On the morning of our trip to the hospital to see the specialist, I wrote in my journal: “I’ve been noticing the sunrises more lately and they’ve been beautiful. I abandoned my mission to get on daycare waiting lists and cancelled my coming appointment with the pelvic floor physiotherapist. Or I’d get up at four in the morning, unable to lie in bed, viscerally aware of Piggy inside of me. I’d start hyperventilating on my walk to work. I tried not to think about worst-case scenarios, but when I was alone I was often gripped by a palpable physical panic.
Skip hop diaper bag full#
It was a welcome distraction from the quicksand of anxiety that threatened to drag me in as I waited a full week to see a specialist. I spent the weekend strategizing with lawyers, doing media interviews and launching a letter-writing campaign to get her out of jail. One of my magazine’s photojournalists was wrongfully jailed in northern B.C., drawing international media attention. Two days after the phone call from the midwife, my day job as an editor exploded. One of the crazy things that happens when you’re struck with a piece of news that stops your world is that the rest of the world keeps turning. With the approval of my midwives, I kept lifting weights and going on surf trips, joking that Piggy would be born with a love of waves. I was determined not to let pregnancy stop me from doing the things I loved. At the magazine where I work, two other editors were due within five weeks of me, so we bundled our pregnancy announcements into one grand reveal and shared our news with the rest of the team when I was about 15 weeks along. Our elderly parents were overjoyed, buoyed by the promise of a grandchild. With the negative results in hand and the first trimester behind us, we started telling our families and friends about Piggy. The results came back negative, meaning my pregnancy was not at increased risk for any of the conditions tested – but in a video on the testing company’s website, a cardiganed woman calmly noted the test doesn’t screen for all genetic conditions.
Our midwives walked us through a dizzying array of genetic testing options and at around 10 weeks, we opted to pay $99 privately for a non-invasive prenatal screening blood test (known as NIPS) that assessed the fetal DNA for risk of chromosomal abnormalities. My husband and I immediately started referring to our growing spawn as “Piggy.” And, at 36, I felt I’d delayed motherhood pretty much as long as I could, so I decided to go off the Pill and joked with my friends about “letting Jesus take the wheel.” He took it and got me pregnant at the first opportunity. It terrified and intrigued me in equal measure. I had the sense that having a baby would be both painful and deeply healing. “Liver and stomach of baby seen outside abdominal wall.”īut deep down, I did crave a biological family of my own, especially because I’d never grown up with one. When she asked if my husband was with me, it struck me as unnecessary.īut then came strange words that didn’t belong in my life. I wasn’t surprised to hear from her, figuring it was a routine follow up. Just a couple hours later, I was sitting in my fishbowl office when I answered a call from our midwife.
Skip hop diaper bag cracked#
That photo is the last evidence of “before.” Before the hushed voices, before the invasive procedures, before a fault line cracked open, severing me from my previous life. The next morning, I bundled up for a winter bike ride to the office and posted a silly photo on Instagram of me wearing my bike helmet under the hood of a puffy jacket. My husband and I went for Thai food afterward, photos of our yawning little one safely tucked away.
When the tech ran her wand over my stomach she found a strong heartbeat and a growing, kicking baby girl. One week later, I was back home on Vancouver Island, lying on a medical exam table, as a technician spread gel on my belly for an anatomy ultrasound. On a vacation to Mexico, Gilchrist went to a market in Sayulita, shown in a photo by her friend Kathryn Juricic, and bought a blue mobile, shown at her home in Victoria.
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