by Vicki Niedzielska

Created on: October 18, 2008

No one was more shocked than I was to discover that contrary to all the beliefs I had firmly held onto for the first 29 years of my life, I actually do posses a maternal streak. It was well buried, and would in all likelihood have never managed to fight it's way to the surface of it's own accord. It was well buried under layer upon layer of selfishness, self-doubt, and a nagging suspicion that there would be a bit more to life than I had so far discovered. I was going to travel the world, curing hunger, pestilence and litter in the process. I was going to explore tropical jungles and ice capped mountains (as long as there were five star hotels in a reasonable vicinity), and most of all I was going to be different. My life would be different. Special. Meaningful, exciting, unique and a long list of other adjectives that flowed freely whenever I spent an evening in the company of my wayward friend Lucy and a few bottles of mid-priced wine. Then suddenly everything changed.

Somehow, I found myself pregnant, engaged, and heading dangerously towards that mystical state of being "settled". I swear I do not know how it happened. I remember the butterflies in the stomach when I set eyes on Adam for the first time. Exactly how those butterflies of suspense translated into the entirely different feeling that accompanies Morning Sickness well, I have to admit the details are fuzzy. I rather think that Adam was as mystified as I, and we have an unspoken agreement that we will leave the details alone, as analyzing them too much might just put us on slightly uneasy territory. There is a dangerous patch in our history, which if lingered over for too long might prove rather explosive, and so we hop and skip over those few months, rather as one might dash across hot coals. For the first two years of our "no pressure, we are together when we want to be" relationship we did a very successful job of fixing our gaze firmly toward the hazy vista of the future and concentrating on the creation of our special and meaningful lives, which would, probably, run in parallel.

From a vague supposition that we would embark on future adventures together, suddenly we were bound, tied and otherwise welded together, apparently for all eternity (and not in the "oh damn, we have lost the key to the handcuffs again" kind of way). Those wispy ideas of sharing adventures became as fixed and unmovable as the mountains I had been planning to climb. The experience of feeling the earth flip in a double

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