This piece was published in Wild Willow Magazine’s issue on mums (issue six, May 2026)
After the first dose of meds, my daughter, Anna, messages All very fun and relaxing so far. She and her partner, Tessa, are both outside, walking around the car park of the provincial hospital on a sunny December day as they wait for the labor to begin.
But a little later, Not fun, don’t like.
Then it’s Tessa who sends the messages. She’s timing the contractions, counting the minutes between them, as Anna breathes through the knotted pain. Deep breath in. Slowly out. In. Out. And again. Over and over.
A hundred and fifty miles away in my cottage in the city, I’m keeping track of the four rows in the knitting pattern (knit; K1, P1, repeat; knit; P1, K,1 repeat) that intertwine to form a fine lacy texture.
I’d cast on the fifty stitches in soft, charcoal-gray baby wool at about the same time the birth was induced. After only a few rows, several dropped stitches meant I’d pulled it undone and started over. But for Anna, the oxytocin in her system means no going back. Baby’s head is down, but facing the wrong way, putting extra pressure on the spine. There’s laughing gas, though it’s no laughing matter, followed by fentanyl and an epidural.
It’s only three days after Christmas and as I wait for news, the words of a nativity song go round in my head: “The hopes and fear of all the years are met in thee tonight.” My mind won’t lie still but I keep knitting, an act of faith that all will be well, yet a tangle of worry entwined into the garment that’s taking shape. I wish the knitting needles in my hands would turn into a magic wand. Three interwoven threads have gone into the making of this baby: the most viable of Tessa’s eggs, harvested at a leading fertility clinic; donor sperm, the donor chosen from a dozen profiles, no photos though; and Anna’s womb, prepared by hormone supplements to welcome the fertilized egg.
I wonder if I should jump in the car now and make the four-hour drive. To be closer, just in case. But I don’t. As I’d packed up to leave their place on Boxing Day, Anna had said, “You’re welcome to stay a couple more days until baby comes.” Instead, I’d made a run for home. I was sure the birth would go smoothly. It didn’t occur to me that Anna might really want me around – not at the birth itself, but there before and after. That in putting my own needs first, I might be behaving like my mother.
Evening stretches into night, and night into early morning. As the knitting grows apace, I hold the needles in an ever-tighter grip and struggle to keep the tension even. I realize I’ve gone wrong; got the knit one, purl one, out of order. I have to reverse knit to unpick two rows, stitch by painstaking stitch, the way my mother taught me.
By the time Tessa reports, Good progress on the cervix now, the back of the baby jersey has enlarged to a sixteen centimeter swathe. More messages come.
Anna is a bit hot. Bloods are being taken.
The midwife is in the room; several doctors too.
Then things go quiet. Several doctors? My stomach spasms as if poked and prodded by the sharp tip of the knitting needles that are still in my hands, still restlessly looping and twisting yarn. My great-great-grandmother died in childbirth, my niece almost did. And sepsis is still one of the main causes of maternal death everywhere. A small brandy loosens the tension, unravels the tears. It’s all going on so far away. I promise myself that when the next child comes along, I’ll be close by.
Then a message arrives on my phone with good tidings.
It’s a baby!
A flurry of photos follow.
My tears turn to sobs of relief.
The waiting is over. My first grandchild has been pushed and pulled, delivered out into the world. They stitch up Anna’s episiotomy tear, baby lying swaddled against her chest.
I run my hand over the silky soft square that was no more than a ball of wool some hours before, breathe deeply.
The birds are waking by the time everyone is ready to settle for the night. Tessa sends a picture of the newborn babe, its eyes shut tight, tucked up in a hand-knitted shawl. With my mind arcing to the tender new life, safely arrived and ensconced in a hospital crib, I drift into sleep.
(Photo by Tara Evans on Unsplash)
Fragments of an ordinary life 