Knitting again

*This is a follow-up post to Knit together*

As anyone who has experienced it can attest to, the time between miscarriage and next conception passes painfully slowly. At it's worst, sex changes from a leisure activity to a science experiment, and every subsequent period feels like another miscarriage. You don't just want to be pregnant. You want to STILL be pregnant. Each day that passes brings your original due date closer, and on the darkest days you feel like you will never be pregnant again.

And then one day, you are.

We got that coveted positive result one Saturday afternoon, and my spirit soared. My hands were shaking, I couldn't stop smiling, and my husband was thrilled. We called a babysitter and went out to dinner and a movie. I happily ordered a non-alchoholic drink. But I didn't start knitting again.

I made my first doctor's appointment. I told my family. I started taking prenatal vitamins. But I didn't start knitting again. And then, about 7 weeks in, I started bleeding again.

It was a Thursday afternoon. I was home with Nik, and my husband was at work. Nik went down for a nap, and I laid down for a little while, too. When I got up, I had to go to the bathroom. When I looked into the toilet, it was full of blood.

I was frozen. I just stared at the red water, not believing what I was seeing. We hadn't even talked about the possibility of it happening again. I walked out of the bathroom, in a cloud of numbness. I went to the phone, and called my husband, my mother, and told them what I knew. I called the local health line, who told me to call my doctor. I got an appointment for the next day, and he told me to rest, and wait and see. My husband called his parents. I called my workplace. Everyone was quiet. Everyone wished us the best. Everyone knew there was nothing they could do.

I didn't cry.

I bled for 3 and a half days. It went from red to brown and stopped. I couldn't believe it stopped. My doctor said it was a good sign and scheduled an ultrasound. I went back to working, with strict instructions not to do any lifting, to take it easy. After a week back at work, I got my ultrasound, and my husband and I got to see our baby's heart beating on June 18th, 2010. But I didn't start knitting again.

Something about being let down leaves a scar, like losing a kind of innocence. I married the first man I loved. I never had to go through a heartbreak in my courtship years. I know what is it to have my heart broken now.

I didn't really talk about the way that I was feeling. I didn't even really FEEL the way I was feeling. But I could see it in the things that weren't there. No pregnancy books by the bed. No talk to Nik about the coming baby. No browsing in the baby section of stores. No knitting.

As my waistband got tighter, things started to slowly change. I dug my maternity clothes out of storage, washed them, and hung them in the closet. I dusted off the pregnancy books on my bookshelf, and put some new ones on hold at the library. We started to talk to Nik about the baby that was coming after Christmas. And, finally, I took out my knitting, and added on just a few cautious rows.

Baby steps, right?

Knit together

My husband's brother has a daughter that lives in Regina with her mom. She is our geographically closest relative on my husband's side, and we try to make it out to see her twice a year. The most recent visit we had fell on Sinterklaas weekend.

Sinterklaas is the Dutch version of St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus. My husband's father was born in Holland (as was my own mother), and he grew up with Sinterklass visits, and continued the tradition with us, starting the very first Christmas we were married. Sinterklaas comes on December 5th, leaving you to discover your gifts in your shoes the next morning.

My gift this past holiday was a pair of knitting needles, a skein of pretty varigated purple and turquoise yarn, and a book for beginning knitters with illustrated instructions and lots of knitting patterns. I started learning the cast on, knit and purl stitches from the book that same morning, and kept practicing later that day on the car trip home.

My first project was a scarf, which, due to my inexperience in judging size and wool amount, was quickly turning out to be not for me, as I had planned, but for the Winnie the Pooh bear that lives in Nik's crib. Ah, well. I knew that next I would try a real pattern, and could avoid that particular way-too-small pitfall. After learning that I was expecting our second child, a child likely conceived during our Sinterklass weekend getaway, I knew just which pattern I wanted to try. My knitting book had a simple pattern for a very pretty baby blanket - no increases or decreases, just the straight knit and purl stitches I had already learned and practiced, and it turned out a cute grid pattern. Perfect.

I bought the wool at Michaels shortly after Christmas, but didn't start the blanket right away. I didn't want to make the new hobby mistake of just starting projects and never finishing them. I had to finish that darn scarf first! Poor Winnie the Pooh must be cold in just that t-shirt in this dreaded Winnipeg winter. How could I let him down? The new yarn sat with my pattern in my knitting bag, untouched, while I worked on the scarf.

Then one Saturday in late January, I found brown spotting in my underpants. Probably nothing. When it was still happening on Monday, I called the public health nurse, who told me to see someone in a few days if it didn't stop. Still spotting, I bought the right size needles for the baby blanket that Wednesday and cast on the first row.

Thursday afternoon, I went down to my GP's office as a walk-in. Getting up to 16 rows while waiting to see the doctor, I was knitting faster than ever. My doctor sent me home with the next week off work, and instructions to take it easy: "I think it will correct itself if you give it a chance. No lifting. Just rest."

"Alright, " I thought, "I'll just sit and knit."

Sunday morning, I went to church on my own, while my husband stayed home with Nik. The message was about heaven, and the pastor opened with these words from the Eric Clapton song:

"Would you know my name, if I saw you in heaven ?
Will it be the same, if I saw you in heaven ?"

The paster went on to comfort the congregation with Scriptures indicating that we would know our loved ones in heaven, and even though the nature of the relationships will change, they will surpass even the best relationships we experience in this life. I gave God a dirty look in my heart. I do not need a sermon about death right now, Lord. Everything is going to be fine.

On the way home from the service, I heard that same Eric Clapton song on my car stereo. It was, unbeknownst to me, just up next in my playlist. I didn't like the omen. That afternoon, I knit my baby blanket. In the evening, when I went to my parent's for supper, I took everything along, and just kept knitting.

Knitting became my plea, my physical prayer. Surely, the baby would HAVE to come if there was a handmade blanket being prepared for it. The Lord would see how I am preparing for this child so much, even in just the second month. Knit 8, purl 8, knit 4, purl 8... My hands moved in my desperate plea for mercy.

On Monday, my spotting turned to bleeding, and by the end of the day it was a full period flow. I knit my blanket. I knit on Tuesday, too, even while trying to keep an eye on my active 2 year old son. Tuesday morning, Nik interuptted me when I was halfway through the 2nd knit row in the pattern. I pushed my knitting far down on the needles, and put it down to read him a story. Then I got busy, and put my knitting away in my knitting bag, planning to finish the row just a little later.

Tuesday evening, just before Nik's bedtime, I had contractions. I knew what they were. Nothing feels like labour but labour. 15 minutes later I had passed the miscarriage I knew deep down had occured days before. As my husband helped me pack some things to take along to the emergency room, he asked me, "Do you want your knitting?"

"No, just leave it," I said. And I have left it. I haven't finished that half-finished row. I haven't even touched it. I just put my knitting bag back into the corner where I keep it.

I know God understands. He is a knitter, too, after all. And when he starts knitting again, so will I.

"For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother's womb."
Psalm 139.13

Simple Living

This photo reminds of the mama I would like to be in the midst of the rushed mom I usually am.

I am attracted to minimalism. Photos of wicker baskets on spacious shelves make me happy. Clean lines appeal to me. I even like the term, 'white space'. When I read of someone living the pared down lifestyle, baking their own bread and making wooden toys for their children with their own hands, I feel wistful. But when I try to adopt that lifestyle myself? Well, let me just say it does not go so smoothly.

Maybe it is because simplicity appeals to my head and to my aestetic self, but not my down-and-dirty day-to-day life self. Like silence, that in concept seems to have so much merit, in practice I am uncomfortably at odds with it. So, I fill that silence with conversation, that closet with clothes, that empty page with the written word. I am the master of the collection, and of the run-on sentence.

It isn't that I am all wishing and no action, either. I faithfully declutter, donating to the local thrift stores every couple months. I empty, and purge and organize. I try to live by William Morris' words:

"Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful."

Ah. I love those words. They are like a tall drink of water for my soul. My closed-eyes sitting on a mountain yoga soul. My artist soul. But my reality is generally not so poetic.

Let us talk of real life for a moment, and not of dreams and wishes. Somewhere along my journey of getting to know the part of me that believes in breastfeeding, cloth-diapering, baby-wearing, and co-sleeping, I stumbled into the idea of voluntary simplicity. It seems that there are people out there living contentedly within their own modest means, sewing and baking, homeschooling and gardening, spending less and having less all around. How deliciously counter-cultural! Rather than getting caught up in the race to have the biggest or the newest or the fastest, some people are realizing that it can be enough to simply have enough.

Swept up with this idea, I did what can be expected of me in such a situation: I researched the @#$! out of it. I visited blogs, purused websites, checked books out of the library, and read, read, read. I had so many questions: How did this work? How could you make such a lifestyle change? What were the benefits? What were the risks? Can you live this way in the city, or does it require a hideaway in the woods? Do I have to keep goats? (This would be a deal breaker.)

So much of what I read reassured me that simplicity, at it's core, is an attitude, not a rigid set of lifestyle rules. Authors encouraged me to just start somewhere, and grow from there. Well, baking bread was out, and although I have a hand-me-down sewing machine from my mother, I am a little afraid of it, so that was out, too. But what about TV? So much of what I read recommended eliminating or seriously cutting back on your screen time, especially television. Hmm... That might be a possibility. If we got rid of the TV all together, there would be no more fighting with Nik about whether or not we would be turning it on, that's for sure. But how would I convince my husband...?

Just then, the phone rings. It's my dad. He bought himself a new flat screen TV on his holiday shopping trip. Do we want his old big-screen CRT? Thank you, Lord. I am laughing on the inside.

Skip to the end. After some discussion, I find myself watching as my husband expands our entertainment unit to make room for our new big screen TV. He is happy as a clam. I am feeling like a simplicity school drop-out. So much for my mountain yoga soul.

But as the weeks went by after that, I realized I was putting way to much pressure on the "No TV" change. No TV will not automatically equal more nature walks, more wholesome food, hand crafts and inner peace. I guess I can't build my best life by just cutting things out of my current one. There is probably a little more to it.

So, I am still on the journey. I am learning to knit. I am drinking more tea. And that big screen TV is spending a lot of time turned off, while I build train tracks with my son and mix up brownies in the kitchen. Maybe one day, I'll even crack open that sewing machine.