‘Aren’t you in labor?’, my husband said with a sense of urgency. I looked up to him with confusion spread across my face. It was 2:30 a.m. I was sitting on our toilet bowl trying to see if the mucus had a tinge of red. It had been 10 minutes since I was awakened by a gush of water trickling between my legs. I was hesitant to give the go signal because even if it looked like labor, I wasn’t feeling any contractions. I decided to call my doula and recount the past half hour. She calmly said, ‘Your water just broke. If you aren’t feeling anything, lie down and rest first.’

I laid down; my husband paced the floor. I remember being in an emotional state of limbo, unsure of what I wanted to happen next. Five minutes later, a familiar sensation coursed through my body. Welcome back, old friend, I thought as my toes curled up in response to the feeling…

It was not an empowering birth, but it was a humbling one. It was 3:30 am and I was in denial – the ungodliest of hours to feel such gravity. The muscles were contracting on an interval; I was curling my toes every time they were doing so. It can’t be happening, it can’t be happening, I thought. I was still six weeks away from my due date. I didn’t want to tell my husband because I didn’t want it to be true. But when half an hour passed, I woke him and he sat up in shock and worry. I checked myself in the bathroom and the next sign of labor was there – bloody discharge…

We will tell him this pregnancy was hard. I will describe to him the nights I laid wide awake, awash in worry and regret. The pandemic frightened me but the sight of two lines on a test tipped me over. I will speak of the moments his father and I fought, argued, and wished for what was not.

In a span of three years, we went from dreaming, hoping, and praying to holding our breaths and bracing ourselves for impact. Carrying an unplanned baby in the midst of a pandemic while juggling two young toddlers – that idea packs a punch. The conceived has become inconceivable…

Homeschooling. We’ve opted to go the crazy path and not sign up for any online classes. I have no plastic envelopes filled with lesson plans and worksheets. I stared in horror at the empty calendar my child was going to have this year. What in this lockdown-crazed earth are we going to do? One hard look at my child and the answer was right in front of me: follow him…

It was never ours to keep. It was never mine to design. And, especially throughout the last few months, privacy was always elusive.

But it was our sacred duty to live in it.

Two years ago, with a baby in our arms, we entered the doors of our second home. And ever since then, this place bore witness to the best of times and the worst of it.