“Sorry,” I mumble, stopping still. I don’t want to do anything to piss her off. Except now I’m hovering close to the bed, my hands hanging uselessly by my sides. I’ve racked my brains and thought back to the advice for fathers in the pregnancy books, but I can’t think of any practical way to be useful. Not a single task. And I can’t stand that feeling. “Give me something to do. Please. I want to help.”
She opens her eyes, and her face softens a little as she takes pity on me. “If you look in my bag, I have a hair brush with hair ties around the base. Could you please put my hair up? This clip is driving me nuts. She takes it out, and her gorgeous waves spill down, stopping my breath for a second. Even in her favourite old Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel vest top and nothing from the waist down, skin slightly damp with sweat, she’s a fucking goddess.
“You got it.” I’m going to put her hair up like a total champ. I’ll be the best hair putter upper in dadhistory.
“You’ve got to calm down,” she says, mildly amused at how clumsy my hands are as I rummage in the bag. This bag has been prepped and ready to go for the past three weeks, and everything is packed sensibly and neatly, sowhy can’t I find the fucking hairbr -ah, here it is.
“Sorry,” I say again.
“Stop it,” she says again, gently. “It’s all good.”
I need to take some serious inspiration from Sadie. She’s being determinedly calm, because she’s always said she doesn’t want our little one to be born into a stress filled atmosphere. It’s one of the reasons she chose this birthing unit instead of the maternity ward at Foxton General: these rooms are homier and more relaxing, with softer lighting and comfortable chairs and all the inflatable pilates balls anyone could want. She’s got the option of a bed, a birthing pool, and this weird-ass chair for the actualbaby’s-coming-outpart of the process. She’s holding it together like a total badass, which is no mean feat considering this is her first birth. And the staff have been so reassuringly easygoing and kind and unflappable. I know they’ve seen it all before, and nothing that happens today can shock or surprise them, so it’s definitelypossibleto be calmer about this, sowhy can’t I be?!
I’ve never felt less like myself in my life.
She leans against me a little as I brush her hair straight up, long, soft strokes that have her sighing happily. “That feels so nice,” she says, and I feel like I just won fifty Nobel Prizes. I’m helping. I’m doing something right.
I need to keep this up.
“What else can I do?” I ask, desperate to know.
She takes my hand and kisses it. “You can stop pacing and fidgeting. You can stop looking like you’re going to cry every time I have a contraction. You can hold my hand when I need you to. You can rub my back now and again, because I gotta say, that would be fucking incredible right now. And you can accept the fact that I’m in pain now, I’ll be in even more pain later, and I’m probably going to curse you out like a deranged harpy when I’m crowning, but I don’t really mean it.”
I put her hair in a giant messy pineapple bun on top of her head. It may not look red carpet worthy, but it’s out of her face. “You can swear and rail at me as much as you want.”
“Don’t I always?”
I grin. “True.” Kissing her forehead, I put my arms around her and let her grip my arm, her nails damn near puncturing my skin, as she rides the wave of another contraction. I hate seeing her in pain, but I’ve got to just steel myself and accept that this is entirely normal and nothing to be worried about.
The midwife, Nancy, walks in with a big smile to check on us. “How are you feeling, dearie?” Her voice is wonderfully soothing and cheerful.
“Erm…OK, I think, for a given value of OK.” She sounds a little out of breath, but clear and lucid and not enraged. I’m calling this a win so far.
“You’re doing brilliantly. I’ll just do a quick internal to check on progress.” It’s so weird, watching some random woman put her hand up the woman I love and for itnotto be a sex thing.“OK, still a little way to go, but not hugely long. I’ll be back in about half an hour and we’ll see where we are then.”
Should I ask? Is it my place? Fuck it. “So, uh, how about those epidurals, huh? They seem cool.”
The nurse chuckles. “Sorry, duck, we don’t offer them here. You need an anaesthetist.”
Oh.
Fuck.
“Is there any way I can pay to have one show up?” Desperate times…
She laughs. “They’re not Uber Eats, darling. Sadie’s doing exceptionally well, actually.”
“It was the trade-off,” Sadie mutters, shifting uncomfortably. “Nicer environment, but no epidurals.”
“We have Entinox or some aromatherapy oils if you like?”
She shakes her head. “No, but thanks. I just want to get this over with now.”
When Nancy leaves the room, Sadie turns to me with a grim smile. “I maybe should have given more consideration to the epidural…”
No shit, Sherlock!I want to shout at her. Epidural equals pain relief during the worst agony a human can go through. How could she possibly consider turning them down?!
But I’m not that much of a bastard.Igot her into this. I should help when it comes to getting out of it, not give her a hard time for not taking an obvious assist.
