug store on my way home from work. When my husband got home, I mentioned that I was thinking about doing the test but that it wouldn't really be conclusive if it was negative. He thought it was too early but I couldn't resist. So I peed on the stick and waited and a faintly pink symbol appeared. I went downstairs and showed Dave: I think it's positive. And he looked and said, "Yeah I think so too. Cool." And off I went to my rehearsals, giddy but panicky too.

For some reason, ever since I was a kid, I've always thought that pregnancy must be a scary time for a woman because so many things can go wrong. I'm not exactly sure what gave me this idea but I think it could be have been partly because I grew up on a farm. One year, we had two mares who were expecting and, sadly, we lost both babies and nearly lost one of the mares too. I think I was around 11 or 12. As a result, myfirst trimester was characterized by intense anxiety.

A week after the positive test, I dreamt that I lost the baby. And I woke up and felt in my deepest self that I'd lost it. My breasts weren't sore and I just didn't feel pregnant. The doctor scheduled an ultrasound even though it was probably too early to see a heartbeat. The ultrasound showed a pregnancy but no heartbeat so was somewhat disappointing. Some symptoms had returned though and I hadn't bled at all.

I found that time crept by more slowly than I'd ever experienced in my life when I was pregnant. I watched a virtual fetus grow each week online and felt its fragility intensely. For me, each week brought the baby closer to survival.

At eight weeks I had my first consultation with the midwives. At 11 weeks, another appointment. She tried to hear the baby's heartbeat with a doppler but she warned me that she may not be able to and it wouldn't mean the baby was dead if she didn't. Only my heartbeat echoed around the room.

I remember feeling a little goldfish swim across my belly around 14 and 15 weeks. I had another appointment around 15 weeks and finally we heard the magical sound of the baby's heartbeat. I cried so hard because I'd had three months of wondering and worry and this heartbeat was clear and strong and the perfect speed. The midwife said I couldn't possibly have felt the baby move already but I know I did and my husband even felt a little kick or something at 17 weeks.

After that, my anxiety lessened as my belly grew and I could feel the baby's movements more regularly. I definitely enjoyed the second and third trimesters and I even belly danced publicly when I was seven and a half months pregnant. Although it was hard to keep up with how fast my body was changing and it sometimes felt like I was on a speeding train and couldn't get off, I loved having this belly. I felt like a walking affirmation of life.

Kirstenbosch, Native Plants, and Babies

Over the Victoria Day weekend in 2003, I read a book that changed my life. It's probably not the kind of book you're thinking of. It was The Gardener's Manifesto: Changing the World and Creating Beauty One Garden at a Time by Lorraine Johnson, and after I read it, I decided to buy a house so that I could have a garden with plants indigenous to my part of Ontario. No doubt there are easier ways to get a garden, especially with all the community gardens around. But many of my friends were buying houses and I wanted to join in on the fun.

So a few weeks later we found a house and bought it and took possession on July 18, 2003. It was a fixer-upper and cheap but in a central neighbourhood on a quiet street. I thought it would be a great project. After six weeks of ripping up floors, removing 50-year-old doggy carpet and yucky 70's fake wood panelling, painting, melting and nearly breaking up in the hot summer, we moved in. I started gardening immediately, bored with the house renovations already. I removed some hedges in front of the porch and began planting native plants. And then waited to see the results next summer.

Next summer we got married and I started planting flowers in a former vegetable garden that was far too shady for vegetables. Plus, being in an old, slightly industrial neighbourhood I didn't trust the soil for veggies. And veggies are just way too much work. A big reason for planting native perennials was for the low maintenance. I like planting but I've never been great at the maintenance. Anyways, again, I waited to see the results in the following year. The front garden didn't look so great. The right side flowered in the early summer and the left side flowered in the late summer so it was all very unbalanced. On to 2005.

In February 2005, my husband and I went to South Africa. He grew up there and all of his family except for his mum still live there. For details of my trip, see the emails I sent while we were gone. Our first day in Cape Town, we went to Kirstenbosch Botanical Gardens. I was very keen to go because I've always loved flowers and now I was especially interested in the indigenous plants, especially the fynbos. My favourite place in Kirstenbosch is the medicinal plants garden, which describes how each plant has been used traditionally. By this time in our lives, my husband and I were beginning to talk babies. Well, ok, I'd been talking babies for a few years but finally my husband had joined in. For some reason I was scared I would struggle with infertility once we started trying. So one plant that really struck me in the medicinal plants garden was agapanthus. It's a blue flower in the lily family and very pretty. I think it was backlit in the actual garden when we were there so I couldn't get a good shot of it in Kirstenbosch. Traditionally it was used as a fertility charm. I wanted a charm like this to take home with me. So I spent the rest of the trip with my eyes peeled for agapanthus so I could take a photo for my fertility charm. Eventually, I found one at the Storm River's Mouth in Tsitsikamma National Park.

Shortly after we returned to Canada, we started trying to make a baby. Two months later, I was pregnant. After we had Ezra, my husband's employer sent a beautiful bouquet of flowers to congratulate us. It was blue, I guess because we had a boy, and in it were two beautiful agapanthus flowers.

Anyways, back to my garden: I didn't do much during the summer I was pregnant and here we are in the next summer and I'm too busy with Ezra. But I have a friend who is a fantastic gardener and has improved my gardens immensely. I like my front garden now and I just know my back garden will look great next year. Oh - and on our house: it's slightly more fixed up than when we bought it but it's still very much an unfixed-up fixer-upper. We've discovered that not only are we completely unhandy but we also don't much like renovating. Luckily, we've also discovered we really like our house and don't want to live in any other house.