1Mmm, RaisinsI don’t have time for this crap.
I sat in my car, looking down at the bottle of orange syrupy liquid in my hand that the lab tech had casually instructed me to drink. I took a sip. Nasty. But alas, I am a good girl, so I drank it. A few hours later, I was back at the lab, eyes closed and my arm outstretched while the tech pierced my vein and drew my blood to see how well my body was tolerating the sugar bomb.
A positive test result would mean I’d won the gestational diabetes lottery and that my body wasn’t processing sugar properly. This diagnosis would come with a strict new diet to avoid health complications for both me and the baby. And sure, I wanted a healthy baby. But also? Sugar is one of my personal seven wonders of the world. The idea of giving up Twizzlers and Two-Bite Brownies for the duration of my pregnancy? Unrealistic. Sadistic, even.
Since getting pregnant, I’d become a blood-test frequent flyer. The amount of visits to the doctor, midwife, and lab made monitoring my health feel like a part-time job. I already had two of those.
By day, I worked a high-stress job on my feet as an educational assistant, supporting students with special needs in schools across my rural county. By night, I was a server at a fast-paced fancy restaurant. Between the two jobs, I crushed my step goal every day. By nearly all measures, I was a healthy twenty-five-year-old pregnant woman. Still, they had to check the boxes, I guess.
When I arrived at my midwife’s office a few days later to get my results, I was greeted by a fill-in. Let’s call her . . . Agatha. Think the Trunchbull from Matilda, whiskers and all. She called my name, and I waddled into her office.
“I’ve got your results here,” she said with a thick Austrian accent, pursing her lips. “Are you drinking coffee?”
“Just decaf tea,” I said, proud of myself for being a rule follower.
“Sugar?” she asked, with her head cocked to the side, as if she already didn’t believe what I was going to say.
“No, just milk,” I said, shifting in my seat, my legs throbbing after my long day at work.
“Good. Your result is negative. BUT! You could still develop diabetes at any time and that would be very bad for your baby! You must be careful. No junk food, no candy, no sweets, and no sugar in your coffee!” she asserted triumphantly.
Ludicrous! I felt my eyebrows lift and tried to pull them back down, desperate to hide what I was really thinking.
“If you really need a treat, have a handful of raisins,” she added.
I held back my laughter like my life depended on it. “I can’t have any sugar whatsoever?” I asked, in utter disbelief.
“Yes, no candy or treats. Eat whole foods and only those that are naturally sweet,” she said. Did she live on planet earth?
I gave a polite nod while my mind drifted to my hunger pains and the doughnut I planned to eat on the way to my second shift after this appointment. I’ll try to cut a realistic amount of sugary things from my diet, but hard pass on the raisins, Agatha. I’ve got enough to think about.
She carried on with the rest of the appointment, weighing me, listening to my stomach, and listing off more rules. “Drink lots of water! Take your vitamins. Don’t be stressed, the baby can feel it. No processed meat. Don’t gain too much weight but make sure you are eating enough. Take care of yourself,” she said.
Inside Libby: I’m tryinggggg, lady.
Outside Libby: Got it.
When she asked how I was feeling, I remembered the problems I was having with my legs.
“My legs have been bothering me a lot lately, getting more swollen as the day goes on, throbbing and even some of my veins are bulging out,” I said, hoping for a quick solution.
“Stand up and let me see,” she asserted.
I pulled up the skirt of my dress to show her and that’s how the Trunchbull met Big Blue and his brother, Bulgy Blue—my enormous throbbing veins.
“Oh. Those are varicose veins. You’ll have to stay off your feet as much as possible. Certainly, no standing for long periods,” she said with stern certainty.
Did she think I was some kind of viscountess straight out of Victorian England? Like, I could while away hours in bed while my ladies-in-waiting fetched me cheddar scones and freshly churned butter? This is real life. I have bills to pay. I have a baby to prepare for. Such realities involve being a person who stands upright—a lot.
“That’s not possible in my line of work. Are there other options?” I asked.
She looked at me, shaking her head, seemingly disappointed by my very being.
“Well . . .” she tutted. “If you really can’t, you must wear thigh-high compression stockings whenever you are standing. You’ll have to buy a pair as soon as possible,” she said. As I got up to leave, she called out, “And don’t forget to put your feet up!”
The next day I bought a pair of old-lady compression stockings just like she told me to. I used the money from tips I’d been saving to buy a maternity bra for my growing breasticles. Priorities, I guess. I wrestled the miniature uncomfortable elastic-y tubes of torture onto the pasty-white swollen legs of my five-foot-eight body that was once so slender, youthful, and freckled that my family called me Pippi Longstocking.
Now, when I looked in the mirror, that is not who stared back. Instead? A grandma—walker, dentures, and all. Like Pippi Longstocking gone rogue. I exaggerate. Still, I wasn’t a fan. Ugh.
It was a good thing I bought the tights, because several weeks later, I needed to wear them on a long-haul flight—an activity infamous for turning swollen legs into full-blown conundrums.
We visited the UK most years. The south of England is where my husband, Greg, was born and raised. That big green island is also where I lived when we’d gotten married four years earlier, one rainy day just shy of my twenty-first birthday. But after living in Southampton for two years, we decided to move and settle in Canada. Now, with the help of Greg’s mom, we simply visited England most years.
Despite the glory of rolling hills, cobblestone streets, historical landmarks, and five-star cheese, England was simply not a place we could afford to build a life. The decision to leave for Canada was easy. At the time, even with full-time jobs, we lived in a one-bedroom flat in the sketchy part of town and shared a car that was always on the verge of dying. Our kitchen was so small that we had to step into the hallway just to open the oven door. Making friends with English girls turned out to be harder than anticipated. I was lonely. Also, our downstairs neighbor sold drugs.
Any spare time we had wasn’t spent gallivanting around castles or sipping pints in cozy pubs—it was spent surviving. So, we settled in southern Ontario, where life was affordable. Canada, my home country, also offered wide open spaces, strangers who acknowledged your existence, and houses without washing machines located in the kitchen (no offense, England). That and, of course, Tim Hortons, Canada’s iconic doughnut shop with wonderfully average coffee. You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.
Visiting England instead of residing there seemed like a better long-term decision. Besides, the trips back to the UK were always something we looked forward to. As we waited for our plane to jet off from Toronto that day, I smiled to myself. This visit was particularly exciting. I was seven months pregnant with the first grandbaby in the family.
On the seven-hour flight, I tried to wear my compression stockings, but they were even more uncomfortable than usual. The hot, sticky beasts rolled down my legs. I wanted to yell in the flight attendant’s face. I didn’t. Instead, I went to the bathroom and peeled them off in relief—like a normal person. I enjoyed the rest of the flight, stocking-and shoe-less.
I stretched often. I walked the aisles every hour or so to keep my blood moving. The blood was making its way down to my lower extremities all right. It just didn’t come back up. When the plane finally landed, Bulgy Blue and his veiny brother morphed into immense throbbing vessels of terror. My feet grew to two times their normal size. Before deplaning, I squashed my juicy feet into my little black flats and waddled my way through the airport, fearing I had made a grave mistake.
Copyright © 2026 by Libby Ward. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
