I had a wonderful pregnancy, the very best a woman could hope for with a first child. I checked my belly every morning to see if I had a bulge yet, but I didn’t manage to produce one until the end of my fourth month. It appeared around the time that I stopped my endless indulgence on grapefruit and began to endlessly indulge on sour green apples. Oliver brought a sack of them home for me every night, that sweet man, along with anything else I had wanted the day before or he thought I might like. He took excellent care of me and our baby.

Poor Oliver. He really must have thought that I'd gone mad, but he took all my whims and moods in stride. “Sweetie,” He whispered one night from beside me on the sofa at his mother's house, “Are you crying?”

I had been trying to hold my breath for several minutes, but upon hearing his voice, I burst out with a loud sob and bawled, “Yes!”

He immediately drew me into his arms, “What’s wrong?”

“That show!” I didn't want to admit what had actually set me off, so I kept it general.

“Huh?” He was sincerely confused, “Doctor Who is making you cry?” He paused, figuring out the true source, “Oh! It was the tissue commercial?”

“Yes!” I wailed and buried my face into his arm. I could feel him shaking gently as he held in a fit of laughter. “Shut up,” I mumbled and he shook harder.

I had the oddest cravings for food combinations as well during those nine months. I remember fixing breakfast for us one day. I was so proud of myself, it looked so delicious spread over the table, but when Oliver walked out he made such a face I baulked, “What?”

“What is this?”

“It's breakfast!”

He scratched his head and said nothing more, but still looked a bit put off as he sat down.

“Are you going to eat anything?” I asked, slightly offended.

Oliver paused, looking at me adoringly across the table, “I'd like to make some eggs. Would that be all right?”

“But I made breakfast!” I looked at the table and stopped immediately. It was only about eight o'clock in the morning and I'd prepared bean burritos with sour cream, sliced green apples, and large slices of birthday cake.

“Yeah,” Oliver agreed, seeing the expression on my face and realising I understood, “I think this is more-like for you than me.”

We both began to giggle.

It went beyond that, though. Those things are fairly normal. My pregnancy issues went further. Where most expectant mothers are exhausted and want to sleep more, there was me, who was suddenly ten times as energetic as I'd ever been. And that was saying loads considering my previous stamina.

“You need to sleep more,” Oliver wandered into the kitchen in the middle of the night and stood in the doorway in his pyjama pants, “Pregnancy has made you completely hyperactive. It‘s not good for you or the baby for you to be running around like a lunatic all the time.”

“I’m nesting.”

“It’s three in the bloody morning!” He objected, sounding as grumpy as his father, “We only have five rooms! The stove can wait until it’s light! Will you please come to bed?”

I did, but I had terrible insomnia. I was out of my mind cleaning most days and nights to ease it, reading during the day when the light was good. None of it helped me sleep any, but the cabin smelled absolutely wonderful.

Pregnancy had not only made me a connoisseur of bizarre food combinations and utterly hyperactive, but it had rendered me mildly retarded. I found myself losing track of time, redoing things I had already finished, bumping into things and hitting my head constantly. I couldn’t remember from one moment to the next what I was about to do just before I forgot. This made for a bad time at my job. I couldn’t concentrate. Halfway through my second trimester, I made mistakes that could have been avoided and I was reprimanded. The odd thing was that I didn’t care. My career wasn’t important to me anymore. Still, the attitude with which my supervisor approached me was annoying and I did not hold my tongue once I was home.

Oliver sat in his chair silently and listened to me as I vented. He was slow to speak, but when he did, what he said surprised me, “Well,” He leaned back and looked into my eyes, “Maybe you should think about staying home full time with the baby.”

I couldn't believe he was suggesting it. “And waste all that schooling?”

He scratched his chin, “Well, no. Not really. I’ve told Doctor Caldwell that we’d do well to have our own laboratory at the office. Do everything in house, so we don’t have to wait so long for results. He agrees, but we’d need someone to organize it. Mind, you could do that.”

“And how would I stay home with the baby if I did that?” I liked the idea of what he was saying, I just wasn't sure if we could manage it.

“Well, you wouldn’t have to be there all the time,” He explained. I could tell this was something he'd been thinking about for a while. Oliver often seemed as if he were incredibly spontaneous, and he could be, but more often than not when he made large moves they were pondered for a long period of time and ironed out in his mind so that there were no mistakes, “You set it up and help us hire a few people. If we needed you, you could bring the baby with you. It‘s a paediatric office, Love. The baby will fit right in.”

“How will we afford me not working?” I had to be sure before I agreed. I wasn't making a great salary, but it was half of his and together we were sure to do all right.

“We’ll deal with that,” He answered placidly, patting his knee to signal Duncan that he could join him on the chair, “I’m making more now and we’re beginning to catch up. I have my trust coming soon and that will put us ahead.”

“Are you sure?”

“Silvia,” His dark eyes bored right into my soul, “I’d rather have you home with our child than out making us rich. Some things money just isn’t worth.”

I put my notice in to the chagrin of my employers, who offered me a raise to stay. It was tempting, but a sharp kick from within my uterus told me it wasn’t a good idea. I declined and left the building with an intense feeling of relief. All my life I'd dreamed of being a scientist, but now the only thing that was important to me was my family. My husband and that little baby living inside of me were my main focus and I was thrilled I had the chance to dedicate my entire life to them. Working was a stress on my mind and on my body and I knew the baby and I were much better off just buzzing about the cabin and avoiding the cold winter that raged outside our doors. Plus my belly was getting so big I was having trouble getting in and out of my car. I wasn’t sure how long it would be before I couldn’t drive.

Not that I needed to. Oliver came home every night with a bag of goodies, kissed me on the mouth and then put his hands on and kissed my belly. “Hello, you muffin!” He’d say, “I heard you’ve been telling your mother you want oranges! Healthy choice! You’re going to be a clever one, you are!” and then he'd stand up and come back to me, “Come here,” He's take me into his arms, “I missed you all day.”

“I missed you, too. Are you hungry?”

It was a rhetorical question, of course. Oliver had been born starving and never ceased to be seeking a meal. And so we'd have dinner and then we'd sit together and chat and giggle or sometimes, just lie close and be quiet and enjoy the time we had alone.

He had been right, as he usually was, about Doctor Caldwell. The good doctor had enthusiastically taken Oliver on staff as an assistant doctor. He was grooming him to take over the practice when, three months later, as Oliver put it, “Being older than the first rays of light, he took his retirement and carked it on hols in Poland.” My husband was more than happy and willing to take a loan to purchase the practice from Missus Caldwell, which included a wide area around where we lived. He took out more money than he needed and by our eighth month, Oliver and I suddenly had some money to burn.