“How are you honey?” she asks softly. “Besides the obvious.”
“Other than feeling like my body is trying to shove a basketball through a cheerio, I’m good,” I say, squeezing her hand in return. “What’s that?”
“This,” she says, setting the bear in my lap and stroking its fur gently. “Is the teddy my mom brought to the hospital when I was in labor with Aaron. He loved this thing to pieces until he got too grown-up for teddy bears. But I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away, so I held onto it, in case he had any children of his own.”
Her voice cracks on the last word, and I snuggle the bear tightly to my chest. “Thank you,” I whisper. “I promise I will take such good care of it.”
“I’m glad a little piece of him will be loved by a different piece of him,” she says thickly. “I just wish he were here to see it.”
“So do I,” I say, voice shaking from the effort of holding in my tears. “More than anything.”
“I’ll let you rest, my dear,” she says, leaning down to brush her lips against my cheek. “I just wanted to make sure you had that. You are going to do so well, Abby. I can’t wait to watch the mother you’ll become. Alan and I both love you very much.”
“I love you,” I say, waving goodbye as she leaves the room.
“Jesus,” Ellie mutters from the corner, dabbing at her eyes with her sweatshirt sleeve. “I didn’t think I could get any more emotional, but here we are.”
My dad and brother come in next, but luckily there are no more heavy moments with tears shed. Instead, we all laugh at the horrified expression on Nate’s face when the nurse comes in for a cervical check.
“I’m never having kids,” he says in a low voice. “I never want to see anything like that ever again.”
“First of all, you closed your eyes the whole time,” I point out. “Second, you wouldn’t be the one having the baby, you dweeb. You don’t have a cervix to check.”
“Don’t care,” he says, shaking his head. “I’m not putting a girl through that. Childbirth is actually psychotic. Thank God I don’t have to stay here.”
“Get out of here then, you big baby,” I say, shooing him from the room. “You can come back when there’s an actual baby. Just don’t think too hard about how she got here.”
He looks pale and shaky as he leaves, Ellie, my dad, and me laughing him out of the room.
“You look good, Red,” my dad says, stroking my hair. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Thank you, daddy,” I say, leaning into his touch. “Or I guess I should start calling you Pop-Pop now.”
With a wide grin, he unbuttons his shirt to reveal a t-shirt underneath, with the words Pop-Pop in bold letters across his chest.
“Two steps ahead of you, kiddo,” he beams. “Pop-Pop reporting for duty.”
“I love you, daddy,” I laugh, snapping a picture of him before he joins my brother back in the waiting room.
As time goes on, I can feel the pressure building in my pelvis, and sharp stabs of intermittent pain bring back the mild sense of panic in my chest.
“Is this normal?” I ask nervously the next time someone comes by for a cervical check. “That I can still feel pain even with the epidural?”
“It can happen,” the nurse says calmly, removing her latex gloves and depositing them in the hazardous materials bin. “Everyone responds to the medication differently. I can have the anaesthesiologist come check the placement and make any adjustments necessary.”
A few minutes later, he comes into the room to check the status, making a few adjustments until the pain is mostly gone. But that doesn’t stop the pressure from building, and right as I think I can’t take anymore, the doctor declares that it’s time to push.
“Okay mom, here we go,” she says brightly. “You’re at ten centimeters, and your contraction readings all point to game time. You’ll be holding your little one before you know it.”
The epidural may have numbed the pain, but it has done nothing to mitigate the feeling of pushing. You know what they don’t show in Grey’s Anatomy? How fucking long you push for.
An hour and a half later, I’m sweaty, exhausted, and feeling increasingly defeated.
“Why is this taking so long?” I pant after pushing through yet another contraction. “Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, sweetie, you’re doing fine,” the doctor soothes. “It can take a little longer with your first. Nothing is wrong, it’s just the unpredictability of childbirth. I promise I will let you know if you should be doing anything differently.”
An hour later, I have a full breakdown.
