Ahhh! I am free, free, free. My feet say Clap! Clap! on this hard floor. Clap! This room full of cupboards and handles and finger-places. Treasures treasures, all for me. Spoons and lids and sticks and mashers, all ready and waiting for bangers and crashers. For me, all mine. Ahhh! Here: BANG! BANG! And here: TWANG! TWANG! I open and close and open and close and open and close and CRASH! Ohhh! Wonderful magical Bangs, always finding me. Now over here I pu- NOOOO! Murder! Bloody! Horrid! Thieves! Torture! Rack! Agony! Anguish! Woe! They take away, always away! So much and they take! No still! Mad! Bad! Nasty! Mean! Away! No more be done to! NOOOO!

He goes as limp as a noodle, throws his head back and wails, screeches, flails.

I’m already tired of The Fight. It’s the blasted freedom that did it: the walking. He has tasted ownership over the world, and there’s no going back. He belongs more to Himself now, swamped with discovery.

Today, thanks to highchair-aversion, he ate the following: one-half Baby Mum-Mum (munched while walking). Four spoonfuls blueberry mush (stuffed in mid-scream, sitting still). Three cups juice (sipped while walking).

The two of us collide and persist, him finding delight and me ruining it, a hundred times a day. It’s only bound to escalate, and I’m already losing.

Once again, calling on the trailblazers: Is the most recently surpassed stage always christened ‘The Easiest’, compared to the throes of today? Or is there one truly easier stage of parent/childhood? I already don’t like what you’re going to say, but I’ll ask just the same.

There’s a dead house next door. Evan and I walk to the beach to feed the winter ducks, and we pass it on the way. It sits forgotten, friendless and mournful. The paint has faded and cracked to match the salt-soaked wood, and the remnants of a fanciful trim along the eaves are long past irrelevant. Every window is broken, and through the shards and gloom I can see wallpaper inside, pinstripes and rosebuds.

I stand in front of it, stepping closer, trespassing. Waiting for it to wake up and explain itself. People were born in there; people died in there. How can a house stand through a hundred and fifty years of hurricanes and nor’easters only to wither away, alone? It stares back at me and sighs. I don’t know, it says.

Houses like this are scattered throughout the south shore of Nova Scotia. And fishing boats, too: beached and left to rot, hollow and exposed. A study of peace in abandonment. There’s one just down the road, keeled over on a strip of sand. I hope no one ever takes it away.

Evan’s getting antsy. It’s time to go. Why are we stopped? He wonders. It’s just a falling-down old house.

Many things culminating lately, banging together, rollicking around in the brain. Contemplations of a second pregnancy, labour and delivery bring the first one to mind for rehashing and reflecting.

The story of Evan’s birth, I admit, is sterile, tidied. I recorded the plot points faithfully, but much of the mess trickled away down into the bilge where it belongs, sloshing around beneath the ocean. A vivid but less than pristine collection of memories that stinks a little on a hot day. I keep them, but I don't take them out much.

They're irrelevant now, footnotes diminished in the brightness of Evan.

Birth is gorgeous, but not pretty. It makes you feel indescribably powerful, but its audience requires the shedding of all inhibitions.

Birth stretches you, pushes you, taunts you, bullies you, thrills you, shames you. It kicks you in the pants so hard you won’t sit down for a week. But then it’s over, and the next day breaks. They bring you soggy toast, cold tea and a celebrity gossip rag. You look outside and buses are running, people are late for work. The world trudges on, oblivious.

I’m a mother now! You want to hang out the window and yell, shaken and bruised but joyous. Can’t you see? I did it. Everything’s changed.

Your child-burrito snores in a plastic box, nose squashed, forcep-dented, chalky goop clinging to every crease. The most perfect 7 pounds, 9 ounces you’ll ever know. And you are more proud, more fulfilled, stronger than you’ve ever been in your entire life.

The messy stuff faded with the thrill of meeting our son. But contemplating another round of pregnancy and birth, I’m remembering more. To remind myself that I’m made of tough stock, that I can do it again.

Pride is not in having labour go exactly as you planned, all soft music and chanting and kissing and eucalyptus oil in the air. Sometimes your inner goddess says I'm outta here. Pride is in something else taking over. In discovering reserves of adaptability. We survive, even when it all goes to pot.

I was curled up in a ball for hours, immobilized with back labour. I had envisioned being a natural champ: moving, walking, bathing, turning, coaxing. But it wasn’t to be. Both of us, me and my backwards boy, were frozen. A full day like this made him stressed, exhausted.

His heart rate plummeted. The room erupted into Plan B, a gruff OB-GYN was brought on board and I was given a cup of some vile liquid to drink: NOW. What’s it for? I asked. Just drink it, an unfamiliar nurse replied. I obeyed, and it made me throw up. Christ. A heads-up would’ve been appreciated.

People are running in and out of the room, unplugging instruments, tugging at me. They tell me to hurry, and Justin’s wearing scrubs. I’m trying not to cry, to keep it together. An emergency c-section after twelve hours of back labour. Hysteria bubbles, wrestles with logic. I have not failed. I have not failed.

One nurse in particular laughed at me all the way down the hallway as they wheeled me into the OR, yelling, “She’s a puker! She’s a puker! We all had to wait because she puked!”

Stupid twat. I wished I’d thought to aim it in her direction.

The operating table is shaped like a T, and arms are strapped down to keep them out of the way. I was a sacrificial offering, soon to be devoured. Fixed at the wrist and ankles under spotlights, fifteen-odd masked faces staring at me, whispering, waiting for gore. 'Vulnerable' isn't sufficient. All that was missing was the bone necklace. Half of me found it funny: the other half was terrified.

The obstetrician gave me one contraction – one chance to push under duress of major surgery. I pushed to avoid that c-section, to get out of that room, to get back to soft lights and people I trusted. And so my very own Rocky Balboa corkscrewed his way into the world.

They stitched and wiped and pressed and murmured around me, and I strained to see past all the blue-clad figures huddled around the plastic box. Two purple legs, kicking, the flash of a tiny hand, matted, sticky dark hair.

And Pouf! There was no one else in the room but me and our son. Even Justin was a blur as I thought Bring him to me so I can finally look in his eyes and know he’s real, my inhabitant.

I’ll always remember the lime popsicles. The smiling nurse who came to look at me, early on, and said briskly, Dear, now dear, you’re a mess. Let’s mop you up, and you’ll be good as new. She made me feel dignified against all odds. The fresh strawberries and pineapple our family brought from Pete’s Frootique on Spring Garden Road, explosively refreshing. The quality of light when late one afternoon, we laid a sleepy Evan on the hospital bed and he obliged us with pictures, and we fell in love.

It was the first day of a bigger, vaster life.

I’m not sure why I’ve revisited this, revised it. Labour is a raw, complicated endeavour, the entrusting of a piece of your soul to another. I’m going to do it again before too long. I’ll be swept away in the rapids once more, hoping not to be smashed into the rocks.

But, as in everything else, all we can do is turn our smashings into learning, conviction, and passion for life.

“Don’t bother waiting,” my fellow yogi said at class on Saturday morning. “Just do it now. If you wait until Evan’s out of diapers, he’ll only end up regressing once the second comes along. It’s just like <name removed to protect the guilty>. When my second was born, he started pooping on the coffee table. I wouldn’t tell him that now – he’s 24. But that’s what he did.”

To impregnate, or not to impregnate? That is the question. We see ourselves as a two-fer family, so it’s not the numbers that are up for debate. It’s the timing.

If we were on the two-year-gap track, I’d have to get pregnant by the spring. But.. but.. but.. it’s not fair! I’m back to myself again, just. I’m not leaving milky puddles on the sheets. I smell good. I am light of foot and nimble of mind. I know what month it is, and I don’t open the fridge door to put a clean frying pan away. How do I love thee, mojo? Let me count the ways.

Three years: that’s what I’d been thinking. Give my recovered self a nice, long break; give Evan a chance to learn how to pee standing up; get through the terrible twos. My hopes, however naïve: that a three-year-old Evan would be more likely to respond to reason (or at least bribery), making it easier for us to cope as a family of four.

Now, we’re on the fence. The Do-It-Quick camp says:

• Compress the diaper years, even if it means they overlap.
• The sooner you get pregnant, the sooner you’ll be done with it for good. Your body is never really yours again until you’re done.
• Kids born closer together are closer in spirits.
• It might take you longer to concieve than you think. May as well get started now.

• Why would you allow yourself to have two in diapers at the same time? Why, in the name of all that’s holy?
• Why rush? You’re not ticking yet.
• Kids born further apart are easier to manage.
• Don’t start trying unless you’re ready to get pregnant tomorrow.

Readers, family, friends: please weigh in. Cast your vote in the Evan’s Little Sibling Sweepstakes! A prize, yet-to-be-determined, will be delivered nine months from the contest close (also yet-to-be-determined).

Almost nightly, Justin explodes out of a deep sleep to frantic ‘I’ve crushed/lost/dropped the child’ delusions.

He turns the light on, turns the bed upside down, bashes around the room like a trapped moth.

Whereizze? Whassat? No! Whereizze? Stop! No!

It’s okay, I say. He’s in his crib, he’s safe.

What? He says, unconvinced. What?

The cogs turn and he comes to, realizes he's fallen for it again. Crib? Safe. Oh. Then back into bed. Sorry. Inside of thirty seconds, he is snoring. I spend the next hour tossing and turning, cursing his inherited ability to fall asleep like.. a baby.

We take turns. I used to do it, back in the breastfeeding days. I’d wake, panic-stricken, convinced I’d forgotten him, suffocated him, rolled over onto him. I’d reach for the nearest body and try desperately to pull it towards me, thinking I was saving the baby from tumbling onto the floor. But it wasn’t the baby: it was Justin. Oh. Sorry.

We take turns. Ridiculing each others’ anxiety, diffusing it like a boggart. Someone has to do it.

Pre-child vow #42: My child will not watch television. We will play, use our imaginations and read books. There will be a zero-tolerance policy for willful brain rot, open-mouth-breathing and ADD cultivation.

(Note to reader: pre-child vow #41 was “I will not throw up during labour”, and #43 was “there will be no plastic in my house”.)

Given the track record to date, it should come as no surprise that Evan giggles every time Mr. Toppemhat comes on screen. He is enraptured, watching in awe as Thomas and His Friends clack along the tracks of Sodor Island, delivering ice cream to the beach and children to the fair.

And I get breakfast, a contented ten minutes to drink tea and poach eggs.

Then it’s back to living room laps, crudnut-swallowing and cat-tormenting, chicken soup for the toddler's soul.

Is it so bad? We all watched it. The Muppet Show, Carol Burnett, Hercules at lunchtime. But thanks to legions of unchecked children and lazy parents, television is a pariah. The lowest common denominators – parents who warm the house with broadcast glow, hours per day – have caused TV to be proclaimed evil for all.

Letting your child watch must be like choosing formula over breast. You feel compelled to justify your choice to not swim against the tide of trailer park parenting.

My child eats gnocchi with parmesan, you want to say. I’m not one of Them. It’s not like I’d sit him in front of ‘Barney’ with a bag of cheez-its and a can of coke.

He stands in his playpen, transfixed, and shame takes root in the pit of my stomach. But then he squeals happily, just in time for singalong. My tea is getting cold, and the bagel just popped. Five minutes. Maybe seven, tops.