Seems I live in the most fertile house in history. Everything about this house is fertile and that’s partly why this house was so appealing to buy. Eight children and two parents lived here before we bought it last summer. Later I learned that the mother was expecting her ninth baby.
The neighbors joke, “Don’t drink the water in that house!” I was drinking water by the gallons, are you kidding me? Although normally I’m pretty conscious of drinking only filtered water, I started drinking straight from the tap as well as offering it to all of my fertility clients.
But it’s not just the people who lived here that were fertile, it’s all the animals that made their home here too; the carpenter bees that placed their larvae in our deck, which we figured out when a woodpecker kept showing up for lunch every day, the ants in the bathroom and mice in the basement. This place started to feel like a show on the nature channel. When the raccoon moved into our chimney with its babies, I couldn’t take it anymore. Everyone seemed to be able to multiply, but the two of us.
All the animals were safely removed, well the ants and bee larvae not so much, but the mice and raccoon families were left unharmed. As I’m not too keen on any more animals in the house, domestic or otherwise, I thought I’d start focusing on being fertile in other ways, like with a garden.
In the fall, my husband and I planted hundreds of tulips, daffodils and irises. I was so looking forward to their arrival and for months have been searching for any sign of life. As I look around the neighborhood I see tulip leaves popping up everywhere and then I look at our blank space and don’t see anything in bloom yet. Infertility seems to have even affected my belief that anything can grow. My husband has been very optimistic about our tulips blooming, but I lost faith in them. So we started planting a vegetable garden, I thought maybe we’ll have better luck with that working.
We carefully sowed the seeds in little individual planters with fertile soil and watered them carefully. We placed them on the windowsill in our dining room and waited. My husband and I kept checking every morning to see if anything had popped up. When the first little broccoli seedling arrived, my husband was out of town, so like a proud mama I texted him a picture. We were both so excited. I decided to look outside to see if the tulips had started to appear too; nothing, just plain dirt. When the kale, chives, onions, tomatoes, peppers and thyme started to arrive we were so happy. It started to feel like Christmas, running down the stairs to see what Santa left under the tree. This morning I saw the biggest zucchini seedling starting to emerge, ten times the size of the broccoli. We’re waiting to see life arrive from the asparagus, stevia, cilantro, basil, and parsley seeds. Plus, we have started grafting fruit trees. We both decided to go easy and start small, ha, can you tell we’re overachievers?
This garden has given me so much hope. Hope in new life, in the possibility that I am able to nurture life and watch it bloom. My husband gently led me by the hand yesterday as he had something he wanted to show me. Some red tips were pushing their way through the ground where we planted our spring flowers. Seems like the tulips took after their parents, they were just late bloomers.
Jenilyn Gilbert, 42, is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker, Certified Yoga Instructor and is currently trying to conceive. For fifteen years she has successfully helped hundreds of women become mothers. She provides fertility and adoption consultations through her business, One Way or A Mother. She worked as an adoption counselor at The Cradle in Evanston, IL, and also as a fertility coach and fertility yoga teacher at a variety of holistic fertility centers in Chicago. The number one thing she has experienced, which brings about more peace on the journey to motherhood, along with more babies, is women supporting other women. Jenilyn resides with her husband and a dream. She can be found at her blogsite: www.onewayoramother.com.