I came close to not marrying my husband. It was the classic conflict – He wanted children; always had. I didn’t; never had. We found this out very early on in our relationship but without actually saying so we decided to keep dating since we were having so much fun together and in most ways felt connected. So, we didn’t talk about kids. I thought he would just change his mind and I’m certain that he thought the same of me. None of our friends had babies back then. It really wasn’t an issue. We carried on with our dating lives.

Once upon a time your mom was young, and little, just like you are now. And in the summers she would go and visit her grandma on Pender Island. Her grandma and grandpa had a wooden house there that her grandpa built. It was small, and cozy and your mom loved it a lot.

One of the things your mom liked best was to go down to the beach at Trincomali and play. She would wear her blue flowered bikini, the one her grandma had bought in Hawaii. She would wear her blue floaties to keep her safe, and get her mom to put her blonde hair into pigtails. And she would wade in the water.

She settles on the park bench everyday, sharing her perch with a sundry population of passersby who gravitate toward her - a pinstriped businessman, a drug numbed youth, an adventurous traveller. She grants the same gentle smile to all. The chattering ducks parade before her, so accustomed to her presence as to be oblivious.

I suffered with very severe morning sickness for my last pregnancy. My current pregnancy began the same way. To make a long story short...I've tried everything from vit B6 shots to diclectin to chiropractor to reflexology to chromium. Then a friend told me of something that she knew of two generations ago...Coke! That's right...good old Coke Classic. So now I still take Dicectin, but when I start to feel the nausea on top of that, I drink a glass of Coke Classic and the feeling soon disappears.

“I hate you. I wish that you were dead”.
The words grow huge, stretch away from her
Like the credits on a Hollywood film
They distort, make pathways until they make no sense
Disappear, leaving a clanging, jarring echo

The woman sat on the corner of the bed in the dark watching the child sleep. She adjusted the angle of the door so that enough light came in from the landing without the beam falling across his face. When her back ached from the angle of her watching she turned and looked out of the window at the moonlight glistening on the roofs but she could still hear his snuffling breath and she could smell his warm, damp skin. A cat knocked over a milk bottle on the street. She held her breath as the clatter died away. The baby slept on.