As the mattress burned, I kept an eye on the baby monitor, watching Maddie sleep. The silence between Toby and I was heavy with the uncertainty of what had been going on in our home.
A baby monitor | Source: Pexels
Later, Julia came over to make was breakfast as usual.
My husband took the lead, his voice steady but laced with an undercurrent of betrayal.
“Mom, why didn’t you tell us about the mattress? About the herbs?” he asked.
I poured Julia a cup of tea – despite everything that we had learned, she was still one of my favorite people. I loved her like I loved my mother.
My mother-in-law’s face crumpled, her usual vibrancy replaced by a somber guilt.
“I just wanted to help.
I knew that you were having trouble conceiving, and I thought that if it worked, you wouldn’t care how. I never meant to hurt either of you. Especially not my granddaughter.”
“What else did you do?
What’s in the bag? Other than the herbs?” Toby’s questions flew hard and fast around our living room.
A cup of tea | Source: Pixabay
“Nothing!” Julia exclaimed, finally registering Toby’s fear. “It’s just dried herbs.
I can give you a list of them,” she said. “I’ll take you both to the store where I got them from. It’s a sweet little apothecary next to my dentist.
It’s a store all about natural wellness.”
“You could have just told us,” I found myself saying. “How we can trust anything you do now? How do we know if our baby is a miracle baby or just an outcome of your herbs?”
“Does that matter?” she asked, her eyes brimming with tears.
“Maddie is here and she’s ours.”
I couldn’t exactly argue with that. Of course, Maddie was ours. I was just feeling wounded that Julia had done this and not told me.
I also felt obligated to be angry with her – because my husband was livid.
“I’m sorry,” my mother-in-law whispered. “I really am.”
A crying old woman | Source: Pexels
At her words, I felt Toby soften next to me.
“We need to start over, Mom,” he said. “If you plan on doing anything like this again, you have to tell us first.
We need to know what’s going on in our own homes.”
Julia nodded and smiled at us. She seemed shaken that we had discovered the truth.
I was confused – there was a part of me that was eternally grateful to her because I know how difficult it was for us to get pregnant. But at the same time, how could sleeping on a bunch of herbs actually help us get pregnant?
Toby spent the rest of the day looking for mattresses online, while Julia baked us a tart for lunch.
I just reveled in spending time with my daughter.
A woman holding a baby | Source: Pexels
What do you think? Do you believe in natural remedies and old wives tales?
