Precisely And Perfectly,
The Birth Of This Love.”
Tyler Knott Gregson
June 24│Hayes
WE WERE ASLEEP WHEN BIRDIE’S WATER BROKE. She sat up in bed and was completely still long enough for me to rouse and grow concerned.
“You all right?”
“I…I think I just peed myself.”
I sat up, fast. “What?”
She started climbing out of the bed, groaning. “Please don’t make me say it again. Damnit, I can’t turn it off...” She paused a step or two away from the bed, holding the base of her belly with both hands. “It’s my water! My water broke!”
“Oh, fuck! Hang on, Smalls. Let’s...shit! What do I do?”
She clicked on a light and stared at me across the bed. “You don’t need to do anything except get dressed, Big. My bag is packed. We’re ready. I’m just going to take a quick shower and then we’ll leave.”
“You’re going to do what? Birdie, you’re not having this baby on the side of a highway. We need to leave. Like, now.”
I was aware that I sounded like an idiot. I couldn’t help it, though. It was time. The baby was on its way. And she wanted to take a shower? No. Not on my watch.
She laughed at me and turned to waddle to the bathroom. “Relax. This won’t take long, and I’ll feel better if I’m clean when we get to the hospital and I have to labor for the next twelve hours.” She was stripping off her tee shirt as she walked, her waist only slightly thickened from the rear view. Softer.
“Birdie.” I tried to inject authority into my voice and failed miserably.
“Call your parents,” she ordered, and then the shower started.
To her credit, she was in and out fast. By the time I got off the phone with my mother and had gotten myself dressed, she was back in the bedroom, clutching a towel around her and rooting in her dresser for something to wear.
“Are you having contractions? How hard are they? Or far apart? What is it?”
She was shaking her head. “I’m fine. You, on the other hand, are going to give yourself a heart attack. Chill out.” She held up a pair of leggings. “I’m not sure what to wear. I’m still dribbling, so…gross.”
“Chill out? Birdie, we’re having a baby! Come on!”
She rolled her eyes and dressed herself simply in a pair of sweats and a tee shirt.
I ushered her to the truck, lifted her in, and prepared to break every speed limit in three counties after leaving the gravel driveway. I took it easy on the gravel, though. Didn’t want to jar anything loose...
The cab of the truck was quiet as we made our way to the hospital, both of us excited and nervous and, where I was concerned, scared spitless. I reached over and took Birdie’s hand, finding comfort in the touch of her skin.
And then we were there. I parked in a no parking lane and started to get out, halting when Birdie gently pointed to the empty space just a few yards away. “Shit.” I moved the truck, then slung her bag over my shoulder and helped her out. She flapped her arms at me as I tried to steer her toward the entrance.
“Hayes. I can walk.”
Inside, she went directly to the elevator, as though she knew exactly where she was going. What she was doing. My chest tightened with pride. I was a wreck, and I wasn’t even the one giving birth. But my woman...she was incredible.
She caught my look as we left the elevator on the fourth floor and she turned down the hall for the labor and delivery wing. “What?”
“You’re just fucking amazing,” I blurted.
“I haven’t even done anything yet.”
“Don’t argue with me, woman.”
She laughed and replied easily. “Big, I will slap you naked and hide your clothes.” We were at reception. She turned to grin at the nurse, who was staring as though she’d never seen another couple quite like us. “Hi. We’re having a baby.”
After only the briefest of hesitations, the nurse checked us in and led us to LDR8. I made note of the room number so I could let the folks know later.
Then I sat. I collapsed onto the narrow, hard sofa in the delivery room while nurses bustled around and did my best to be unobtrusive. After giving her a robe to change into, they hooked Birdie up to a dizzying array of wires and sensors and things that beeped.
“Look at that,” she mumbled at one point. A nurse was putting some kind of stretchy band around her waist, and as I watched, Birdie’s stomach clenched and tightened. Aside from blowing air through her nose and adopting a thousand-yard stare, she registered no reaction.
“Damn, Mini.” I watched the corresponding peaks and valleys on the monitor next to her. “Does that hurt?”
She didn’t answer right away, instead working on keeping her breathing steady and slow. After a minute or so her stomach relaxed, and she blew out a whoosh of breath. “I’m good,” she said. “But I’m really hoping you didn’t pass along your Gigantor genes to this baby.”
“Are you having a boy or a girl?” The nurse beside her finished with an i.v. and started clearing her instruments.
“A girl,” Birdie answered. “We have the cutest pale pink and gray nursery you’ve ever seen.”
“Oh, yeah? What are you naming her?”
“Savannah,” we answered together.
“That’s real pretty. Okay — I’m all finished here. The doctor will be in to see you shortly. Until then just try to get some rest. First labors can take a while sometimes.” We thanked her and she left.
In the next several hours, I kept nervous vigil as contractions rippled through Birdie’s body, arriving first in constant five to six minute intervals, and then four to five. Her brow pinched and her expression grew fierce with determination.
It was more hours still until the contractions heightened in tempo and intensity, arriving every three minutes and leaving Birdie in agony for a brief span. She never made a sound, though, enduring with a panting quietude that left me humbled.
At one point she flicked tired eyes in my direction. “I think I want the drugs after all, Big. It hurts.”
“Oh, baby. How many kids did you say you wanted?” I stroked her hair. This was killing me. I needed to get her mind off what was going on with her body.
She ignored me and I started to pace restlessly, long since having given up on the couch. There was nothing I could do, and it was driving me crazy. Every time the nurses descended en masse on the room to poke at buttons or look at the strip of paper that was continually printing from the monitor, I fled to the corner or the attached bathroom. I had never felt as out of place, useless, and in the way as I did here.
Finally, the nurses decided it was time to push, and a new flurry of activity began: breaking the bed down, adjusting the monitors and sensors, situating Birdie, and paging the doctor.
“Dad, why don’t you get up there by Mom’s head and hold her hand?” One of the nurses motioned me forward.
“I don’t wanna hold his hand,” Birdie grumbled. “He did this to me.”
The nurses laughed and I winced, but gamely I did as the nurse suggested.
And then things got fun.
Despite her last-minute complaint, my warrior had elected to do this without an epidural, so there was yelling.