[birthfetish]

birth fic - Google Drive

after receiving about a million emails about people trying to access this from an old post, here is a new link to my birth fic drive. enjoy!

[birthfetish]

uploaded some more gems last night for the first time in years! u can also message me for upload requests or if your story is in here and you want me to remove it

[dilfpregcentral]

🫃🍼4️⃣🖐️🚩🏢🪑🐢 ?

[Birth Denial Request Game]

(I’m gonna meet you halfway on the office part and do a job-themed one)

I’m thinking of a heavily pregnant Uber driver. Driving is so uncomfortable these days, the way his belly forces his legs to either side, pinning them to the door on one side and the console on the other. The steering wheel gets wedged against his belly, too, if he isn’t careful. After all, there are five people in the driver’s seat.

Today is especially difficult. He’s been having contractions on and off, and he misread an assignment and accidentally agreed to a four-hour drive. His client is about as happy about this as he is, grumbling in the back seat that he doesn’t care if there wasn’t another flight today, the company should have just postponed the conference instead of making him drive all this way. As if he’s the one driving, not just sitting in the back tapping his fingers while the actual driver tries not to groan out loud from the pressure of quadruplets pressing his hips to the seat.

An hour and a half in, the contractions start to get a little too regular. The driver knuckles sweat from his brow as he glances at the clock, noting the time since the last painful squeeze of his belly. Five minutes apart. Oh, dear.

He squirms and winces in his seat, letting out a gentle whine as the pressure grows in his lower back. From his first pregnancy, he knows that the concrete weight is the head engaging in his cervix. He really hopes there’s a hospital near the destination.

At hour two, the pain really starts.

He struggles not to clench his eyes shut as his insides tear apart. Knowing that transition won’t be forever doesn’t save him from the feeling that this pain has taken over his life, that there will never be anything but this, the cruel knot of agony deep inside him. It’s a miracle he hasn’t crashed the car. Not caring what his client thinks, he lets a sound rise from his gut and press through his teeth.

“Hoooouuuuuuggghhhhh…….”

The client makes a disapproving sound. A scoff? That bastard—

“Something you want to share with the class?”

The driver lets the moan fade with the contraction, and struggles to catch his breath.

“I’m sorry, sir, but- we’re gonna have to pull over. I- hoo- I’ll need to push, soon.”

“You’ll need to—?! Yuck, I don’t want to hear about that! Just do your damn job!”

The driver finds himself too shocked by the audacity to say anything. Though it turns out he doesn’t really have to; his body says it for him not three minutes later, his cervix giving way to the head, the red-hot clutch of his belly wringing it down with a deep pulling sensation that manifests as one clear need.

“Ohhhh god! It’s time, I need to push!”

“I don’t give a fuck. Do your job or I’ll get your goddamn license revoked!”

Through the haze of pain and panic, the threat sounds plausible. But he can’t ignore his body. Hundreds of thousands of years of evolution weigh on his womb, and he has no choice but to bear down with it and push.

For the next forty miles of highway, he pushes. Every time another noise of effort wheezes out of him, the client berates him for working in such a state, and for being disgusting, and for driving at such a pace that the other cars in the slow lane keep going around them. More than once, he hears the client on the phone reporting him to someone or another, but the contractions are two minutes apart now, so he never catches much before the strain of pushing blots out all other sounds.

Then, he feels a release of pressure, and the seat grows wet beneath him. The baby surges forward. The road blurs in front of him.

“Oh, god!” he cries. “The head! I feel the head, it’s coming, I gotta—“

He hits the brakes and wrenches the car off the road. A horn blares and fades as someone narrowly avoids them. He barely hears it over his own startled yelp as the seatbelt extender locks just under his belly, clotheslining his already-agonized pelvis. But the pain is nothing compared to the head straining his pussy.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

“It’s coming ouuuuuut!”

One of the doors opens and closes, but he pays it no mind, able to think of nothing but the building burn as his cunt stretches around the descending head. “Ohhhhh, my pussy, my pussy…” he groans, still white-knuckling the wheel.

Suddenly, his door opens. He jumps in surprise, then whimpers as he feels the head strain him.

“Get out,” the client huffs.

Finally. The driver spreads one leg carefully out of the car, slowly transfers his weight onto it, then clutches the door and the frame with trembling hands as he levers his baby-filled belly and pussy off of the seat.

“Ohhhhhh…” Immediately he staggers over to the hood of the car, ignoring the sting of hot metal on his palms as he falls against it. He bends there, belly hanging between his legs, feeling his drenched sweatpants clinging to his domed pussy. Vaguely he’s aware of the passing traffic, of everyone who drives by seeing the head of his baby tenting his crotch, but he doesn’t care as long as the child comes out safely.

“What are you doing?!” the client snaps. “Get back in!”

Blearily, he looks up to see the client pointing to the passenger’s side. Yes, it would make sense to push sitting down instead of over the asphalt, wouldn’t it? He staggers his bow-legged way around the nose of the car and carefully lowers himself in, practically laying back in the seat with his spread legs splayed outside of the car. He has just enough room to tug his waistband down as he starts to push again.

His heaving breaths come out as whines as the crown threatens. At this angle, he’s able to fit his arm around the jut of his belly and feel his crotch.

“Ohhh god, that’s the head, it’s coming out,” he whimpers, feeling a small patch of slimy hair between his taut pussy lips. The contraction ends, and he releases his push, feeling the head inch ever so slightly back inside. Only a few more pushes, now.

Behind him, the client has been muttering and grumbling. Taking the moment to twist around, the driver looks over his shoulder and sees that the client has pulled some casual clothes out of his suitcase and thrown them over the soaking driver’s seat, and is now cursing and wincing as he starts to sit.

“What- what are you doing?” the driver pants.

“What does it look like? Close the door and put your goddamn seatbelt on.”

He swallows dryly. “Are you taking me to a hospital?”

“Yeah, yeah.” He gestures flippantly with one hand. “So get on with it.”

Bewildered but grateful, the driver grips his legs behind the thighs and folds them into the car. A thin noise leaks out of him as his cunt strains, the change in position pushing the head forward.

“It’s so close, it’s almost out,” he groans.

The client doesn’t say anything to that, just pulls the car around and starts to accelerate. The driver focuses on his body, the weight in his womb and the searing pressure of his first baby peeking out between his legs. He feels his belly tightening and tucks his chin to his chest, grunting as he pushes with all his might. Beneath his shaking hand, he feels the his cunt lips stretch rounder and rounder, then finally begin to ease back, releasing more and more of the head.

He howls in pain but keeps pushing. He can feel it, the mounting pressure, the sensation of the head beginning to have its own gravity, it’s about to come out, it’s so close—

And suddenly it’s shoved back inside of him. A scream gargles in his throat, eyes snapping open to the sight of the client’s hand pushing flat on his crotch. He claws at the bastard’s arm futilely, too exhausted and disoriented to budge him.

Later, he’ll wish that he had the presence of mind to demand what’s going on, what the fuck is wrong with this monster, to say he’s going to press charges, to say this fucker should be ashamed of himself. But in the moment, all he can do is scream at the wrongness of it, the pain that’s somehow worse than crowning, and keep trying to push against it.

But finally he reaches the end of his ability, and can do nothing but fight for thin gasps of air. The client lifts his hand away with a confident huff.

“There’s enough screaming in this car already. I won’t want to hear your brats crying, too.”

“What- what the fuck!” he sobs. “You- you can’t—“

“I can, and I will. I better not see that thing coming out of you again.”

“I don’t have a choice!” His body chooses to illustrate a point with another contraction. He tries to close his legs to cut off the client’s access to the baby, but the asshole just shoves his hand under his thighs and finds the lump of the emerging head. The driver screams his pleas, but they fall on deaf ears, and his baby is forced back into his pussy again.

Through watery eyes, he sees that the GPS estimates they will arrive in 57 minutes.

“We’re- not even going to the hospital, are we?” he croaks.

“There’ll be an ambulance waiting at the conference center. Don’t be dramatic, you’ll be fine.”

He is very certainly not fine.

Everything in him rebels against the sensation of childbirth being violently reversed over and over. The contractions were already the worst pain he’s ever felt, but now they’re even tighter, even closer, forcing him to push. The head crowns, only to be swallowed by his unwilling pussy again and again.

38 minutes from their destination, a new pain drills into the driver’s spine. He groans, “No, no, stop! Not yet!” as he feels his cervix forced even wider. “Stop!” he screams, at the client now. “Another baby is coming! They’re gonna get stuck, please! It’s too much! It’s too much!”

“Then stop fucking pushing, dumbass,” the client hisses.

All the driver can do is tremble and weep as he feels a second baby beginning to slide down. The lower it gets, the worse it feels, until finally he vomits onto the floorboards. He follows that up with dry heaving every few minutes, the sensation of two bodies stretching him more than he can bear.

Eventually, when he pushes the head out again, it feels different, a sting to one side of his pussy.

The client scoffs. “Are those feet? What the fuck?”

The driver shudders with a dry sob, too dehydrated for tears. The second of his quadruplets is breach. Its feet must have slipped through his cervix in all this abuse.

It doesn’t matter, anyway. It’s all shoved back into him.

His world reduces to pain and nausea. He still pushes, but it’s feeble. He accepts that he’s going to die with two babies in his belly and two in his pussy. He bets the coroner will have never seen a man go like that, before.

Then the car slows, and the client says, “Finally. We’re here.”

The driver peels his eyes open. The only thing he can make sense of is the distant wail of a siren. At least there really will be an ambulance.

The client gets out of the car without so much as a “good luck.” But the moment he’s gone, the driver slams his feet up on the dashboard, digs his nails into the backs of his thighs, and pushes with all he’s got.

A head and a pair of legs burst out of him in a gush of fluid. He takes only a moment to catch his breath, then he feels a contraction building, and he pushes again, prying his legs open and gritting his teeth. Shoulders and knees come out of him. This is the part where the first baby should slip out of him, or at least be easily pulled free, but it’s stuck with the second baby in his birth canal.

A scream rises in his throat, and he keeps pushing. Two barrel-shaped torsos stretch him at once, nearly the width of the head and twice as long. He feels like he’s tearing open, but he keeps pushing. His pussy spasms as the shoulders pass and the legs of the first child fall free, finally a single moment of not being pried fully open.

He catches the first baby and drags it up to his chest, his head falling back against the seat, unable to look as he rubs and pats the tiny figure, even as he pushes on the head of his breech baby.

Finally the firstborn coughs and starts to cry, and the sob of relief that punches through his diaphragm is enough to crown the second. Beyond any squeamishness or care for pain, he rests the baby on his belly and reaches between his legs. He gently grips what he can of the head and simply pulls the child out, a sharp grunt of agony and a spray of blood.

His birth canal and pussy are so loose that he barely has to push before a third head stretches his lips. He pauses only to be sure baby two is alright, then scrunches his face tight and heaves out the third head in as many minutes. The shoulders follow with a few stubborn pushes, and he gathers the newest baby onto his wheezing chest.

Suddenly his door flies open, and he doesn’t even have the energy to be startled, eyes sliding numbly to the pair of EMTs standing there. They start to speak, but he groans, “Ohhhh it’s coming fast, catch it, catch it!”

The nearer EMT lunges forward and just barely catches the baby that comes barreling out of his gaping birthing hole.

And finally, the driver goes limp, surrounded by four wailing babies. With the last of his strength, he mumbles, “I bet that bastard’s gonna give me zero stars, too,” and lets his eyes fall shut.

[fatfemmebear]

Guy carrying an egg in his belly that grows so large he doesn’t so much go into labor as simply run out of room. The egg is already staggeringly massive when it begins to peek out of his hole, and it slowly spreads him over the course of days as it gets bigger and bigger. With his muscles so stretched, he has no strength to push, so the only way for the egg to come out is to wait for it to naturally stretch him past its widest point. In the final days of carrying the egg, it’s so large that the guy can’t even stand or sit, so he can only crawl, groaning and whimpering, the strained skin of his belly dragging on the ground. And with his agonized hole hypersensitive to the touch of fabric, he can’t bear to cover his ongoing birth with any garment, so everyone sees the dome of the egg bulging through his swollen-red ass as he crawls around. He could attempt to wear something that’s simply open-backed, but there’s no point in trying to protect his modesty when his cock, stiff and dripping from the constant pressure on his prostate, will always tent the fabric and leave an obvious stain every time he cums from still being so pregnant while so deep into the throes of birth.

[fatfemmebear]

Drew him btw 🥰

And yes he’s rock hard 🥰

[lilly-aurora77]

Triplets

Sabrina was twenty six years old, five feet three inches tall, and carrying triplets. Her belly was a hard, stretched drum that had consumed her entire frame. She could no longer tie her shoes, could not roll over in bed without a plan, could not remember what it felt like to go an hour without heartburn or a small foot wedged under her ribs. She and her husband John had tried for four years. Fertility treatments had given them three at once. When the ultrasound tech pointed to the three flickering heartbeats, Sabrina had laughed and cried and thrown up all in the same minute.

But the joy sat next to a cold, growing dread. Triplets. Three babies. One cervix. She had read the statistics. She had watched the YouTube videos. She knew that triplet births were almost never straightforward.

By thirty five weeks, the triplets had settled into their positions. Baby A was head down, low and ready, a solid eight pounds already. Baby B was also head down, slightly higher, a more modest seven pounds. Baby C was the problem. Baby C had turned posterior, his spine pressed against Sabrina's spine, his hard little skull facing the wrong way. The obstetrician, a no nonsense woman named Dr. Patel, recommended a hospital birth with a full team. Sabrina agreed without hesitation. She wanted the epidural. She wanted the operating room on standby. She wanted all the interventions.

Her midwife, a warm but direct woman named Carol, would assist Dr. Patel. The plan was vaginal delivery if possible, C section if not. Sabrina hoped for vaginal. She had dreamed of pushing, of feeling her babies pass through her body. But she was also terrified. The triplets were big. Baby A alone was projected to be over nine pounds by birth. The combined weight was nearly twenty five pounds of baby inside a body that had started at one hundred thirty.

The labor began at 3 AM on a Thursday. Sabrina woke to a contraction that wrapped around her entire abdomen like a vise. She sat up in bed, breathing hard, and woke John. By 5 AM, the contractions were five minutes apart. By 7 AM, they were three minutes apart and Sabrina could no longer talk through them. John drove to the hospital with the hazard lights on, running red lights when the streets were empty.

Dr. Patel met them in the labor and delivery triage. A cervical check showed six centimeters. "You are in active labor," she said. "We are going to move you to a delivery room. You can labor in any position you like. Walking, squatting, the ball, hands and knees. Whatever feels right. But I want you to stay upright as much as possible. Gravity is your friend with triplets."

Sabrina nodded. She had done her research. She knew the positions.

The delivery room was large, almost the size of a small apartment, with a hospital bed that folded and twisted, a birth ball in the corner, a squat bar attached to the bed, and a team of nurses already setting up two warming stations for the babies. A third warming station was on standby. Dr. Patel and Carol the midwife stood by a monitor displaying the triplets' heartbeats. Three distinct lines, three different rhythms, all strong.

Sabrina labored for the next six hours without stopping. She started on the birth ball, sitting upright with her legs wide, rocking her hips in circles through each contraction. John knelt in front of her, holding her hands, counting her breaths. When the contractions became too intense for sitting, she dropped to her hands and knees on a padded mat on the floor. She pressed her forehead to the cool linoleum and let her enormous belly hang toward the ground. Carol rubbed her lower back, where Baby C's posterior spine was grinding against her sacrum with every wave.

By noon, Sabrina was nine centimeters. She moved to a deep squat against the wall, using John's shoulders for balance. Her thighs screamed. Her back was on fire. Baby C's posterior position meant that every contraction sent a lightning bolt of pain straight through her tailbone. She vomited twice. She cried. She asked for the epidural she had said she wanted.

But it was too late. She was nine and a half centimeters. There was no time.

"Baby A is crowning," Carol said calmly. "I can see the top of the head. Sabrina, you need to move to the bed or stay squatting. But you are about to push."

Sabrina wanted to squat. She wanted to stay upright, to use gravity, to keep her pelvis as open as possible. She dropped into a low squat next to the bed, gripping the edge of the mattress. John squatted behind her, his arms around her chest, holding her up. Dr. Patel knelt in front of her in blue scrubs and a sterile gown.

"The head is right there," Dr. Patel said. "On the next contraction, push."

The contraction came. Sabrina pushed. She pushed with a sound she had never made before, a deep roaring grunt that came from the bottom of her lungs. Baby A's head stretched her perineum. It burned. It burned like nothing she had ever felt. The head advanced a little, then slipped back when she stopped pushing.

"Again," Dr. Patel said. "Do not stop. Keep pushing through the contraction."

Sabrina pushed again. The head crowned. The ring of fire was real, was unbearable, was exactly what every mother had warned her about. She felt her skin stretch to its limit. She felt the widest part of the skull slide past her pubic bone. The head came out. One ear, then the other. The chin. Baby A's face was squashed and furious, eyes squeezed shut, mouth open in a silent cry.

But the shoulders did not follow.

Dr. Patel's face changed. "Shoulder dystocia. Sabrina, I need you to change positions. Get on your hands and knees. Now."

John helped her roll forward. Sabrina knelt on all fours on the hospital floor, her head down, her hips high. Baby A's head was out, dangling between her legs, his face turning from pink to a dusky purple. Carol reached up and pressed above Sabrina's pubic bone, trying to dislodge the anterior shoulder. Dr. Patel reached inside and tried to rotate the baby. The team tilted the bed. A nurse pushed on Sabrina's abdomen from above.

"Push!" Dr. Patel commanded.

Sabrina pushed with everything she had left. The anterior shoulder slipped free. The rest of the baby slid out in a gush of fluid and blood. Baby A was enormous. The nurses whisked him to the warming station. He cried immediately, a furious wail. Twelve pounds one ounce. John looked at the scale and went pale.

"Baby A is a boy," Carol said, but she did not hand him to Sabrina. There was no time. Baby B was already descending.

Sabrina stayed on her hands and knees. Baby B was head down, but he was larger than they had thought, nearly nine pounds. He came faster than his brother. The head crowned after only three pushes. This time, the shoulders came without dystocia. Baby B slid out, purple and wailing, and the nurses took him to the second warming station. Eight pounds fourteen ounces. A girl.

Sabrina should have felt relief. Two babies were out. But Baby C was still inside, and Baby C was posterior. The contractions had not stopped. They were coming every minute now, each one sending a spike of agony through her lower back.

She rolled onto her side. The posterior position meant that Baby C's hard occiput was pressing against her sacrum, the wrong way around. Each push felt like someone was driving a wedge into her tailbone. She screamed. She begged for something, anything, for the pain to stop.

Dr. Patel checked the position. "Baby C is still posterior. He has not rotated. Sabrina, I need you to get on the birth ball. Sit upright. Let gravity open your pelvis. We need to try to turn him."

John helped her onto the large rubber ball. Sabrina sat, legs wide, feet planted on the floor. She rocked her hips in circles. She lifted and lowered herself. The contraction came and she pushed, but the posterior head would not descend. It was stuck, the widest part of the skull trying to fit through the narrowest part of her pelvis.

"Vacuum," Dr. Patel said. "We are using the vacuum."

Carol brought the sterile cup. Dr. Patel attached it to Baby C's skull. The suction pulled. Sabrina felt a deep, dragging pressure inside her pelvis. She pushed. The posterior head descended one agonizing millimeter at a time. The vacuum popped off. Dr. Patel reattached it. Sabrina pushed again. The head came down another millimeter.

"It's crowning," Carol said. "But it is coming out the wrong way. The face is up. This is going to tear you, Sabrina. I am sorry. There is no way around it."

Sabrina did not care about tearing anymore. She just wanted the baby out. She pushed with a scream that echoed off the tile walls. The posterior head stretched her perineum unevenly, the brow pressing where the chin should have been. She felt her skin split. A hot, sharp tear. Then another. Blood ran down her thighs and pooled on the floor.

The head came out. The face was looking at the ceiling. Baby C was completely posterior. Dr. Patel reached in and checked for the cord. It was wrapped around the neck once, loose, easily slipped over. "Push again. The shoulders."

Sabrina pushed. The shoulders came, but one arm was folded. Dr. Patel reached in and freed it. The rest of the baby slid out, small and limp, only six pounds. Baby C did not cry. The respiratory team swooped in. They rubbed the tiny back. They suctioned the mouth. After a long terrible moment, Baby C coughed and wailed. A second girl.

Dr. Patel did not hand Baby C to Sabrina. Instead, she looked between Sabrina's legs and spoke quietly to Carol. "We have a third degree tear. Possibly fourth. I need to stitch immediately. And I need to check for uterine atony. She has lost a lot of blood."

Sabrina was still on the birth ball. She was shaking uncontrollably. John held her upright. The nurses placed all three babies on a warmer and checked their vitals. Baby A was stable. Baby B was stable. Baby C was stable but small, requiring a little oxygen.

They moved Sabrina to the hospital bed. They put her legs in stirrups. Dr. Patel began to stitch. The needle went in and out of Sabrina's torn perineum. She did not flinch. She was beyond flinching. Her eyes were fixed on the three warming stations across the room, where three small bodies lay under radiant heat, three pairs of lungs breathing, three hearts beating.

"Can I see them?" she whispered.

John brought them to her one by one. Baby A, the twelve pound giant, already rooting for food. Baby B, the calm middle child, staring at the ceiling with dark eyes. Baby C, the tiny posterior baby, wrapped in a pink blanket, her face still a little bruised from the delivery.

Sabrina held all three as well as she could, stacked across her chest like logs. She was still being stitched. She could feel every pull of the suture. But she did not look away from her babies.

"That was the hardest thing I have ever done," she said to John.

John kissed her forehead. His hands were still shaking. "You were incredible," he said. "I have never seen anyone fight like that."

Sabrina looked down at Baby C, the posterior baby, the one who had torn her open. "You," she said quietly, "were a nightmare."

Baby C yawned.

Dr. Patel tied the last stitch. "Forty seven sutures," she said. "Third degree tear. It will heal. But Sabrina, no more babies. Your uterus cannot handle another pregnancy."

Sabrina laughed. It was a broken, exhausted laugh. "I have three," she said. "I am done."

She lay back against the pillows, her triplets on her chest, her husband's hand in hers, her body stitched and bleeding and utterly destroyed. And for the first time in nine months, she smiled.

[primal-prince]

Stuck! (fpreg)

*WARNING: Fetish Content*

Featuring:

Fpreg with huge baby

Shoulder dystocia

Intense scenes

Read this on AO3

It was supposed to be an intimate, private birth.

Despite being nearly three weeks overdue, Danielle had prepared for a calm home birth, one where she would be sure to have agency and privacy with her husband, Vash. They deep cleaned their small apartment in the hopes that it would give Danielle peace in labour. She had planned to labour in the shower, in the tub, in their living room space where they set up a birth pool, and maybe on the bed as a last resort. Danielle was very adamant to not give birth on her back. This was her time, and her baby, and she would deliver on her own terms with only the support of her husband, one registered midwife, and her sister-in-law Srin–also a midwife in training.

Forty-two hours of labour later, and it did not turn out that way at all.

It’s three in the morning. The quiet of their neighborhood is brutally interrupted by the fact that they opened the balcony door a crack, to bring in some clean spring air for Danielle. The horrible sounds of her birthing effort can be heard all down the street, waking neighbors. The other tenants in the apartment complex had been notified about the home birth, and there’s a good chance they haven’t slept all night due to Danielle’s noise. But she can’t help it. By Srin’s visual estimate, the baby is massive and has wedged herself deep into Danielle’s pelvis.

When the idea of a water birth quickly fell through, they helped Danielle move to the bedroom where they could turn off the lights and help her concentrate on pushing.

Three hours later, and she’s currently standing at the side of the bed near the end, one leg high up on the mattress and one planted firmly on the floor, both hands gripping the bottom bed post like claws and nearly bending the wood straight out of the frame. Srin can see the back of her head, her mess of a high bun after hours and hours of hard labour, and her bare back and bottom. She’s been trying to push the baby’s head past a crown for at least fifteen minutes. The baby is just sitting there, stretching Danielle impossibly wide open, the head so large it looks like less of a dome and more like a big solid plug. Danielle’s tissue is red-hot and already ripping a little, nearly translucent where it’s stretched so thin around her daughter’s huge skull. Her anus is sitting right above her massively stretched tissue, puffed out with hemorrhoids and a dark dusky shade, all from pushing extremely hard for so long. As Srin stands by with the doppler, Danielle bears down again, roaring hard and strained through her teeth, her vocal chords raw and torn at this point, as she grips the bed post. Vash puts a hand over hers, his face tight and pinched with sympathetic pain as he watches his wife’s grimacing face as she tries with all her might to give birth to their daughter.

It’s terrifying to watch. Srin is still a midwife in training–this is the first time she’s attended a real birth this intense, and especially one so close to home. This is the birth of her first niece, after all.

Her brother looks terrified, intensely focused on his wife from his place standing at the foot of the bed, a supportive hand rubbing up and down Danielle’s sweat-slicked back while the other one gently covers Danielle’s hands gripping the post. She can just about hear Vash muttering through Danielle’s hard sounds of effort.

“Doing so well, baby, her head’s almost out.”

Hearing her husband’s promise, Danielle makes it to the end of that push and then inaudibly gasps in before bearing down again, hard, grunting and roaring with all of the strength in her body.

“HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Srin watches the baby’s head struggle down, down, down through Danielle’s massive push. Heather, the experienced midwife and her teacher, is supporting Danielle’s stretched-to-the-limit tissue, rubbing a gentle finger along the translucent skin while Danielle pushes her daughter down hard.

Srin isn’t needed during this contraction, so she just stands there and watches, speechless, as again and again and again Danielle works incredibly hard, roaring and grunting with every push, bending her bottom down deeply, her one leg on the bed staying wide open. The baby’s head gradually nudges out on a slightly crooked angle, then bounces back to the stuck point, then with barely a second wasted, OUT again harder harder harder as Danielle roars, refusing to let go of the push. Her noises are intense, echoing in the small room and making Srin tremble.

“GUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!! UUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!”

Vash can barely be heard encouraging her: “Pushpushpushpushpush honey, so hard!”

In response to her husband, Danielle bears down with one more gargantuan, shuddering push, her vocal chords cracking and tearing, the sound of her roar going up and down as she slowly, agonizingly, pushes the baby’s head out to just above a wrinkly brow.

“..BHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRrrrrrRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRrrrrRRRRRrrrrrRRRRRRRRRRUUUUUHHHHHHH!!”

They all react to Danielle’s progress, finally, as Danielle screams, bouncing up a little to try and escape the sudden sharp pain. She tore a little more, Srin noticed, but no one will scare her by drawing attention to it. Srin has also noticed the baby’s head is on an uneven angle, and facing Danielle’s right thigh slightly. Heather, of course, noticed first. Srin knows they’re both very concerned now about the possibility of a shoulder dystocia.

Srin has to remember to breathe, or else she’ll pass out at the mere thought.

“Good job Danielle, take a big breath now,” Heather guides. “Just breathe.” Then she raises her voice. “Tones!”

Srin takes her cue and puts the doppler under Danielle’s belly, trying to get heart tones as Danielle gulps in gasps and cries, Vash helping her stay upright. Danielle grunts lightly with each breath and Heather has to guide her through every single inhale, trying to encourage her not to push right now.

Srin has a hard time getting the baby’s heart tones. She’s about to remove the doppler and signal to Heather to tell her it’s time to lock down, but just then she manages to get a slight sound: a steady heart beat, but much too slow for her liking. The baby is struggling, likely stressed from being squeezed so hard, if she’s as big as they both think.

When Heather hears the tones, she gets her hands back on stretching Danielle’s tissue, applying lube, and says, “OK Danielle, I want you to push very hard now. It’s no holds barred, just get her out.”

Danielle doesn’t need a second more of instruction. She gasps in hugely, then her entire body, sweat-drenched and naked, SHOVES down hard, opening wide, as she roars deep into her chest and her gut.

Srin watches the baby’s head coming out, coming out, trembling with Danielle’s effort as she tries so hard to push the gigantic skull past her tissue that refuses to stretch any more. With her fingers rubbing around Danielle’s translucent and red tissue, Heather says very loudly, “Sound in Danielle and big breath in!”

Danielle gasps hugely, Vash holding her shoulder and grimacing in sympathy, looking at her face.

“And PUSH HARD!” Heather orders, as Danielle’s entire body bends down, her leg still wide open and up on the bed. She barely makes a sound beyond some quiet, strangled strains as she pushes SO hard her entire body flushes red, her head shaking hard, her hands bending the bed post out of its wooden socket.

“All your might, baby, get her out,” Vash says tightly.

Srin can see the baby’s head slide out a little more, Danielle’s ripped and bleeding tissue peeling back over the swollen shut eyes, then the nubby nose, as her entire body trembles hard enough to shake the bed. Then she can’t hold her sound in any more, but keeps that massive push going.

“BOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

From there on it’s one brutal push after another, as Danielle knows she needs to get her out now. Srin doesn’t count. She’s too lazer-focused on the baby’s face coming out, and the dusky purple shade of her skin. She keeps the doppler pressed under Danielle’s huge belly, trying to get heart tones, as Danielle just pushes like a demon. At least ten gigantic, earth-shattering pushes go by, Danielle’s throat completely raw and her voice animalistic by the tenth one, and she still hasn’t gotten the baby’s chin out. Baby’s head is on a sharper angle now, with one chubby cheek more out than the other, and each time Danielle lets go of a push, the head bounces back in as if something is holding her back.

“MMMMOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! UUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUUHHH!!! HOOUUUNNNGGGGGGGGGGGGG-NUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! BHOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!”

Past Danielle’s horrible animal grunting and straining, Heather looks over her trembling, shining back to seriously tell Vash: “Call 911.”

Vash leaps up from his spot immediately to grab his phone from the dresser. Without him there, Danielle continues to labour hard, trying with every muscle in her body to birth their huge daughter. Srin isn’t even sure Danielle notices Vash is gone from her side. There’s no real way to know if she sees or hears any of them in her current state. That is until Heather, sticking her gloved fingers in around the baby’s huge purple head, tells Danielle to stop pushing.

Her gloved fingers are bloody as she places her wrist on Danielle’s tailbone, trying to calm her. “I need you to stop pushing Danielle, just try to blow! That’s it, good, blow blow blow! C’mon you can do this.”

Srin talks over to Vash, instructing him to tell the operator on the phone what’s happening. She can barely get the words out, knowing this is happening to her brother and her sister-in-law.

“Shoulder dystocia. Head is out.” She looks back at Heather, who has her fingers in again, trying to maneuver the shoulder out as Danielle screams shrilly. “Trying to get the anterior shoulder.”

Stuttering but sounding robotic as he goes into shock, Vash relays the exact words to the operator. He’s still looking at his wife, tears in his eyes now.

Srin helps Danielle get both legs on the floor as she and Heather both realize that she can’t hold it. Every push brings the baby harder against her pubic bone, lodging the shoulder and clavicle deeper, making it very difficult for Heather to release her. Srin knows Heather’s original in-the-moment plan was to prevent Danielle from pushing so she could reach in and release the anterior shoulder, which looks to be the one that’s severely stuck judging by the angle of the baby’s head. She’s worried about what else they might have to do… There’s a possibility that Heather will get Danielle on her back so she can physically push the baby back inside a little in order to release the stuck shoulder. But she’s not going to tell Vash or Danielle that.

With both of her feet on the floor, Srin helps Danielle bend and open her legs wide, the baby’s giant head dangling darkly between her legs, blood dripping down the baby’s thick hair. Heather’s hands shake as she manages to get her fingers all the way past her knuckles inside Danielle’s vagina on the front, pulling and wiggling hard as she tells Danielle to “PUSH now! Push hard, Mama!”

Through the balcony window, some lights come on in the apartments across the street as Danielle tucks her chin and roars gutturally, bending down deep so she’s sitting in the air, supported by Srin and the bed where she grips the sheet hard.

“DYEUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!”

Srin keeps glancing at her glow in the dark watch as a few minutes of this go by, Danielle pushing and pushing and pushing with brutal force, roaring and screeching her baby deeper into her pelvis. There’s blood on the floor. Vash keeps speaking into the phone, telling the operator what’s happening, even as he runs over to turn on the light.

Heather manages to pull one of the baby’s arms out as the paramedics buzz up. Vash runs to the door to let them in, regrettably leaving his wife in agony, but Danielle is too busy to even notice. Fully naked and primal, she tucks her chin to her chest, tears the bedsheet with shaking fists, and bears down with all the force in her body again and again as Heather and Srin continue to encourage her.

“Keep pushing Mama, don’t stop! Heart tones?”

Srin shakes her head. She can’t get a good read, especially not with this intensity and with Danielle pushing so constantly. It’s up to her now.

“OK,” Heather breathes out, still pulling down hard on the baby with each of Danielle’s pushes. “GO mommy, GO! PUSH! PUSH! Get her out!”

Losing her mind to the pain of birth, Danielle grunts and screeches out her first words in what feels like ages.

“GGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRUUUHHH!! DHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRHELPME!! VAAAAAAAASSSHHHHHHEEEEEEEEEEEEHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!”

Vash comes running back in with three paramedics in tow. He gets on the other side of the bed, facing Danielle, reaching for her hands. One of the paramedics drops his large bag on the floor and immediately starts getting gloves on as Srin tells him what’s going on.

“First baby, shoulder dystocia–we’ve tried to release the anterior shoulder. One arm is free, but the posterior shoulder is still wedged.”

Danielle’s grunts start to turn into ragged screams now, part pain and part terror, as the paramedic nods and quickly introduces himself to Danielle, speaking softly and professionally. He tries for the length of two huge hard pushes to wiggle the baby free, with Heather’s help, before he stands up and tells them to help him get Danielle on the bed.

Together, they quickly instruct Danielle to flip around and get flat on her back. McRoberts, Srin thinks, the panic making her think in singular terms. Danielle is shouting and gasping as they all take her legs and bend them way open and back. Srin focuses on the baby’s head, her arm out next to her chunky face, limp and floppy. Her head is massive, her big fat cheeks squished up against Danielle’s body, and her complexion is a very scary shade of dark purple. As Danielle pushes and grunts horribly, her head tossed back, the baby’s head lifts up just a bit, trembling and struggling with her effort, before falling back and sucking back in to its stuck spot.

Very quickly, they get Danielle’s legs as wide open as they can be and all the way up, her knees pressed into her shoulders, making her giant belly stick straight up, her large breasts cushioning her chin as he gasps. Vash is at her head, holding both of her hands above her head and switching his serious gaze from Danielle’s face to the baby’s.

Then they all work together at once. They tell Danielle to PUSH HARD, and her belly launches up with a push as Srin presses down as hard as she can on Danielle’s pubic bone, and Heather and the paramedic both pull the baby’s purple head and neck down dramatically far. Danielle makes the most horrible sound in the world, ragged and alien, as she brings her head up and digs her chin into her bare, sweaty breasts, mouth wide open and tongue sticking out as her grunt goes strangled and she looks at her baby’s humongous head being pulled upwards now as they all try to release the other shoulder.

This is the pivotal moment. The baby’s head has been fully out for several minutes, at least six. Danielle pushes and pushes and pushes and pushes and PUSHES, bringing her head up and whipping it back again and again, gripping her husband’s hands, arching her back and her bare feet, way up in the air, as she screams and grunts gutturally hard and brutal. Heather and the paramedic both need to hold the baby as the other shoulder releases with an audible crack of Danielle’s tailbone and she screeches raggedly, but keeps pushing SO hard. They both pull the baby up and side to side, wiggling her huge body out, as Danielle gets her out to her chest with one massive push, then another, and another, and another. SO many massively hard pushes to get her body out.

In the chaos, they all encourage her.

“PUSH BABY, PUSH! C’MON SHE’S COMING!” -Vash.

“Almost there Danielle, one more big push!” -Srin.

“PUSH HARD, Danielle, AGAIN! Big breath and PUSH!” -Heather.

While Danielle screams and grunts her baby out, hardly even human anymore, completely lost in the throes of hard labour.

“MMRRRRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGHHHHHH!!! AAA–AAOOOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!! HUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHH–UUUUUUHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!! BAAOOOOOOOOOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!!!!!”

Little by little her huge chunky body comes out, with the effort of Danielle and Heather and the paramedic, and then just like that: Past her hips, she flies out in a massive spray of water and blood with an audible ripping sound and Danielle’s ragged, animal scream. Fluids hit the floor loudly as Heather immediately puts the massive baby on Danielle’s deflating belly as she’s still screaming and gasping, and all professionals get the resus kit ready.

It takes only a minute, but the longest minute of their lives, for the baby to start crying so quietly and weakly, and then she’s shrieking with life and everyone in the room heaves a massive sigh of relief.

When she’s weighed at the hospital later, they learn she’s a whopping 12 pounds three ounces.

It’s the last birth before Srin gets her official certification, and the first intense one of many.

[bigpushes]

This isn’t even a prompt but this is such good material for Fics in this community that I just want to put to attention rather than just storing it

Yes I am quoting Wikipedia.

“In the Olympian scheme, the king of gods Zeus is the father of her twins, Apollo and Artemis,[2]whom Leto conceived after her hidden beauty accidentally caught the eye of Zeus. During her pregnancy, Leto sought for a place where she could give birth to Apollo and Artemis, since Hera, the wife of Zeus, in her jealousy, ordered all lands to shun her and deny her shelter. Hera is also the one to have sent the monstrous serpent Python and the giant Tityos against Leto to pursue and harm her. Leto eventually found an island, Delos, that was not joined to the mainland or attached to the ocean floor, therefore it was not considered land or island and she could give birth.[3]

……After having arrived at Delos, she labored for nine nights and nine days, in the presence of Dione, Rhea, Ichnaea, Themis and Amphitrite.[34] Only Eileithyia, the goddess of childbirth, was not present; she, unaware of the situation, was with jealous Hera on Olympus.[35] Her absence, which was preventing Leto from giving birth, kept her in labor for nine days.

According to the Homeric hymn, the goddesses who assembled to witness the birth of Apollo were responding to a public occasion in the rites of a dynasty, where the authenticity of the child must be established beyond doubt from the first moment.”

Ancient Greek story. delayed and difficult labor. Public labor. Multiple pregnancy . Tick tick tick.

i feel like the fact that i so vividly remember this from Greek mythology explains a few things, oops-

but yes, yes, yes. it's soooo good.

especially the extended labor period and the lengthy denial. greeting another sunrise still unable to give birth, just overwhelmed by waves of pressure and a need to push that you can do absolutely nothing about. completely powerless and out of your mind with pain.

[bigpushes]

sex in the throes of labor while the birthing partner just gets pounded over and over as they're denied permission to push despite the baby's head bearing down on their partner with each thrust, getting their hair pulled back and their neck bitten and sucked until they cum with a scream, shrieking out that they're pushing just as their partner growls that they're not done, and that they're going to continue to breed them like the good birthing slut they are until they decide that they're fit to shove their child out

[bigpushes]

The urge strikes me suddenly, pulling a ragged gasp from my throat as I rock back and forth on my hands and knees. "I-I think it's... oh, it's time to push," I grunt, sliding one hand between my thighs to press against my cunt.

There's a slight bulge there, the force of the baby's head pushing through my canal causing my labia to swell outwards. I provide counter pressure as I groan through the tail end of the contraction, fighting against the urge to bear down.

"It's coming," I pant, trailing my fingers over my red hot labia. "You're coming, baby. I feel you c-comingggg." Not even 45 seconds had passed since my last contraction, but another pain had taken hold. Starting in my back and spreading around to the front of my belly, pulled low and heavy with the pressure of the pain, the iron band grips and seizes, shoving the baby down with such power that I have to shift my hips further open to make room.

"Oh god, oh god, oh- fuckkkk." I keep my hand firmly in place, all but holding the head back as it barreled through my cunt. The pressure is unlike anything I'd ever felt, tapping into the most primal side of me. Contraction on top of contraction, I tried to groan and not scream, though the urge, much like the urge to push, was becoming unbearable. "Mmmmmphhh, GOD."

I am finally overwhelmed by my instincts and I bear down, and the baby's head surges forward and begins to emerge as a small, wet teardrop pressing against my fingertips. "Nooo," I whine, half delirious with the pain. "No, no. Not yet." I couldn't give birth yet. I couldn't give birth alone.

I drop my head, resting my chin against my heaving chest. After taking a moment to catch my breath, I brace one hand on the edge of the bed and struggle to push myself up, keeping my hand firmly over my bulging hole. My efforts amount to nothing, however, when the action of shifting my hips pushes the baby down further into the birth canal. I cant hold it back any longer. I cry out in shock, and the cry turns into a scream as the head begins to crown.

"OHHHH, IT BURNS. FFFFFUCKKKK, BURNING." I land back down on my knees and give in to the pressure, fisting the hand that isnt supporting the head into the blankets as I push, and push hard. My labia, angry and red and burning, spread to accommodate the skull, and I let out another wild scream as they begin to sting. "Coming outttt. Gotta get it OUTTTT."

A hazy fear of tearing crosses my mind, but its gone with the next contraction. As my womb squeezes down around the baby, I throw my head back and wail, bringing the head to a half crown before it slides back in. "One more. Just... one more. Oh goddddd." I grunt and feel my labia stretch around the head, feeling impossibly tight for a few seconds, and then one hefty shove brings the baby to a full crown.

I struggle to catch my breath, stroking my fingers over its soft hair. "Almost," I whisper, half to my child, and half to myself. I inhale deeply and tighten my hold on the blankets as the next contraction builds, using it to anchor myself. "Almost, almost, alm-ohhhh, here. HEREEEE. ITS COMINGGGGG MMMMMMPFFFFF-FUCKKK!"

My words become an incoherent screech as I scream through the final stretch of the ring of fire, pushing until the baby's head pops free in a torrential gush of fluid. "Come on, baby," I grunt, feeling the presenting shoulder rotate and come free. "Here you are. Oh, here."

With one last tiny push, the second shoulder pops out, and the baby slides into my hands. I hadn't needed help after all.

[lilly-aurora77]

Spine against Spine

The first hint that this baby was trouble came long before the first contraction. Ryla, twenty years old and built like a long distance runner, lean hips, narrow pelvis, a body that had always done exactly what she asked of it, had spent the last three months of her pregnancy looking like she had swallowed a watermelon whole. Strangers in the grocery store stopped her with wide eyes. "Twins?" they would ask, and Ryla would laugh, embarrassed, her hand spread over the taut drum of her belly. "Just one," she would say. "A big one." Behind her, Theo, her fiancé, would rest his palm on the small of her back and offer a tight, professional smile. He was twenty four, a junior doctor in his final year of training, and he had already rotated through obstetrics. He knew what a big baby meant. He also knew what a posterior baby meant, sunny side up, spine against spine, the hardest way out. But Ryla wanted a home birth. She wanted quiet, candlelight, their bedroom, and no one else's hands but his. Her own parents had not spoken to her since she had announced the pregnancy at seventeen. "You have ruined your life," her mother had said, cold as ice water. Theo's parents were worse, religious and unforgiving. They had been uninvited from the wedding that was supposed to happen next spring. So it was just the two of them. Just Ryla and Theo and the enormous baby turning wrong side out inside her.

The first contraction came at two in the morning, a low, deep ache that started in her lower back and wrapped around her hips like a fist. Ryla woke with a gasp and sat up in bed, one hand pressed to her spine. Theo was awake instantly. He had been sleeping in restless bursts for a week, his medical bag packed and waiting by the dresser. "Is this it?" he asked, already reaching for her wrist to count her pulse. Ryla nodded, her breath shallow. "It feels different," she said. "It's in my back." Theo's jaw tightened. He helped her out of bed and walked her to the living room, where they had set up a birth pool that neither of them would end up using. The next twelve hours were a blur of position changes, sweat, and low, animal moaning.

Ryla spent the early hours standing. She braced her forearms against the wall, her forehead pressed to the cool plaster, her knees soft. Each contraction came like a wave of broken glass rolling up her spine. She breathed through them in long, guttural hums, low in her throat, the way Theo had taught her. But the pain did not wrap around to her belly the way it was supposed to. It stayed in her back, a hot, grinding pressure against her sacrum. Between contractions she begged him to rub her lower back, to press his palms into the base of her spine. He did, hard, using the heels of his hands in deep circles. "Harder," she gasped. "Please, Theo, harder." He pushed until his own arms burned, but nothing was enough.

By hour six, she moved to kneeling. She stacked pillows on the floor and sank onto them, her knees wide apart, her torso draped over an exercise ball. She rocked her hips in slow figure eights, trying to coax the baby to turn. Theo knelt behind her and squeezed her hips together during each contraction, a technique he had learned for posterior labor. He locked his hands over her iliac crests and pressed inward with all his strength. Ryla screamed into the ball. The pressure helped, barely, the way a bandage helps a broken leg. "It's still in my back," she sobbed. Theo did not lie to her. "I know," he said. "He is sunny side up. He might not turn."

She labored on her side next. Theo set up the bedroom like a delivery suite, sterile pads under her hips, gloves and clamps and a bulb syringe laid out on a clean towel. Ryla lay on her left side with a pillow between her knees. The contractions were coming every two minutes now, each one lasting nearly ninety seconds. She had stopped talking between them. All she could do was moan, a low, vibrating sound that rattled up from her chest. Theo checked her cervix during a brief window of calm. Eight centimeters. A lip of cervix still clinging to the baby's head. "You are almost there," he said, but his voice wavered. He could feel the position of the head through her cervix. It was posterior. The hardest part had not even begun.

She tried sitting. Theo dragged a wooden chair into the middle of the room and Ryla straddled it backward, her arms folded over the top rail, her cheek resting on her hands. Gravity was supposed to help. Nothing helped. The baby was too large and turned the wrong way. Every contraction drove his skull against the back of her pelvis, a pain so sharp and deep that she vomited a little onto the floor, a thin, bitter spurt that she barely noticed. Transition had arrived. She began to shake uncontrollably, her whole body trembling like a plucked wire. Her teeth chattered. Her legs buckled. Theo caught her before she fell and lowered her to the floor, cradling her against his chest. She was naked now, her skin slick with sweat, her hair plastered to her temples. "I can't do this," she whispered. "I can't." He held her tighter. "You are doing it," he said. "You are already doing it." She trembled in his arms for forty five minutes, unable to speak, unable to move, each contraction tearing a raw cry from her throat.

Then she felt it. The overwhelming, bone deep urge to push. It was not like the books described. It was not a gentle pressure. It was a tidal wave, a reflex that seized her whole body and bore down without her permission. "Theo," she gasped. "He's coming."

She was lying flat on her back from sheer exhaustion. Theo helped her roll onto her side again, but the pushing was ineffective there. She couldn't coordinate her muscles. The baby's head was posterior, which meant instead of a smooth curve through the birth canal, it was presenting at a wider angle, grinding against her pubic bone with every push. She pushed for an hour with no visible progress. Theo could see the head crowning slightly with each contraction, only to slip back inside when the contraction ended. "He is big," Theo said quietly. "You have to push harder than you think you can."

Ryla flipped onto her hands and knees. Kneeling, she bore down with a sound she had never made before, a deep, primal roar that came from somewhere below her lungs. The head descended. She felt the burn, the stretching, the searing ring of fire that would not end because the baby's head was not presenting at the optimal angle. She pushed until the veins stood out on her neck, until her face turned red, until she thought her heart would stop. Theo watched the perineum stretch to a terrifying degree. "I see hair," he said. "Lots of hair. Keep going."

She pushed for another hour on her knees. The head advanced millimeter by millimeter. Ryla screamed into the pillow. Theo knelt behind her, his hands steady on her hips, coaching her through each contraction. "Tuck your chin. Bear down into your bottom. Do not let up." She pushed until she saw stars, until she felt something tear deep inside, a sharp, hot pain that made her shriek. But the head stayed. It was crowning, finally, a wide oval of dark hair and swollen flesh, but it wouldn't come the rest of the way.

"I need to change positions," she sobbed. "I can't do it like this." Theo helped her shift. She ended up sitting on the floor, her back against the foot of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest. It was not the ideal birthing position. But it was the one her body wanted. She grabbed her own thighs and pulled them back, opening her pelvis as wide as she could. Theo positioned himself between her legs, his face pale and focused.

The next contraction hit, and Ryla pushed with everything she had left. The head stretched her perineum to the point of transparency. The burning was biblical, a wall of fire that made her scream until her voice cracked. But she did not stop. She pushed through the scream. The head turned slightly, finally shifting from posterior to anterior in the last inch of the birth canal. Theo saw it happen. "Yes," he said. "Yes, he is turning. One more. One more like that."

Ryla pushed again, and the head emerged. It was enormous, the size of a small melon, and the relief was instant and horrifying. The head was out, but the body was still inside. The baby's face was turned toward her thigh, just as posterior babies often do. Theo checked quickly for a nuchal cord. There was none. "Good," he said. "Now the shoulders. Rest for a second."

There was no rest. The next contraction came ten seconds later, and Ryla pushed with a guttural howl. The anterior shoulder emerged, then stuck. Theo applied gentle downward traction, his fingers hooked under the baby's armpit. The shoulder freed itself with a wet, audible pop, and Ryla tore a little, a small second degree tear that she did not even feel because the pain was already so immense. The second shoulder was worse. It hung up behind her pubic bone, and the weight of the baby, half born, half inside, was now suspended from her perineum. The head was out, heavy and warm against her thigh, and the rest of the baby was still wedged inside her. Ryla looked down and saw her son's face, purple and waxy, his eyes squeezed shut, and she wailed. Not from pain, not entirely. From the unbearable weight of him hanging there, stuck again, his body pulling downward on the torn ring of her flesh. Tears streamed down her face. "Get him out," she begged. "Please, Theo, get him out."

Theo hooked his fingers under the second armpit and rotated the baby's body gently. "Push," he said. "Now. Hard as you can."

Ryla screamed and pushed, her whole body curling inward like a fist. The second shoulder released. The baby slid out in a rush of fluid and blood, and Theo caught him with both hands. He was huge. Long and heavy and solid, with broad shoulders and a round, perfect head that had taken twelve hours to emerge. He was not breathing at first. Theo wiped his face with a clean cloth, suctioned his mouth and nose with the bulb syringe, and rubbed his back with firm, quick circles. The baby coughed. Then he screamed, a furious, lusty cry that filled the small bedroom.

Ryla collapsed against the foot of the bed, her legs trembling, her perineum burning, her whole body shaking with the aftershock of what she had just done. Theo laid the baby on her chest, and she wrapped her arms around him, sobbing. He was slick and warm and impossibly heavy. Ten pounds, at least. Maybe eleven.

"Look at you," she whispered. "Look how big you are."

Theo pressed his forehead to hers, his hands shaking as he checked her pulse, her bleeding, the tear that would need a few stitches. Everything was fine. More than fine. She was exhausted and torn and trembling, but she was fine. The baby was fine. They were alone in their house, just the three of them, and Ryla had done it. She had pushed a sunny side up giant out of her own body with no one but the man she loved to catch him.

She looked up at Theo, her face wet with tears and sweat. "I'm never doing that again," she said.

Theo smiled, exhausted, his scrubs soaked through. "That's what you said after the first contraction."

The baby rooted toward her breast, his mouth open, his tiny fists waving. Ryla helped him latch, and the pain in her back finally, finally began to fade.

[tenderbreedyftm]

I want to knock up my girlfriend and spoil her and treat her so tenderly but at the same time I’m so fucking desperate for her to rut her cum into me and fill my womb with her babies ugghhhh….

She didn’t know my cum could really breed her, but she pumped into me so hard she must have taken what she thought I could never give. Her belly swells anyway, the space below her cock slowly changing to the hole she’ll push my baby from.

i want us to be rounded and full of each other’s kids with nothing left to do but softly hump against each other, her still slick cock rubbing against the folds of my slowly stretching pussy as the space where her own pussy has grown begins to bulge. I want her body to change to bear my baby, hear her soft, but strong little grunts of pain as she pushes, still humping gently against my folds as I press my tdick up against her, grunting and panting as her baby stretches me.

We spend our labors lying there, wrapped safely in one another’s arms, each peppering the other’s body with soft kisses and murmuring pained encouragements in the other’s ear. We crown together, me rubbing her cock softly and her fingers paying special attention to my tdick and folds. Grunts and moans of pain turn to little noises of pleasure, and then gasps as waves of orgasmic bliss roll over us as we cum our babies out together.

[pumpkinbirth]

Say what you will about being a phone sex operator, but you definitely can’t call it boring.

All manner of voices find their way to you; some shy and unsure, while others can be abrasive and demanding. Hell, half of the time you barely have to do or say a damn thing while harsh panting emanates from your headphones as the person on the other end clearly only needs to know you’re listening in order to get off. There are times, though, when you find yourself engaging in specific fantasies of your callers, and those are often the most unique ones of all.

For example, tonight’s caller.

“Ooh, that one sounded like it hurt,” you purr, listening intently as the woman on the other end pants and breathes in a specifically measured way. She had called in ten minutes ago, her voice hushed and thick with anticipation, and you’d listened attentively as she explained the premise of her call: she was in labor. It isn’t the strangest thing you’ve had to play along with by far, and as the minutes tick by and her ‘contractions’ grow stronger, you inwardly find yourself much more aroused by this than you would’ve thought.

“Mnhh, they’re getting so much stronger now…” she breathes in confirmation, which earns a sound from you that is both sympathetic and teasing.

“Tell me how it feels,” you prompt, reclining back in your chair. Your fingertips trace lazily at your waistline as you do so, silently debating whether to slip further downward. Not yet, you decide. “I want to know everything, sweetheart.” There’s a faint click on the other end, perhaps the sound of your caller’s throat as she swallows hard.

“The pressure is…i-it’s like nothing I’ve ever felt before,” the woman murmurs, her voice slightly strained as she fights to speak through what you assume is another one. “I can f-feel the baby moving downwards, little by little…my body’s been opening up for it all day, so it won’t be long until—!” Her sentence abruptly halts, and your eyes widen slightly as you hear what sounds like a faint splashing sound, liquid hitting another surface, the floor perhaps?

Whoever this caller is, she’s really committed to this fantasy, and you’re all too happy to be along for the ride, however odd it may be.

“Oh, sweetheart,” you croon once you’ve gathered yourself again, immersing yourself into her strange roleplay. “Did your water just break?” It takes a second for her to answer you, and for the briefest moment you wonder if the call has dropped. Her voice returns a second later, though, accompanied by that same anticipatory tremor she had when the call first began.

“There’s…fuck, there’s so much of it,” she whispers, grunting softly as she makes herself comfortable, or so you assume. “I-it just keeps coming…the bottom half of my dress is soaked through.”

“Well that won’t do,” you tsk, idly slipping a hand down the front of your pants as you tend to the budding arousal your caller has stoked in you. “It sounds like you’d better take it off, right…?” You draw out the last word seductively, and the effect is instantaneous. She whimpers into your ear before you hear the rustle of fabric, and you imagine what must be happening; her hands shaking slightly as she grasps the hem of her dress, pulling the drenched garment up and off of herself. You shiver slightly as you envision what her pregnant body might look like, before reminding yourself that this is purely roleplay, and you should keep it moving along. “Good girl. Now the rest of it, unless…?”

“T-there isn’t anything else,” she murmurs, almost coyly, and this elicits a pleased sound from you. Your hand works steadily between your legs as you listen to her heavy breaths, no doubt another of her ‘contractions’, and you’re surprised at how much this is actually turning you on. This job certainly has been a journey of self discovery, if nothing else.

“O-ohh—!” This time her voice is laced with urgency, and part of you wonders if she’s actually in pain. But that’s ridiculous, you reason to yourself; if this woman was actually in active labor, there’s no way she would be still on the line with you. No, you tell yourself as you listen to her moaning and panting, she’s just very good at this.

“Sounds like there isn’t much time left,” you purr, and the moan this earns makes a pleased smirk spread across your face. “Am I right, sweetheart? Is it time for my good girl to start pushing?”

“M-mngh, yes…!” she whimpers, and you hear more rustling as she repositions herself. Your mind conjures images of what your caller might look like, sitting naked against the headboard of her bed, legs spread to make room for her swollen belly. You swear under your breath as the image urges your fingers to move faster, but if she hears you she says nothing of it.

“C’mon then, pretty girl,” you urge, curious to see how far she wants to take her fantasy. “Push for me, let me hear it…”

Her response isn’t verbal, but it’s very much audible. A deep, almost primal grunting as she seems to bear down, straining until eventually letting up with a gasp for air. “Coming, it’s c-coming…” she pants, and you absently lick your lips before responding.

“Mm, what a productive push that must’ve been…give me another,” you order, your pulse racing as you hear her obey almost too eagerly. “Again,” you urge when she lets up, reveling in how much she’s become utterly lost in her fantasy. “Again…”

You have no idea how long this call has gone on for, but that doesn’t bother you in the slightest. All you know is that she’s enjoying herself just as much as you are; moans seamlessly intertwining with her cries of mock pain. Until at last, her voice rings out again, seeming to reverberate through your headphones.

“O-ohhhfuck it’s right there—“

“Keep pushing, you’re close, I know you’re close…”

“F-fuck…mnnhhgh!!”

The sounds she makes are unlike anything you’ve heard before, and as you feel yourself reaching your own peak you make a note to thank her for this strange new kink she’s helped you to unlock. Her last moan is a desperate, guttural scream, and there’s a soft muffled sound that must be her slumping back against the headboard. Before you can say a word, though, you hear something else on the other end, something peeking through your caller’s exhausted, labored breaths.

Something that sounds an awful lot like wailing.

“H-haahhh…thank you…for all of your help,” the woman pants hotly, and you can faintly hear her cooing softly to something before the line disconnects, leaving you equal parts aroused and confused. You wonder, faintly, if this means you can technically add ‘midwife’ onto your strange, extensive resume.

[kanarazuni]

i think it's coming (OwO)

[pumpkinbirth]

Never before had you looked so perfect.

The soft lighting of the gallery hall draws attention to each and every contour of your exposed flesh; emphasizing the flushed patches of skin atop your shoulders, across your face and chest. Sweat glistens at your hairline, your temples, a droplet trailing along the column of your throat and following the downward curve of your craned neck. Your arms are drawn taut and bound behind you, elbows and wrists touching each other, and the sturdy chain links clink softly as you absently test the strength of the anchor point.

You stand with your legs wide apart, your plush thighs trembling slightly as the cool air of the room clashes with the heat emanating from your skin. In a bid for a little more comfort, you attempt to adjust your stance, but the spreader bar attached to both of your ankles make this an impossible task. In every sense of the word, you are well and truly bound, and with the choice of movement having been stripped from you, there is only one thing left for you to focus on.

One thing left for everyone to see.

With your head bowed it is difficult for you to tell whenever someone approaches you, but they make their presence known well enough; after all, you are an interactive piece. Hands roam over your sweat-slickened flesh, some tracing the line of your backbone, while others follow the curve of your heavy belly, cradling the hanging swell as if they are the one responsible for it. Voices surround you, some murmuring amongst themselves as they observe from afar, some rumbling close to you as they praise and admire your artfully bound and swollen form. There are coos of awe when they watch and feel your taut belly tense with contractions, coupled with dark chuckles of arousal as disembodied fingers trace between your legs, collecting and spreading the slickness they find there.

It is only when your water breaks with a thick gush that the hands remove themselves from you, your admirers stepping back and taking their place amongst the crowd that has gathered around you. The rules are clear from this point; they cannot touch, and they cannot help. You can’t see your audience in your current position, but you can feel their eyes roaming over you; watching as more amniotic fluid trickles freely from between your spread legs, syrupy droplets spattering onto the floor and accumulating in a messy puddle beneath you. Again your legs tremble as you cry out, another contraction rippling through your body, and your eyes squeeze shut as you brace yourself as best you can.

The restraints binding your arms shift and clink as you pitch further forward, curling in on yourself as much as you can as you bear down and give your first, true push. It feels so primal this way; your body bare and your belly swaying beneath you as you obey the whims of your instincts, pushing and panting in a way that borders on animal. Leather and metal creak as you move in what little ways you can, writhing and whimpering as each push brings you closer to the peak of your performance. Faintly you register the voices of the crowd, encouragement and objectification swirling and blurring and surrounding you entirely.

A keening cry erupts from your throat when you finally, finally feel it, the deliciously burning stretch of the head fully crowning. More fluid spurts out of you, and at this point there isn’t an inch of you that isn’t glistening with either sweat or birthing fluid. Your slick thighs tremble, your knees too, and you vaguely realize that you’re only being kept upright by your arm restraints. There isn’t time to dwell on this, though, not when you’re so close—

Your broken voice echoes throughout the exhibition hall, reverberating in a way that seems to qualify as art all on its own. With one last valiant push, you feel the shoulders ease out of you one by one, followed by the rest of the baby in a searing rush of the last of your waters. One of the gallery attendants swiftly moves forward to catch it, and the wailing of the newborn is soon eclipsed by the enraptured voices of your audience, commending both your performance and the gallery itself for hosting such an experience.

[lilly-aurora77]

The Freshmen

The first contraction hit Marley like a freight train derailing inside her pelvis. She was 19, a sophomore, and six weeks early by her careful calculations. She had been crouched over her biology textbook, highlighting the stages of mitosis, when her body decided to rewrite the entire chapter on human reproduction.

Across the cramped dorm room, a sound ripped through the stale air. A wet, guttural groan. Not from Marley. From Jess, her roommate, who was on her hands and knees by the window, her sweatpants already soaked through. Jess was 20, and she had been hiding her pregnancy under oversized hoodies for eight months.

Then a sharp cry from the bathroom. The door was half open. Cass, all of 19 and fiercely private, was leaning over the sink, her knuckles white on the porcelain. Her water had just broken, a clear flood spreading across the linoleum.

And in the corner, on a pile of dirty laundry, sat Rachel. She was the quiet one, the one who never complained about the midnight kicking or the sciatica. She was also 21, and she was crowning. No warning. No fanfare. Just a dark, wet curve of a head pushing its way out of her while she stared at the ceiling with an expression of pure, animal shock.

Four girls. One room. No phones. No RA. No ambulance that could arrive in time. The snowstorm outside had sealed them in, the campus on lockdown. They had been lying to themselves and everyone else for months. And now the lie was tearing its way out, all at once.

Marley was the first to move. Not because she was brave, but because the pain was worse than fear. She kicked off her jeans and stumbled to the center of the room, dropping into a deep squat. Her thighs burned. The baby was low, impossibly low, a hot bowling ball splitting her from the inside. She had read every book. She knew the theory. Theory did not prepare her for the raw, wet tear of her own cervix stretching to the size of a bagel.

"Push," Jess hissed through clenched teeth, but Jess was also pushing. Jess had her forehead pressed to the cold floor, her back arched like a feral cat. A low, vibrating scream came out of her, not loud, but deep, like a cello string snapping.

Rachel made no sound at all. She reached down with trembling fingers and touched the head. It was slick, dark haired, and wrinkled like a walnut. She let out a single sob, then bore down. Her body took over. There was no stopping it. The head rotated, slipped free, and the shoulders followed with a wet, percussive pop that made Cass vomit into the sink.

Marley watched Rachel catch her own baby. A tiny, bluish girl slid into Rachel's shaking palms, umbilical cord pulsing like a thick rope. Rachel looked up, tears and sweat dripping from her chin, and whispered, "She's breathing." A thin, reedy cry filled the room. It was the sound of a battle won.

But Marley was losing her battle. Her squat had turned into a collapse. She was on her hands and knees now, like a wounded animal. The baby was stuck. Not sideways, not tangled, just stubborn. A second contraction hit before the first one finished, a double wave of fire. She screamed. Not a movie scream. A real one. Raw, throat shredding, the kind that leaves you hoarse for days.

Jess crawled across the floor, leaving a smear of amniotic fluid behind her. She was still in early labor herself, but the urgency of Marley's scream cut through her own pain. Jess positioned herself behind Marley, straddling her hips, and pressed her palms against Marley's lower back. "Bear down on my hands," Jess ordered. Her voice was shaking but commanding.

Marley pushed. She pushed until the veins in her neck stood out like cables. She pushed until she saw white light and the taste of copper flooded her mouth from biting her own lip. The head descended. A fire rim of pain, the infamous ring of fire, and Marley understood with perfect clarity why women in history bit down on leather straps.

"I see the head," Rachel said, still holding her own newborn against her chest, umbilical cord trailing. She shuffled over on her knees, one hand supporting her daughter's neck. "It's right there. Small. Lots of hair. One more push, Marley. A real one."

Marley dropped her forehead to the floor. Her whole body clenched. She curled around the contraction like a fist closing. And then she pushed with a force that felt like she was trying to turn herself inside out. The head emerged. A gush of blood and fluid. Then the shoulders, twisting in that strange, corkscrew motion that no textbook can teach you. And finally, with a slippery, shocking release, the whole body slid into Jess's waiting hands.

A boy. Red faced, furious, and perfect. He screamed immediately, a lusty, indignant wail. Jess placed him on the floor between Marley's knees, and Marley turned over, hauled the baby onto her chest, and laughed. A wet, hysterical laugh that turned into a sob. The cord was still pulsing, thick and primal.

Across the room, Cass had not moved from the bathroom. But she was no longer leaning. She was squatting over a pile of towels, her face a mask of concentration. Her labor had been silent, almost secretive. But now her body was shuddering, and the unmistakable curve of a head was visible between her legs.

Jess, still on her knees, still in active labor herself (her own contractions were now two minutes apart, grinding and relentless), crawled to the bathroom. She grabbed Cass's hand. "You have to push through the burn," Jess said. "Don't fight it. The burn means it's almost over."

Cass pushed. A short, brutal push. The head stretched her perineum to a translucent pink, and for a terrible second, Marley thought she would tear to her anus. But then the head slipped free, followed by a rush of shoulders and limbs. A girl. Small, silent, and then suddenly screaming with a pair of healthy, furious lungs. Cass caught her own baby, sinking back against the toilet, her legs giving out. She was crying and laughing and saying "thank you thank you thank you" to nobody and everybody.

Now only Jess remained. And she was deep in the tunnel. The kind of deep where time stops and pain becomes a landscape you live inside. She had helped deliver two babies while her own waited, and now her body demanded payment.

Marley, still lying on the floor with her son nursing instinctively at her breast, reached out and took Jess's hand. Rachel, her daughter wrapped in a sweatshirt, positioned herself behind Jess. Cass, exhausted but euphoric, wet a washcloth in the sink and pressed it to Jess's forehead.

Jess pushed standing. She grabbed the edge of the loft bed frame, planted her feet wide, and bore down with a scream that rattled the window glass. Her knees buckled, but she did not fall. She pushed again. The head descended. She could feel it, a stretching, burning, impossible fullness. She roared. A pure, feral roar.

The head emerged. She reached down with one hand and touched the wet, wrinkled scalp. She felt the tiny ear, the curve of the skull. And then she pushed one last time, a push that lifted her onto her toes, and the baby slid out in a rush of fluid and blood, directly into her own shaking hands.

A girl. Jess caught her own girl. The baby opened her eyes immediately, dark and calm, and did not cry. She just looked at Jess with that ancient, knowing stare that newborns have, as if to say, "What took you so long?"

Jess sank to her knees, cradling the baby against her chest. The room was a disaster. Towels soaked in blood and fluid. Four placentas still inside four exhausted bodies. Four tiny, mewling infants. The snow was still falling outside the window, muffling the world.

Nobody spoke for a long time. The only sounds were the wet, snuffling breaths of newborns finding their first meals, and the occasional groan of a girl shifting on the hard floor.

Finally, Rachel looked around the room at the three other girls, three other new mothers, all of them strangers to each other just six hours ago. Her voice was barely a whisper, raw and stunned.

"Cleanup is going to be a nightmare."

Marley laughed, a genuine laugh that made her son startle and then settle. Jess snorted. Cass just shook her head, staring down at her daughter with an expression of complete, bone deep disbelief.

They had done it. No doctors. No epidurals. No ambulances in the snow. Four teenagers in a cramped dorm room, and they had torn open the gate of life with their bare hands and brought four souls screaming into the world.

The storm raged on. But inside that small, bloodstained room, there was nothing but warmth and the quiet, brutal miracle of survival.

[lilly-aurora77]

The Surrogate

The first contraction did not whisper. It roared.

Rosie was standing in her kitchen, pouring a glass of water, when her abdomen clenched into a fist of hot, twisting iron. She froze, one hand gripping the counter, the other flying to her belly. She had carried triplets for thirty-six weeks and four days. Each baby had been measured, scanned, and re-scanned: two boys, one girl, all enormous. The last ultrasound had put them between ten and twelve pounds apiece. Thirty-plus pounds of baby. A watermelon, then another, then another, stuffed into a body that had started as five foot four and one hundred and thirty pounds.

She breathed through the first wave. It lasted ninety seconds. Then another came seven minutes later. Then another. By the third contraction, she knew.

She called her midwife, Lena, a woman with grey-streaked hair and hands like warm wood. “It’s time,” Rosie said, her voice steady but low.

Lena arrived within the hour, accompanied by her assistant, Mara. The married couple, Claire and David, arrived twenty minutes after that. Claire was a soft-eyed woman who had wept when Rosie signed the surrogacy agreement. David was quiet, practical, already hauling the birthing pool into the living room and filling it with a hose from the laundry sink.

Rosie labored on her hands and knees first. The carpet had been covered with old sheets and waterproof pads. She pressed her forehead into a pile of pillows, her spine arched like a cat, and groaned as the next contraction built. This was no polite wave. This was a mountain collapsing. Her entire uterus hardened into a dome of sheer tension, and she could feel the babies shift inside her like boulders rolling downhill.

“Breathe down,” Lena said softly, kneeling beside her. “Don’t hold your breath. Let it go low.”

Rosie tried. But the weight was obscene. Every time she moved, her pelvis cracked and popped. Her lower back felt as if someone had driven a spike between her vertebrae. She dragged herself up into a squat, holding onto the arm of the sofa, and let her body weight pull her down. The contraction peaked, and she roared a raw, animal sound that made Claire flinch and David turn pale.

“That’s it,” Mara said. “That’s the sound of work.”

Four hours passed. Then six. Then ten.

Rosie moved through positions like a wounded animal seeking shelter. Squatting until her thighs burned and trembled. Sitting on a low stool, rocking her hips in slow, agonizing circles. Semi-reclined against a mountain of cushions, legs spread wide, her belly so huge that she could barely see her own knees. But the position that worked best was the one she kept returning to: on her hands and knees, face down, her forehead on the cool floorboards, her buttocks high, letting gravity and the sheer weight of the triplets bear down on her cervix.

At hour twelve, her water broke.

It was not a trickle. It was a flood. A hot gush of fluid splashed onto the sheets, then another, then another – three distinct bursts as each sac released in quick succession. Rosie screamed. Not from pain alone, but from the sudden, shocking pressure of three heads dropping into her pelvis at once.

“They’re coming,” she gasped. “God, they’re all coming.”

Lena checked her. “You’re nine centimeters. Almost fully dilated. The first baby is right there. I can feel the head.”

Rosie crawled to the birthing pool. The water was warm, almost hot, and she sighed as she sank into it. She knelt in the center, then leaned forward over the side, her forearms braced on the padded edge, her knees wide apart on the pool’s floor. The water muffled sound. Her own heartbeat filled her ears.

The urge to push arrived like a second labor.

It was not a gentle pressure. It was a violent, involuntary command. Her body seized control. Her diaphragm locked, her abdominal wall clenched, and she bore down with a groan that shook the windows. The first baby’s head crowned. The burning was biblical. She felt her perineum stretch to a degree that seemed impossible, a ring of fire that made her vision white out.

“Slow,” Lena said. “Breathe with it. Don’t tear.”

Rosie couldn’t slow. Her body was a freight train. She pushed again, screaming into the water-splashed rim of the pool, and the head emerged, huge, dark-haired, perfect. Another push, and the shoulders twisted free. Another, and the first baby slid into Lena’s waiting hands.

A boy. Eleven pounds, two ounces.

He cried immediately, a furious squall. Claire sobbed. David reached into the pool to take him, but Lena said, “Wait. The cord is short. Keep him close to her chest.”

Rosie pulled the baby to her chest, her arms shaking with exhaustion. But there was no rest. Her uterus was already contracting again, and she could feel the second baby, even larger, ramming down the birth canal.

“I can’t,” she whispered. “I can’t do another one.”

“You can,” Mara said. “You’re doing it.”

The second labor was worse. The first baby had carved a path, but the second was positioned differently a shoulder presentation that made Lena’s face go tight. Rosie had to change positions. She turned in the water, gripping the opposite side of the pool, and squatted low, her heels digging into the vinyl floor. Lena reached inside, gently rotated the baby’s shoulder, and said, “Push now. Hard.”

Rosie pushed like she was trying to split the world in half.

The second boy came in a rush of water and blood and sound. His head emerged, then his body followed so fast that Lena nearly dropped him. Twelve pounds even. He did not cry at first, just opened his enormous eyes and stared at the ceiling. Then he took a breath and wailed.

Rosie slumped against the side of the pool, two babies on her chest, breathing in ragged gasps. Her arms were barely holding them. Her whole body was a single raw nerve.

“One more,” Lena said softly. “The girl is still high. We need you to stand.”

“Stand?” Rosie laughed.

“You need gravity. The third baby is big. The biggest.”

Rosie wept. Then she pushed herself up. David helped her out of the pool, water streaming from her body, her legs slick with blood and vernix. She knelt on a thick pile of towels, then leaned over a birth stool, her arms wrapped around it, her forehead on the seat. Claire knelt in front of her, holding her hands.

The third baby was a girl. Twelve pounds, three ounces.

Rosie pushed for forty-five minutes. Each contraction felt like her spine was being unzipped. The baby’s head crowned and retreated, crowned and retreated, a cruel tease. Lena poured warm oil over her perineum and massaged the stretching skin. Rosie screamed until her voice went silent. She pushed with a sound like a dying animal a long, low, guttural bellow that went on and on and on.

And then the head was out. The shoulders. The huge, perfect body.

The girl slid into Lena’s hands, purple and roaring with life.

Rosie collapsed onto her side, the baby placed against her belly, all three now tangled together in a pile of warm, wet, furious newborn. Her legs were still shaking. Her abdomen, deflated but bruised-looking, contracted as the placenta began to separate. She was bleeding a normal amount, Lena confirmed but she was trembling so hard that Claire wrapped a heated blanket around her shoulders.

“You did it,” David whispered. He was crying. Claire could not speak at all.

Rosie looked down at the three babies. The boys had stopped crying and were nuzzling blindly at her chest. The girl was hiccupping. They were enormous, ruddy-faced, perfect. Thirty-five pounds of baby had just been ripped from a hundred-and-thirty-pound body.

She did not feel heroic. She felt hollowed out, flayed open, remade into something raw and new. Her perineum was intact but swollen to the size of a grapefruit. Her tailbone ached. Her nipples had not yet been touched, but she knew the next ordeal was coming: feeding triplets.

But for one long, brutal, beautiful moment, she simply lay in the wet towels and the warm water and the smell of blood and birth, and she wept. Not from pain. From the sheer, crushing weight of what she had done.

Claire finally found her voice. “Thank you,” she said. “Thank you. Thank you.”

Rosie closed her eyes. The midwives were already checking the babies, clamping cords, counting fingers and toes. David was stroking her hair. The room smelled of sweat and amniotic fluid and something metallic and alive.

“You’re welcome,” Rosie whispered. And then she passed out for exactly forty-five seconds just long enough for Lena to say her name twice and for everyone in the room to hold their breath.

When she opened her eyes again, the triplets were nursing. Two at the breast, one cup-fed by Claire. And Rosie smiled a broken, exhausted, utterly triumphant smile and thought: I will never do this again.

But in that moment, she was glad she had.

[tbgblr2]

Lifestyles

Finally, a new story for the blog. One of my backlog that needed editing. First I have to acknowledge @allkindsofpreg for her usual contributions to my works, and I want to introduce @highlyrelevantnumber as well who has helped with editing this last piece. Many thanks to both of you, I would certainly not be anywhere near productive without you both! However, on with the story...

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

"Ladies and Gentlemen, welcome to today's episode of "Lifestyles", the officially recorded highest rated show on air covering current affairs and entertainment. I'm your host, Gabby Sinclair, and today I'm joined by our special guest - celebrated author of the wonderful series of books entitled "Motherhood" Jessica Shallows."

The host had practiced polish to her style. I watched as she gave a few moments to allow for the canned clapping to be added by the mixer desk back in the office - in reality, we were in a room with the two of us, a camera operator, and the understanding that there would be a need for a whole lot of post-processing to go to get the show ready for the screen.

I felt uncomfortable in my seat. Truth be told, I was not really one for public spectacle. I was an author, a doula - and I felt most comfortable either behind a screen typing away, or in a delivery room holding a nervous mother-to-be's hand as she undertook a major journey in her life.

Another major reason for my lack of comfort was the fact that I was 9 months pregnant - and it was very obvious. The lady who had helped hundreds of babies be brought into the world was finally becoming a mother herself. With my enforced maternity leave, I had decided to put the finishing touches to my latest book so the proceeds could help smooth out the lack of money coming into the home.

My mind was on other things, though. 30 minutes ago I was in the dressing room getting my makeup done by the team, having a bit of small talk with Gabby - when I felt a twinge. I knew it was my first baby, and it would take time... but the twinges had seemed to become all the more noticeable when the cameras were pointing right at my face.   I was struggling to decide if it was nerves… or something more.

"So, Jessica" asked Gabby - the show was underway - "You have a five-book series so far recounting the many births you have attended, and they have become best sellers all over the globe. Now you're readying for undertaking the same journey yourself. Tell me - how does it feel to be at the other end of the action, so to speak?"

I smiled as my hand moved to my bump as I felt another heave. I just hoped that I could get through this interview. I had plenty of time, I was sure of it.

“Well, it’s a beautiful experience, of course,” I said, waiting for her to nod in agreement, even though she didn’t have any kids. “If your idea of beauty includes constant nausea and the walking speed of a centenarian,” I added, hoping that it came off as humorous and relatable rather than bitter and exhausted.

She chuckled appropriately and watched as I shifted yet again in my chair. “Getting down to the finish line now, yeah? Any details on your own birth plan you want to share?”

I absolutely did not want to describe to however many thousands or millions of people that would see this all the intimate and vulnerable details of how I was intending to give birth, so I just said, “I’ve been witness to the process enough times to know that whatever plan I may have, babies tend to have plans of their own.”

As if to make a point, my belly tightened again, and my smile may have turned a bit tight as I attempted to hide a wince.

“Perhaps we’ll read all about it in your next book, then,” Gabby proposed, waiting until I gave a non-committal shrug before moving on. “Speaking of which… I’m sure most of our audience has heard of your work, but for anyone who might not know, why don’t you tell us a little about what your series is about and the reason you started writing it?”

I took another few seconds to catch my breath—maybe it just looked like I was composing my thoughts—and then recited the boiler plate answer I’d given dozens of times before. “Well, my mother was a midwife, and I realized at a very young age that the education I received about women’s bodies and experiences was vastly different from that of my peers. There was always so much fear and mystery and shame whenever these kinds of topics came up, and it didn’t make sense to innocent little Jessica who had seen and heard only the power and strength and beauty in it all.” A foot jutted out against the wall of my stomach, and I patted the spot, still somewhat in awe of what my body was capable of doing.

“So you wanted to show that the journey of becoming a mother is something to celebrate, not fear?”

A particularly stabbing pain wrapped around my lower back, and I arched against the chair with a small hiss, my very round stomach spilling even more gratuitously over my lap.

“Are you alright, Jessica?” Gabby asked, practiced professionalism slipping into genuine concern. “Maybe we can find you a pillow or something to make you more comfortable.”

I shook my head, not wanting to prolong the interview. “No, thank you. Just running out of room in there, you know?” She didn’t quite look like she believed me, but I continued, answering her earlier question. “I would say it’s less about celebration and more about normalization. There’s nothing especially dramatic or unique about the women in my books, but because we as a society don’t bring up things like placentas and episiotomies and cervixes in ‘polite’ conversation, I figured it would be less intimidating, less clinical, coming from actual lived experiences.”

“Kind of like regaining that tribal knowledge of womanhood.”

“Exactly!” My sudden excitement triggered another pain, somehow even worse than the last one, and I found it ironic that all that tribal knowledge seemed to be failing me now. Things were intensifying too much too quickly. I’d heard about precipitous labours but never attended one—the few opportunities had passed before I could even arrive.

I took a breath, willed myself to calm down. I had never actually been through labor before; maybe this was all normal. Maybe it wasn’t even labor. Surely, I was just jumping to conclusions…

"So do you have any fond memories of any particular births?" came the next question from Gabby.

"Let me think" I pondered a moment, my brain part-focused on the ache that had come back, once more, around my midsection.

"I know a good one" I added. "It was a young, first-time mother. Her pregnancy was an accident. But there was one thing evident in the room as she came in - she was strong. She was hard - knew a life of hard knocks. She suffered her labour like a champ - she hardly made a sound, thinking showing any weakness would be a failing for her. She knew she couldn't ride things out like that for the full duration of the labour. She asked permission to cry out. The girl felt she needed to be allowed to make noise and deal with something that pretty much every mother I have dealt with just allowed to come naturally."

I took a moment to reminisce. "When she finally got the head out, screaming like a banshee, really letting herself go, she reached down and felt the baby for the first time. It was right then I saw love in her eyes. As she took a moment to rest before she had to push out the shoulders and the body she told me, with tears in her eyes that this baby would be the love of her life. And it was - we still keep in touch. In fact, I hope to deliver her second baby after I get back from my maternity leave. She's married now and made a decent life for herself. A real star of the schools PTA it seems!"

My hand absentmindedly pressed into the side of my belly, as the tightening sensation drew across it once again. I blew out a small breath.

"Everything OK?" asked Gabby.

I nodded my head. "Just late-stage pregnancy. Not the easiest thing to sit still when junior wants to poke you in every internal crevice possible." I gave a weak laugh as my hand pressed harder against the aching band of tightening muscle around my middle.

"If it helps..." offered Gabby "we can stand. That's the beauty of our set, we can just move around to suit - we often chat in front of the screen when a guest wants to chat about a video or presentation."

"That would be lovely" I said, as I put my hands on the sides of the chair and pushed myself up to my feet, smoothing my dress down around my knees. I felt like I was a bit of a spectacle on camera trying to get up, but at least I managed it somewhat gracefully.

"Can you do some editing to make me look more graceful?" I asked  Gabby as she stood up and moved next to me.

"Of course, my dear. One of the beauties of this not going out live - editing can solve a multitude of sins!" came the smiling voice of Gabby next to me.

It wasn’t a huge studio, and I had to take extra care around all the lights and camera equipment as my huge belly swung around, but moving around definitely helped alleviate some of the ache. Of course, instead it now felt like the baby’s head could just fall out at any moment, but rationally I knew it wouldn’t be that easy—no one would ever need my services if it was.

“So, Jessica—do you want to give us a sneak peek into this latest release?” Gabby asked, trying to move the interview along.

I paused to grip the back of a chair, channeling the tightness in my midsection into my grip. “Sure, yeah. It’s really a story of endurance.” I bowed my head, taking in a few puffs of air, and then straightened. “It was the longest birth I’d ever attended. This young mother was in labor for days.”

“And you stayed by her side that entire time?” she asked incredulously.

“Most of it, yeah,” I said, somewhat out of breath. “It helps everyone involved to know that the mother always has someone by her side to support and encourage her. Takes the pressure off and makes it a more enjoyable experience overall.”

I must not have been masking my wince very well because Gabby paused the interview yet again. “Are you sure you’re alright? We can schedule this for another time if you’re not feeling up for it.”

I shook my head—it had already taken almost a year to set up this time slot; if we tried to reschedule, I’d likely already be back to work with a nursing child to take care of. I swiped the bottle of water left out for guests on the side table and pointed to it. “Just need a little water and a lot of movement.”

Ever the professional, Gabby took what she was given and followed it down a new path. “Perfect! You can demonstrate some of the positions you describe in your book.”

“Most of them are doula-assisted and require another person…”

She raised her hand like the solution was obvious. “I’m another person.”

“Oh. Right.” It would be a little awkward, using myself as a test dummy with someone I’d only just met, but I had to admit I was curious. “Now I guess we’ll both be ‘on the other side of the action’,” I joked, echoing her own words back to her.

She smirked at that, seeming to like the challenge. “Alright, what do you want to try first?”

“Do you, by any chance, have something I can kneel on?” I asked, as my hands migrated around to my back and pressed, forcing me to jut out my belly in turn. The moment of relief felt like heaven.

“Let me see…” pondered Gabby. As she looked around, the cameraman pointed to the chairs we were previously on. “Oh yeah, we can just remove the cushion from the seat.”

I nodded. “That will be good. Is there anywhere sturdy I can lean against?”

Gabby’s eyes looked around the room once more. Aside from the two chairs and a table in between them, the rest of the room was mainly populated by electronics and lighting equipment. Nothing that anyone would classify as ‘sturdy.’

Whilst Gabby scanned the room, I did some mental arithmetic. It had only been an hour, and I was already at the point where contractions were established. I hadn’t been timing them, but they certainly felt 5 minutes apart at this point. I didn’t think it was sensible to get Gabby or the cameraman to do a cervical check to make certain, but I had to be prepared in case things took a rapid turn. I inwardly sighed. I had the choice to cancel and go home - if I could make it driving in my current state, or this could be an excellent marketing opportunity for the business. It would just mean giving birth on camera. That  couldn’t be so bad,  could  it? The business didn’t have any similar promotional material as all the videos of births I’d attended were kept by the parents.

“Can I make a suggestion?” I spoke as Gabby gave up looking.

“Sure my dear, I’m always open to suggestions.”

“How about I call my husband? He’s certainly sturdy. Most of the time the labouring positions I recommend involve partners to be present anyway - the flow of oxytocin is helped when you feel loved and supported.”

Gabby nodded. “How far away is he? We’re not in any real rush as this is the only recording of the day, but I’m just thinking of practicalities here - how about using Matt, our cameraman - he’s here right now and I’m sure we could set the camera up to capture us all on the stage without him needing to move it?”

I panicked, causing the first word to come out much louder than expected. “No… please. I know he’s just down the road, we were going to get food after the recording. I’d feel more comfortable with him, some of these positions can get quite… intimate.”

Gabby nodded, and I heard Matt breathe a sigh of relief - he certainly didn’t want to be in front of the camera.

I scurried - well, waddled - out of the studio, giving a polite nod to the receptionist outside as I headed to the green room. Opening my purse to grab my phone, I texted the following:

“SOS. Baby coming? Get here.”

I had to take a moment to rest, the next contraction grabbing me in its grip before I had a chance to leave the room. By the time it had finished, my phone had buzzed.

“Shit. On my way. We going home?” I left that unanswered.

I headed back, pushing my phone down my bra so I could keep it with me, and told the receptionist to expect my husband in a few minutes.

As I stepped back into the room and gave Gabby a thumbs up gesture, I suggested “until he gets here, how about some upright movements, like slow dancing? That’s great for loosening the hips and stretching out some key muscles during the labour process.”

Gabby stood in front of me awkwardly as I placed her hands on my hips and put mine on her shoulders. “Now, I’m going to have you put gentle pressure on my hips, squeezing lightly where I have them placed.” She must have been nervous, as her grip tightened painfully, but relaxed when she noticed my wince. “There, that’s good,” I said when she’d found an appropriate pressure.

“It’s not too much?” she asked, just to make sure I wasn’t humoring her after her first attempt.

I shook my head. “No. But communication is key, especially in the earlier stages of labor while talking isn’t too difficult yet. Once it is, hopefully the supporting partners understand the mother well enough that they can recognize what her noises and movements mean and anticipate what she needs without having to verbalize everything.”

My fingers tightened slightly on Gabby’s shoulders as another contraction ramped up and my head dipped low between us—if we were more comfortable with each other, it would be resting on her chest as she helped support my weight.

“And what are you doing now?” she asked to the back of my head.

I tried to bite back any irritation—it’s not like Gabby knew this was anything more than a demonstration—and catch my breath enough to answer. Through gritted teeth I managed, “When a laboring mother is having a contraction, bending and swaying can take some of the pressure off her lower back and overall just makes it easier to breathe and focus.”

“Oh, so you’re ’having a contraction’ right now.” I could hear the air quotes in her tone, but nodded anyway. “Then would something like this maybe feel good for you?”

She repositioned her hands slightly, somehow both squeezing and massaging the tense muscles and I let out an obscene sound that probably belonged more in a barnyard than a television studio.

Gabby chuckled. “I guess so.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled, slightly embarrassed now that the contraction was easing up, and looked up at her. “Baby’s pretty heavy. You’re sure you’ve never done this before? That was masterful.”

She beamed at the compliment. “I do like to think I have a way of observing and playing off of my guests honestly in the moment.”

I briefly detailed the anatomical flow of contractions and why what I was doing and what she did worked so well to take the edge off, but it wasn’t long before we returned to our previous positions. My noises were becoming a little too realistic, but before Gabby could comment there was the sound of a door being flung open.

“I guess my husband is here,” I said into Gabby’s chest.

She hummed in affirmation, but then asked, “Why does he look like he misplaced his child at an amusement park?”

I supposed I had my own lack of text response to blame for that.

Matt looked over to see who everyone was talking about. Stood framed in the doorway was a 6 foot 6 giant of a man, and then as he glanced back at me and my relatively tiny 5 foot 3 inch frame… his brain suddenly realised just why my pregnant belly was so, so big.

In the doorway the man stood with a baby carrier / car seat in one hand and a bag in the other.

Both Matt and Gabby recognised him immediately. Matt was the first to speak.

“Bruce Curtis… whoa man. I’m a major fan.”

Bruce was a well-known tennis player, but he was not one for public appearances and was very private. Up until this point the marriage of a world class sportsman and a celebrated childbirth professional and author had not been public knowledge.

“Hi. Thanks. Just here to see my wife” he announced, as he spotted me in Gabby's arms. “Got your birth bag Jess… don’t know what you would need.”

Before anyone could comment on the obvious reference of birth bag to question it, I moaned out loud, grasping hard onto Gabby’s clothing as the worst pain yet held on to my midsection, feeling something like I was being squeezed in every point at once.

It took a monumental effort to stay standing.

Gabby’s eyes went wide with shock as she suddenly spurted out “wait… this is real?”

I was left short of breath after the surprise contraction, but managed a hum to at least acknowledge the fact that yes, I was in labour.

Surprisingly Gabby’s eyes lit up and her lips parted with a grin. “This… is… amazing! Wait… you’re bringing your bag here… does that mean you aren’t heading off? Are we getting an exclusive first look at the newest addition to your family?”

I managed to raise my head enough to look Gabby in the eyes. I certainly hadn’t recovered from the last contraction and was mentally trying to figure out if I had gone insane, but I confirmed it.

“Yeah. I think I’m having a precipitous labor. In the last hour I’ve experienced things that often take 8… maybe 10 hours for a first-time mother. I don’t think I can make it back home in time. Please help me.” My tone was pleading as much as anything else, all semblance of hiding the truth now gone.

In between all of this, Bruce had placed the bag and baby carrier on the ground and made his way over to me, concern evident in his eyes. He took me in his arms as I turned away from Gabby and gave me an embrace that had his long arms wrapped tight around me, even with the large mound at my midsection taking up space between us.

“Here we go baby. Daddy’s here” he spoke softly to me. Gabby and Matt just looked at each other, shock and confusion stilling their movement. They were unsure what to do given the situation, it certainly wasn’t what they were expecting to happen at the start of the show.

I tried not to panic. The contractions were already right on top of each other and at this rate it likely wouldn’t be long before I was beyond words and coherent sentences.

“I’m sorry, precipitous labor?” Gabby said. “What does that mean? Is it dangerous? Do we need to call an ambulance?”

It was riskier, but this was happening right here right now one way or another, and I wasn’t going to tell her that.

“A precipitous labor is when labor and delivery happen very quickly, a couple hours from start to finish,” Bruce supplied, saving me from having to answer. Gabby and Matt must have worn some shocked expression because he added, “What? My wife likes to talk about her work.”

I could almost hear the two of them putting Bruce on an even loftier pedestal. But I couldn’t blame them—he was pretty perfect. Other than his genetics producing a freakishly large fetus that I would somehow now need to birth with very little time for my body to stretch and prepare.

“Alright, what can we do?” Gabby asked, fully on board with her unexpected involvement.

I gasped and buried my face into Bruce’s chest as he held up a finger to indicate that they would need to wait a minute for an answer. I tried to breathe and relax like I’d instructed so many mothers before me, but the pain and pressure had just gotten so intense so quickly. I just barely managed to keep from crying out as the wave crested and broke, but I wasn’t sure how much more I could endure calmly and collectedly.

My throat was hoarse, and I cleared it before turning to answer. “Once my water breaks, the baby’s head will descend quickly. The baby is big,” I looked accusatorially up at Bruce for the 11-12 pound range we were given as an estimate, “and I would like to open and prepare my body as much as possible to limit the possibility of complications.”

The next contraction snuck up on me, and I groaned, my knees bending as I leaned forward. Gabby instinctively held out her arms and I grabbed onto her forearms as I got down into a squat. But the position only increased the internal pressure and I yelped, shaking my head. She pulled me up, with Bruce’s help, and I went back to ‘slow dancing’ with her while Bruce held me from behind, lifting some of the weight of my massive belly from my spine.

I pointed at the chair and Bruce dragged it over to me. With some more assistance, I got one leg up onto the chair in an almost side lunge. It was a little awkward, but I loved how open it made me feel.

“Why do you keep changing positions? And why is this one good?” Gabby asked, and I wasn’t sure whether she was still in interview mode or just genuinely curious and invested now.

“This allows my pelvis to really open up, while also maintaining freedom of movement if I need to adjust. Baby needs to get into position too, and the more I move, the easier that is.”

Even this quick explanation was almost too much for me because now I was winded going into the next contraction. There really was no buildup for them, they just crashed full force into me, and I was sure I would’ve lost my balance if Bruce and Gabby didn’t have me on both sides.

Despite all my breath work and vocalizations, my body was pushing against something on its own and I cried out as it pressed behind and stretched my unprepared opening.

“What is it, baby?” Bruce asked softly, unfazed by my animalistic noises.

I panted in an attempt to keep my body’s instincts in check. “Need. Someone. To check,” I managed between puffs of air.

“I don’t suppose you’re okay with nudity on this show?” Bruce asked.

There was a pause, then Gabby said, “We can edit it in post.”

I hiked up my dress, gathering the fabric at the top of my oversized mound. As I waited for Gabby and Bruce to decide who would do the honors, I could only hope that it was just the intact amniotic sac and not the baby’s head.

I could tell Gabby was itching to get involved, but Bruce was the first to speak.

“Let’s get this leg down and get those knickers off” he said, almost playfully, considering the circumstances.

He tapped me on the raised knee which was perched on the chair for emphasis.

I groaned as I dropped my leg to the floor, but quick as a flash, Bruce had dragged my underwear to the floor, and bundled it up into a ball in his fist and stuffed it into his pocket.

“There we go. First step completed. Now onto the appetiser”. He was still smiling, completely unfazed, wiggling a finger in the air. “Let’s just hope we get some time to digest before it’s time for the main course!”

I cough-laughed, his lighthearted attitude helping alleviate the stress, as Gabby was caught giggling.

My leg got lifted onto the chair again as Bruce directed my hand onto his shoulder, and he got down to his knees. I suddenly felt the slip of 2 fingers enter into me as I grunted “contraction” and gripped tight hold of the polo top he was wearing.

His fingers continued to press in deeper, as my moan reached a crescendo, the contraction rapid and rough in its approach.

Suddenly there was a release, and water gushed down Bruce’s arm. I turned red, and let out a yelp at the unexpected sensation.

Bruce looked up apologetically. “Your waters were bulging. I might have been a bit rough. Sorry, baby!”

At the same time, Gabby flinched at the sight of the liquid pooling around my feet. “What’s that?” She asked.

I took a deep, steadying breath. Taking a moment longer I started, “It’s amniotic fluid. Think of it like a shock absorber around your baby. Keeps it safe in the womb.” Gabby had nodded, taking in the knowledge whilst staring at the pool which was now soaking into the carpet.

I continued. “It’s good that it’s clear. No sign of blood or meconium is positive.”

“And that is…?” Asked Gabby.

“Baby’s first poop” came the voice of Bruce as I responded by patting him on the shoulder, my fingers no longer clenched.

With the water bag burst, I felt Bruce’s probing fingers within me. I gave a little gasp as Bruce’s fingers slid out from between my legs and he announced “You’re about 7 or 8. Almost go time.”

My head shook “it’s too fast, it’s too fast.” My mantra got Gabby more than a little worried.

“What’s the problem?” She asked, nervously glancing up to Matt, her eyes giving a nonverbal ‘have we gotten in too deep here, is something going wrong?’ look.

I grit my teeth, knowing another contraction was ramping up. “8cm typically brings the transition phase. It can be the most demanding part before pushing, and most mothers tend to go inwards, be non-verbal at that time… I… I…”. That was all I could manage, the next sound out of my mouth was a haunting wail as my body forced me to bend to what it wanted at the time.

Bruce stood up, grabbing my hand from his shoulder and letting me squeeze his own hand as tight as I possibly could. He wrapped his other arm around my own shoulder and I pressed my head into his in return. I felt the press of wetness into his top. I wasn’t sure if I was sweating with how tough it had been for me so far, or if I was simply shedding tears.

Gabby came in behind me and tugged at my dress, slipping it back over my bump and watching it flow down to my legs once more.

Any relief I might have felt with the breaking of my waters was short-lived. The amniotic sac, at least, was filled with fluid and therefore more forgiving. Now that it was gone, I could feel the baby’s head descending at an alarming rate, and it was all huge unyielding skull.

The new weight settling deep into my pelvis sharpened the pain in my back and rectum. I twisted and squirmed into various positions and postures, but nothing seemed to alleviate the intensity of the pressure there. At one point, I ended up on my knees on the chair cushion that had been placed on the floor, sobbing into Bruce’s shoulder because there was no relief—if anything, it was only getting worse.

“Hurts. It hurts,” I mumbled over and over again into the wet fabric of his shirt.

“I know, baby,” he said softly, sympathetically, stroking my hair and kissing my temple. “What can I do?”

“My back. My, my s-sacrum,” I could barely get out the words. “Feels like I’m gonna break in two.” I cried out again as the contraction peaked and then rolled right into the next one with no break in between. “Counter-ngh-pressure.”

Bruce locked eyes with Gabby, then looked down at my back, then back up to her. He inclined his head to indicate that she could—and, in fact, should—be doing something to assist.

“Open your hand and press your palm flat against the base of her spine,” he instructed.

She touched me lightly, but it was more in the lumbar region and far too delicate to do anything against the strength of my contracting muscles.

“Lower,” I growled, and she startled a bit before adjusting her position. “And harder. Please,” I added in what I hoped was a less feral tone.

She put a good amount of body weight behind her hand and finally, finally, it didn’t feel like my coccyx was about to snap off. I whimpered, this time crying for even the smallest amount of relief, and Bruce gave her a thumbs up.

I wanted to move, but it felt impossible to close my legs even a fraction of an inch, so I settled for just shifting and circling my hips whenever I got twitchy. To her credit, Gabby followed my various cat/cows and figure 8s perfectly, and even started experimenting with pressure and position and kneading the muscles around my spine, paying attention to my reactions to continue with what worked and stop what didn’t.

It was maybe 20 minutes of nonstop contractions before no amount of movement or counterpressure could lessen the pain. Everything in my body was tightening, forcing the pressure in on itself and down through my core—a coiled spring ready to flip a switch in my brain that would force me to start pushing whether I was ready or not.

But I wasn’t ready. I was supposed to have a calm, leisurely home birth surrounded by professionals and people I trusted. I was supposed to have music and a bath and- and time. Most of all, I was supposed to have time.

“I- can’t- do- this-“ I half-panted, half-sobbed between gasping breaths. It was the same thing I’d heard from many laboring mothers before, but I never truly understood how true it must have felt for them until now. “I want an epidural. I want a c-section. Anything but this. I can’t- I can’t- I—“

My desperate pleas were cut off by a scream that left my body shaking and my throat raw and hoarse.

“How can I make this easier for you?” Bruce asked in that same infuriatingly calm tone.

It grated on my nerves and I snapped, “Push out your own big-headed fucking kid.” Then, feeling contrite, “Sorry, I’m- god, it just hurts so much.”

I could feel the chuckle behind his lips as he kissed me. “I’m a professional athlete—I’ve heard worse from 10 year olds on the internet. It’ll take a lot more than a jab from my beloved laboring wife to hurt my feelings.”

The urge to push slammed into me with enough force to knock the air from my lungs. I collapsed against Bruce’s chest as both my arms wrapped around my impossibly taut stomach. “Fuck, fuck, oh god, FUCK!” My profanities dissolved into an incoherent wail as I put every ounce of willpower into not pushing with the unbearable instinct.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Gabby’s frantic voice asked from behind me.

“If I had to guess,” Bruce said over my howling, “I’d say she’s hit 10 centimeters.”

“And what happens at 10 centimeters? I can guess… but humour me?” asked Gabby.

“I… I need to push. I gotta push!” came my wailing cry as if in response.

“Pretty much that” quipped Bruce. He came up behind me and wrapped his arms around me, gently shifting me around so I was sat on my ass on the cushion. He wrapped his arms around my neck and over my shoulders, whispering close to my ear so that only I could hear it.

Affirmative words like ‘you can do it baby’ and ‘let it happen, you know you can do it’ came from his mouth into my ears and, despite every nerve in my body being on edge, I managed to relax into his wrapped arms.

I breathed out a calming mouthful of air, trying to regain my composure between contractions.

“I only have a few moments,” I managed, “then the next contraction will hit, and I’ll be pushing. This is the pushing phase, I have to get the head and body of the baby past my

lips…” I trailed off as I parted my legs, raising my knees, and groaned as my chin dipped down to my chest, making contact with Bruce’s hands pressed against my collarbone. My dress skirt was tented but still covered any view the camera may have had - right now the shot was of a dishevelled mother-to-be wrapped in the arms of her husband, sweat-matted hair plastered to her face.

“Lips…?” It was Matt to ask.

Bruce waggled his finger and pointed downwards, aimed squarely between my legs.

“Oh…” of course Matt knew how the process of birth happened, it’s just right here, right now with things happening in front of him, he was simply dumbstruck.

Gabby kneeled down in front of me, between my legs. “Can I help?” she enquired.

I couldn’t answer, right now I was pushing, and no force in the world was going to interrupt me from that task.

It was a good thing Bruce was able to infuse some of his calm energy into me because, as soon as the next contraction hit, the rest of the world faded away. The only thing I could hear was my own primal grunting; the only thing I could feel was the ballooning pressure spreading me wide from the inside out; the only thing I could think was ‘push, push, push’.

But I might as well have been trying to push over a concrete wall. The baby’s head was low and heavy and full, but my body was still adjusting to its presence and would not budge until it was ready to release. No matter how great the force of the instinct to bear down, the fact was that the enormous head still had to somehow fit through my narrow opening. Preferably without tearing me open.

“I need… gravity,” I panted out in the brief break between contractions.

Sitting directly on my tailbone was not helping the pressure in my hips and ass, but I was too exhausted to fully stand and kneeling would not open my hips wide enough to allow my giant of a husband’s baby to engage properly in the birth canal.

“Where do you want me?” Bruce asked, arms still around me ready to pull me into whatever position I requested.

“Chair. Behind,” I grunted as my stomach began to tighten again.

Despite the lack of cushion, he dutifully sat on the chair and pulled me up between his bent knees. Positioning myself toward the end of his thighs, I could use them to lean on as I got my feet under me in a very deep squat while still allowing my knees to flare out as far as they needed to in front of his shins.

The edge of my dress came up over my knees, but pooled and draped over my pussy, obscuring anything that might be going on between my legs as I pushed. My milk-filled breasts pooled over my heavy, dragging belly and it all felt too contained, too restrictive in these clothes that were never meant to give birth in. I wanted nothing more than to take them off, to let my natural naked body move and flow whatever way it wanted, but there was no way I could articulate that desire in any coherent way at the moment. Instead, it presented itself as a whine, an uncomfortable shifting of knees and hips and back, a throwing back of my head onto his knee as Bruce fanned my flushed face.

“You’re doing great, baby,” he praised, running his fingers through my tangled mess of hair and gently massaging my scalp.

“What can I do?” Gabby repeated once I had come back to myself. “Should I help coach you? Maybe count down from 10?”

I shook my head, not really having the energy to explain but desperate to dispel this clinical, controlled image of pushing. “They do that a lot in hospital settings, along with having the laboring mother lying on her back with her legs in stirrups, but that is for the doctor’s benefit, not the mother’s, and it often causes more harm than good.” I hummed, which turned into a moan as the baby’s head slipped down another millimeter. “Luckily, healthcare professionals are starting to recognize the benefits of mother-led labor and delivery, including spontaneous pushing.”

“No doubt in part due to the popularity of your books and the experiences of the women in those stories,” Gabby said, ever the interviewer.

I turned and whimpered into Bruce’s thigh, lightly tapping and squeezing his generous athletic muscles.

“I think that means ‘thank you, that’s very generous of you to say, but I’m also just one of many advocates working to raise awareness and empathy for this important issue’.” He leaned down to stage whisper to me, “How’d I do?”

I gave a thumbs up without bothering to lift my head, only half-listening to either of them, but Bruce had seen enough of my press junkets to know what I would say.

Feeling how tightly my fingers were digging into him, how tense and still I was, Bruce suggested, “Maybe we could try making the room a little more relaxing? Dim the lights, put on some music, tell her how good she’s doing.” Then, leaning down to me again, over my strained whine, “That’s right, mama. That’s my girl, opening up so good for our baby.”

Gabby cleared her throat. “Maybe I’ll leave that last one to you,” she said.

I heard her heels click and then the brightness behind my closed eyes darkened. When I opened them, the only light in the room was the lamp on the side table, normally just meant to add warmth and character to the set. More clicks, this time her nails against her phone, and some low-fi music began playing and she set the device in the background next to the lamp.

I finally lifted my head, wrapping an arm beneath my heavy belly and adjusting my stance with a wince and a deep, exhausted, exasperated puff of air. Bruce’s hands were kneading my shoulders, so I was surprised when I felt a gentle touch on my knee and found Gabby knelt down in front of me.

She used her other hand to cover mine where it rested on my stomach as she said, “You’re doing great, Jessica. Really.”

Tears flowed freely from my eyes now, the sensations were overwhelming, and the simple act of kindness and sincerity from Gabby pushed me over the edge.

Of course, my body had its own agenda, and within seconds I was once again pushing, grunting and groaning along with my body clenching within me, all towards its goal of expelling the child held within me.

I pressed Gabby’s hand into my belly, and she felt the skin of my midsection tighten as the contraction flowed through me, the belly shrinking until it seemed as if it wrapped tightly around the mass of baby inside.

My grunt as the contraction peaked turned into moans of pain - nothing unusual in that by now - but Gabby did notice the time I was making the most noise seemed to be getting longer and longer as each contraction passed.

Finally, it passed, and I was left panting for air. I managed a weak “this is tougher than I imagined it would be. No amount of seeing this happening prepares you.”

I took a few seconds to gather my breath and next, I spoke out, directing to no one in particular, “I have some puppy pads in the birth bag - can someone spread some of them out around the floor. There should be a plastic sheet too. I think it could get messy soon, and I don’t want to be responsible for cleaning this place.” I managed a weak laugh.

“I need to stand again, stretch my back” I advised, as between Bruce and Gabby they got me to my feet. Matt had left his post at the camera and grabbed the supplies I asked for, laying them out. It took a bit of stepping in and around him, but soon the floor was covered. I noted the cushion I had kneeled on earlier was underneath the plastic tarpaulin-like sheet now - making a mental note so I didn’t trip over the small hill it created.

I fell into Gabby’s arms as the next contraction hit me unexpectedly. I wasn’t prepared and could do nothing but wail. Bruce came in behind, kneading my lower back, but I swatted his hand away. I managed a growling command of “dress off, now” as Matt looked over at Gabby, who in turn shrugged.

Bruce pulled the fabric up over my ass, exposing my naked legs to the camera, shoved it over my head, and between Bruce and Gabby they moved one arm at a time until the dress fell to the floor between me and Gabby.

I was naked now except for my bra. And right now, I couldn’t care less. Right now I was cooled down, the studio air conditioning chilling my sweat-streaked back.

That was when I realised I was standing with my legs apart. My fingers dropped down and I felt my vulva. I was bulging. I finally felt progress!

The relief must have been evident on my face because Gabby asked, “Can you feel the head?”

Ohhh, could I feel it. But I knew that wasn’t what she meant. “Not exactly. I can feel the shape of the head stretching out behind the skin, but probably not visible yet.”

I thought I heard Matt mutter something to himself about that being a lot of work and noise for not even being able to see the baby yet, but Gabby was speaking over him. “Can I— I mean, would it be alright if I… you know, took a peek?” She pointed down between my legs, as if it wasn’t obvious where she was asking about.

Normally I would have shied away from allowing someone I barely knew down there, but we were short on hands in this scenario and I figured it was inevitable. I nodded, “Quickly,” and the grunting noises started again as my knees bent into a half squat. My huge globe of a belly shrank and tightened with the contraction, outlining the dips and hollows around the large baby still inside it.

Gabby knelt down on one knee to be able to see around my stomach, and I held onto her shoulders for stability as Bruce drove his knuckles into my bare back.

“Oh wow,” Gabby said as she watched the effects of my pushes. “The baby’s head must be right there; I can see it dome out between your legs whenever you push.” Then, after doing some quick mental math, she asked, “Are you sure… like, is it going to fit through there? That’s a big head; it doesn’t seem physically possible.”

It didn’t quite seem that way to me either at the moment, but it’s not like I had a choice. “It always—hoo—feels impossible—hngh—until it isn’t,” I managed between heaves and moans. The makeshift waterproofing on the floor kept sticking to my feet and pulling up anytime I moved and I kicked at it in frustration several times before concluding, “I need to sit.”

The cushion was trapped on the floor, but Bruce volunteered to be my seat. He positioned himself on the chair first and then I sat on his lap, draping my legs around the outside of his thighs while he kept his open enough to keep my pussy open and exposed. He was tall enough that he still towered over me, and his arms were able to wrap around my front, belly and all, and coming to rest on my inner thighs, spreading and gently kneading them in an attempt to get me to relax.

There was nothing left to the imagination anymore for the people in the room—if Matt lowered the camera a foot or two he’d have a front row view. As it was, he kept a more tasteful side profile at an elevated angle so that my stomach obscured any of the graphic bits. But if things had gone to plan, we would have had a birth photographer present in the room, and so I had Bruce slip Matt both our phones to set up to record the more closeup shots. My own phone was sweaty to the touch because of being stuffed in my bra against my overheated skin, so Matt had to give it a good wipedown on the fabric of his shirt upon receiving it.

“I’m gonna ask for a raise,” he said as he mounted the devices to some small tripods and adjusted them to an appropriate angle, a slight blush coloring his cheeks as he zoomed in for one of the captures.

I chuckled and then gasped  “Fuck!”, the suddenness and intensity of the next contraction somehow still managing to take me by surprise. I threw my head back against Bruce’s solid chest and he kissed my temple as I pushed, my fingers digging into his forearms where they rested on my thighs while his hands moved to my center to gently coax back the emerging volcano forming between my legs. His thumb brushed against my clit and I gasped again, and this time it was my turn to go red.

I knew arousal was an effective pain management technique, but most clients were always too self-conscious to actually try it out in the delivery room surrounded by people. Despite knowing it was nothing to be ashamed of, I still tried to muffle my noises any time he grazed the sensitive nub.

I leaned forward, my breaths heaving, and gave a guttural cry as the instinct to bear down overwhelmed everything else and the first hints of burning teased my opening.

“I think- yes, I see the head!” Gabby exclaimed.

I managed to punctuate my grunting pushes with a small nod as I took in Gabby’s words. I knew myself she was about to get a rude awakening into the process of birth, but couldn’t get the words out. I knew I’d have a chance to explain but finally as the contraction relented I heard her give a disappointed cry as she exclaimed “where did it go” a few moments later.

I was hoarse and needed a drink. It was evident in my voice, I was raspy. I soldiered on, however, and explained, “Think of it like waves. They slosh forward and then draw back. Like the tides, eventually the high tide comes in and you’re up to your ankles in seawater.”

Gabby looked a bit confused at that analogy and asked, “So, the baby doesn’t just keep on coming stretching you wider and wider until it pops out?”

I shook my head. “No. It pokes out a bit, goes back in, pushes out a little more. Eventually it won’t retreat anymore and will be there permanently. Eventually it pokes out to its widest point…”

I was cut short by the next contraction, and I closed my mouth, trying not to irritate my throat further. Closed-lip pushing did not feel like it was giving me anywhere near enough air flow, and I frustratingly gave up, back to an open-mouthed moan.

However, because it was different to my previous pushes, Gabby thought it was just me taking a breath. She continued “and what happens then?” That’s when she saw the peeling back of my lips, the top of baby’s scalp showing once more and then following that, my moan coming through. She shut up and placed a hand on my ankle giving it a gentle pat. She stared as the head once more retreated.

“Crowning,” I finally replied as I caught my breath. “And the ring of fire.”

“That doesn’t sound fun.” Gabby gave a worried look into my eyes.

“It’s not, but it only lasts moments. I’ve heard it’s a rite of passage. I’m certainly not looking forward to it,” I managed. Finally, I asked:  “can I get some water, please? My throat feels like it’s burning.”

Gabby apologised, realising just how bad my voice sounded. She was too intensely focused on the action between my legs. She dashed out of the studio, and suddenly it was just us two and Matt, who was doing his best to have a camera as a shield between himself and the messy situation developing between my legs.

“So… err… anything else you guys need?” he asked. Bruce smiled and looked up. “I guess an epidural is out of the question?”

“Sorry all out of those” Matt gave a grin back as the humour helped lighten the tension in the room a little.

I was soon pushing again, hands digging into Bruce’s thighs as I grunted “that’s OK I wanted it to be natural anyway”. The end syllable elongated into a ‘aaaaaaaaay’ noise as the contraction did what it had to do and once more, at least for 30 seconds or so, I was overcome by my natural instincts  and lost all sense of the world around me.

When I regained my composure again, I found Gabby standing next to me, glass of water in hand - and she’d remembered a straw to make it easier to sip it.

After a pull on the straw, my smile was evident. “Thanks, that feels so good.”

The exhaustion caught up with me then, the immediate need to quench my thirst satiated enough for me to really feel just how tired my body was. It made sense—it was working overtime to condense days’ worth of effort into just a couple hours. And, even though the instinct to push was strong, progress was slow, and my mind was beginning to doubt.

“I need to rest for a bit,” I announced, untangling myself from Bruce’s limbs to put my feet flat on the floor.

Both Matt and Gabby looked at me like I’d lost my mind. “How are you possibly going to do that?” she asked.

“Wanna lie down on my side.” The cushion was still there on the floor, if slightly buried, and I looked between it and Bruce pleadingly.

“Am I to be your pillow then?” he guessed, and I nodded.

“Please.”

He kissed my neck and gave my thigh a gentle squeeze. “Anything for you, love.” Then, Bruce got down on the floor above the cushion, helping me down before sprawling out to be used however I needed.

My hip rested on the cushion while my top half splayed across Bruce’s considerable mass. My belly spilled out over his body and we both had a hand rested on it, while one leg rested on the floor to give some stability. The other leg was bent up with my knee toward the ceiling in an attempt to keep my hips open, but it wasn’t quite enough and so my foot just kind of dangled helplessly in the air until Gabby took hold of it.

“Want me to hold your leg up?” she offered.

“You’re a saint,” I breathed, glad to have found purchase.

She grinned and hooked my knee over her shoulder, leaning back and settling herself on the floor next to me once we’d found a good position where I could rest even as my body continued to work.

I let the next several contractions just roll over me, through me, pushing if I needed to but not trying to force anything to move quicker than it naturally wanted to—the tippy top of the baby’s head might have breached my opening, but there was still a long way to go before the rest of it would fit through there and I didn’t want to exhaust myself before the effort truly began.

The back and forth peekaboo game would have been maddening were it not for Bruce and Gabby’s gentle touches and whispers of encouragement. Bruce told me how beautiful and amazing and strong I was while Gabby gave a play by play of everything happening between my legs—first a dime size peek, then a quarter; then she ran out of coin analogies and switched to a golf ball, a tennis ball, a baseball. Every time my opening got wider, the head pushing out further, but every time I stopped pushing it would get sucked back into the depths of my tight folds.

“I need to move again,” I huffed as I felt the head slip back in for what felt like the hundredth time.

“Rest time over?” Gabby asked, and I almost scoffed because how could I have possibly thought I could rest when the baby was so close to being born.

“Something like that,” I said with a bit of bitterness. “Hands and knees, please.”

Because Bruce was still under me, Gabby and Matt helped pull me to a more seated position and I hissed at the added pressure that put on the baby lodged deep in my hips. But I transitioned quickly, now kneeling on the cushion over Bruce’s body, still using him as a pillow.

My legs widened until my pussy was just a few inches above the floor and everything felt so much more open like this. It was as if something shifted, just a millimeter or two, as the next contraction barreled through my core, the head shooting forward as I pushed, the pressure and burning nearly unbearable. I howled, the sound only slightly muffled against Bruce’s clothes, releasing the push and taking frantic breaths, waiting, desperate for the relief of the head retreating back inside, but the terrible stretch remained.

The head was staying put.

Gabby sounded frantic. “Are you ok? That sounded painful.” I blew out a breath, trying to regain composure. The exhale lasted for a good 5 or 6 seconds, which to me didn’t seem to help much but to those looking in, seemed to last a long time. I shook my head, clearing away the cobwebs, and explained the situation.

“Think of it like trying to squeeze your hand into a very tight glove… but in reverse. You’re the glove.” My  hand patted Bruce as a way to keep my mind focused. “If you get it so far in, and let go, you’ll feel it squeeze you tight but it won’t… hurt, per se… but if you pull on it you’ll feel it tugging your skin. Right now my skin is being pulled… tight… when the contraction pushes the baby out of from between my legs. And to be blunt, it hurts like hell.”

Gabby let out a nervous chuckle. “That does not sound fun. Is this position you’re in comfortable?”

I shook my head, not wanting to point out the obvious. “Nothing is comfortable, but this allows me to widen my hips, giving more room for the head to emerge.” I felt the next contraction build and let out an apology as I grasped tight onto Bruce’s arms and once again let out a yowling groan, internally counting to 10, taking a breath, then going again.

Gabby got down to her hands and knees, and then lay on the floor, trying to get a good view of the emerging head from underneath me. She let out a frustrated ‘fuck’ - completely forgetting the fact she was on recorded television.

I leaned forward, ass in the air as I panted against Bruce following the aftermath of the contraction, when Gabby gave a little cough.

I turned my head to look at her, not saying anything, but my look suggested she should speak.

“I know I’m not in any sort of position to ask this, but could you flip back over? I can’t see anything in the position you are in.” She sounded genuine, and certainly interested in seeing how things would pan out.

I gave a groan. “Normally I’d berate you. You should never tell a mother-to-be how best to give birth as it should be an entirely mother-led affair. But I appreciate this is a learning experience and a little different to the norm…”

I looked up into Bruce’s eyes. “Can you give me a hand up?”

The next few minutes consisted of a lot of rolling around, getting picked up off the ground, Bruce and Gabby holding me tightly as I stood wide-legged, trying not to close tightly on the emerging head, and a 30-second pause as the next contraction worked its way through me – my head buried into Gabby’s shoulder as I muffled my yowl as a result.

“I need… need to take off my bra. It’s constricting” I whispered to Gabby. Part of me had a moment where I figured whilst I was wearing a bra I wasn’t ‘naked’ and felt that this was a final breaking point where I finally gave in to my base instincts and let the pregnancy take over. I had seen this moment dozens of times with mothers I had helped. It was always the first-timers. Another rite of passage I must go through, I figured.

Gabby didn’t hesitate. Her arms reached behind me, wiggled on the snaps and suddenly the fabric slid off my breasts, sliding down my belly and landing with a plop in front of me.

I stood up in front of Gabby and she couldn’t help but give a little involuntary blink at the sight in front of her. She pictured her own breasts from her shower this morning. Perky, pink-tipped things with tiny nipples. Mine, in comparison, had dark brown-ringed areole, long, puffy nipples almost the size of the end portion of her little finger… and they had stretch marks. She refused to comment, but this was one more physical change she noted was an after effect of the pregnancy.

Another push came upon me, my hands finding Gabby’s shoulders to hold as I dipped into a squatting position, which could be best described as a wide-stanced plié from ballet – my knees bending and my hips dropping low.

My head met her chest, and my groan reverberated through her. As it passed through me, I blew out a breath and looked up at Gabby. “Think I’m ready? Can you help me get down to the floor?”

As Bruce retook his position to give me somewhere to rest against, Gabby held my hands and lowered me down to his thighs. I settled into place as he found the gap between my breasts and belly to hug me close as Gabby got down onto her knees in front of me. She was almost at eye level with my waist and could see all the intimate details of my pussy stretched against the head poking its way out of me.

“It’s starting again” I gave a grunt as my feet found Gabby’s shoulders, using her almost as stirrups, Gabby in turn grabbing my ankles to help brace herself. Bruce changed the position of his hold so he was crossed arms, his left hand grasping my right breast and vice versa. I felt his thumb and forefinger of each hand find my nipples as the sensation caused me to groan, lightning sensations from my sensitive nubs coursing through my body and, somehow, finding their way between my legs.

Gabby sat wide-eyed as the white, compressed head between my tight lips moved a fraction wider as my eyes scrunched tight and tendons on my neck bulged as I gritted my teeth. She had a front and centre view as Matt had brought the camera around to get a straight on view of me all from above her head. I knew the head must have been almost out, the burning sensation had been growing and growing with each contraction since I had been on my hands and knees.

“How much- of the head- is out?” I managed between panted breaths, trying to focus on the pleasure of Bruce’s hands in the brief respite between contractions.

Gabby formed her hands into a circle that was far smaller than it had any right to be. “About this much.” She studied the remaining bulge behind the visible ring. “Still looks like there’s a lot left to go.”

An annoyed growl rumbled through me and Bruce soothed me with his touch. I wasn’t upset with Gabby, per se, more at my own ineffectiveness. Maybe it was silly, but part of me really believed that I would be better at this, that it would be easier for me because of what

I did and what I knew. But nothing was happening like it was supposed to, and as quick as the labor had been, the second stage seemed to be taking an eternity.

I knew I’d agreed to it, but this position was really not doing me any favors. My hips were pressed awkwardly into the ground and, the full weight of my stomach adding to the painful pressure despite the buried cushion. My feet on Gabby’s shoulders helped keep me open wide, but she was unpracticed and the angle wasn’t always quite right—she leaned forward as I bore down, pushed my knees so far up and out that they were pinned on either side of my belly, emphasizing the enormity of its curve.

“Wow, you are really working hard,” Gabby said suddenly, temporarily removing one of her hands from my ankle to lay on the surface of my tight stomach as I pushed. “You can actually see your whole stomach move up and down as you push.”

Matt moved the camera in closer, changing the angle slightly to better capture the way my belly scrunched up, its peak becoming sharper and higher even as the whole thing moved further down my body. It must have been quite a sight, getting every primal feminine bump—belly, breasts, and pussy—on full display, each heavy and full and straining with the process of giving birth.

Gravity was not on my side, and I could feel myself working harder than before to make any kind of progress. If the head had already truly crowned it would have been easier, but there was still a bit more stretching to do.

“Come on, girl, you’ve got this,” Gabby said, giving my ankles an encouraging rub even as I whined in frustration.

I reached down between my legs as I pushed again, pressing lightly against my distended clit as it stretched around the baby’s massive head. “Need help stretching,” I realized after several contractions with no progress.

“Wha- how?” Gabby asked, quickly going from confused to eager.

I moved my hand lower, tracing the outline of my stretched lips. “Here. If you can-“ I didn’t know how to explain, so I demonstrated the delicate motion that would push the thin skin further around the bulge.

“Doesn’t that… hurt?” she asked when I winced and hissed.

“Only a bit,” I lied, biting my lip to keep from crying out. This was necessary, and she might hesitate if she knew how much it fucking hurt. “I can’t reach with both hands.”

Gabby still looked skeptical, but I grabbed her hands and guided them to my opening. “Good thing I keep my nails trimmed short,” she commented, testing the give in my skin around the head and surprised that there was still any give.

I groaned, indicating that the next contraction was starting. I positioned Bruce’s hands back to cup my breasts, silently communicating my needs, before reaching back behind my head to grab onto Bruce’s shoulders in an imitation of how I might be holding onto our headboard if I was giving birth at home in our bed.

With the first brush of Bruce’s fingers against my nipples, the pain of the contraction skyrocketed, and I couldn’t stop the wail that came up my throat.

Bruce’s touches turned gentle, coaxing, as he instructed Gabby to, “Keep going, that means it’s working.”

I could’ve kissed him if I didn’t also want to strangle him—childbirth was complicated. Because Gabby’s hands were otherwise occupied, Bruce took over keeping my legs pulled back as I curled around my contracting stomach, face turning red and veins popping as I threw everything I had into the push. The burning stretch was almost so intense that the pain was numbed—almost—and finally I could feel when it crested as I reached a full crown.

I took a couple desperate breaths, but refused to lose the momentum. If I was still on my hands and knees, the rest of the head might have slipped out easily. As it was, it took several more long, hard pushes to get past the eyes, nose, mouth, and then finally the chin. Gabby’s cheers mixed with my cries as a gush of fluids erupted from between my legs. The floor, at least, was mostly waterproofed. Gabby, not so much. But she was all smiles as she cupped the newborn head in her hands.

The relief from the pressure and pain may have felt better than any orgasm, right there and then, at that minute. My head sank back into Bruce and I revelled in the success for just a brief moment.

There was still the shoulders and the body, I reminded myself. Not over yet.

I tuned back into the room as Gabby was making all sorts of celebratory noises to the room in general, and I felt the soft touches of her fingers probing around at the head between my legs.

“Feel for the cord” I announced, though my voice likely came out a lot quieter than expected in the general ruckus of the room.

“Come again?” Asked Gabby, her eyes and focus back on my face rather than my lower half.

“Check for the umbilical cord, should be nice and loose, not trapped. Baby still gets oxygen from my placenta until he’s fully out and he takes his first breath,” my voice recovered and explained - admittedly punctuated with heavy breathing, trying to recover from my ordeal.

Gabby gave a nod as I felt her fingers press deeper into my sore opening, to around the baby’s neck. I felt her finger hook over the cord and give a tug. The sensation felt completely alien to having it all happen with me rather than my acting on it externally, but I felt a warmth by the fact that I felt the cord pull away, suggesting it wasn’t caught tight.

“Seems to be loose” Gabby said. “Though I don’t know how much I should pull?”

“No… no, that’s enough” I gave a smile as response, which was soon replaced by a wincing grunt as the next contraction built up on me.

I pressed down into my hips, splaying my pelvic opening wide as I did an experimental push, feeling the shoulders press me from the inside. I reached down with a hand and felt the head, my fingers brushing against Gabby, who seemed reluctant to let go.

I pushed, harder than I expected if I was going to be honest with myself, and felt a popping sensation as the baby’s lower shoulder slipped out from between my legs.

My hand felt the baby’s chest fill it as it slid out, and I maintained the pressure of the push. The second shoulder gave a slick sound as it slid out of me, and suddenly I had half a baby out of me.

“Do I pull? Do you push?” Gabby was flustered, however I was unable to answer. I shook my head, a gesture that meant nothing in the context of what she just asked, but when she didn’t act on her own accord, I doubled down, taking a breath and pushing again as I felt the baby’s belly widening my opening until a strange slithering sensation followed as the baby’s long legs and feet slipped past my lips.

Suddenly it was all over. I was breathing hard, stunned into silence. Holding a hand onto my baby’s belly as Gabby did the manual handling work and lifted my baby up to my belly. My hand was suddenly clutching the wriggling form tight to my skin as a gurgling sound was soon followed by a piercing wail as the baby took its first breaths.

Gabby suddenly burst into tears - and both me and Bruce soon followed, the emotion of the moment taking over any sensible training I may have previously considered should the roles be reversed.

[lilly-aurora77]

The King

The snow began its assault on the castle just after nightfall, a howling white fist hammering against the ancient stone. By midnight, the drifts had swallowed the lower bailey, and the narrow mountain pass to the village was a memory buried under six feet of ice. The king, Alistair, stood at the window of the royal bedchamber, his breath fogging the glass. Behind him, a low, guttural moan rose from the massive four-poster bed.

Queen Jane, early thirties, her black hair plastered to her forehead with sweat, gripped the silk sheets. Her belly, enormous and taut, contracted like a fist around a scream. She had been laboring for twelve hours. The midwife, old Elara, was supposed to have arrived at noon. But the storm had laughed at horses and men alike.

“She’s not coming,” Jane said, her voice raw but carrying the iron of a woman who had survived famine, a rebellion, and three court poisonings before her twentieth birthday. “You heard the stable boy. The pass is dead.”

Alistair turned from the window, his ceremonial robes abandoned for a simple linen shirt, now soaked with his wife’s sweat and his own fear. He had commanded armies. He had looked down from the battlements as trebuchets flung fire. But the sight of Jane’s legs, slick with amniotic fluid and blood, made his stomach curdle.

“I will do it,” he said, and the words came out steadier than he felt. “Tell me what to do.”

Jane had studied the birthing scrolls. She was not a passive vessel. “First,” she panted through another wave of pain, teeth bared, “get me off this bed. Squatting. Gravity is our ally.”

He helped her lower herself to the fur rug before the roaring hearth. The heat was oppressive, but the cold beyond the window was death. Jane squatted low, her thighs burning, her hands braced on two overturned wooden stools. In this position, her pelvis tilted open like a flower. She bore down with a roar that was not a scream but a war cry.

For an hour, she pushed. Alistair knelt behind her, his hands pressed to the small of her back, feeling the monstrous power of her uterine muscles. He could see nothing but the curve of her spine and the sweat dripping from her chin onto the stones. Jane grunted, low and animal, her face purple with effort.

“I feel something,” she gasped. “It’s… it’s wrong. Alistair, look.”

He moved around to face her. Between her legs, emerging from her body, was not the familiar soft crown of a tiny skull. Instead, a rounded, fleshy mound pressed outward, split by a small, pale crevice. His heart stopped.

“The buttocks,” he whispered, horror cold as the snow outside. “The baby is breech. Feet first… no, worse. Complete breech. The buttocks are crowning.”

Jane looked down and saw it. A small, perfect bottom, the genitals swollen and tiny, wedged tightly in her pelvic rim. The baby was not sliding out. It was stuck. The skin around the baby’s anus had already turned a distressing shade of violet.

“There’s no cord,” Jane said, her mind slicing through the panic. “Check for the cord.”

Alistair reached with trembling fingers. He touched the baby’s cool, waxy flesh. He felt for the soft, rope-like coil of the umbilical cord. Nothing. It was still above, thank the old gods. But the baby was trapped, its hips too wide for Jane’s pelvic inlet. Every push Jane made only jammed the little body harder against the bone.

“It’s crowning,” Alistair said, the word foreign and obscene on his tongue. “The buttocks are crowning. Fully.”

Jane screamed then, not from pain but from frustration. She had read of this. A breech buttock presentation was a catastrophe even for skilled hands. For a king and a queen alone in a snowstorm, it was a death sentence for their child.

“You have to stretch me,” Jane ordered, her eyes wild and blazing. “Manually. Now. Before the baby’s hips lock.”

Alistair’s hands shook as he coated his fingers in the slick oil of sweet almond from the bedside table. He positioned himself between her squatting legs. “Forgive me,” he whispered to his wife, to his unborn child, to any god still listening.

He inserted two fingers into her vagina alongside the baby’s trapped bottom. Jane’s scream was primal, a tearing sound that echoed off the stone walls. He felt the ring of her cervix, swollen and rigid like a too-tight collar around the baby’s rump. With a gentleness he did not know he possessed, he pressed outward against the flesh, trying to stretch the unyielding muscle. Jane’s blood coated his fingers. She bit her own lip until it bled.

The baby did not move.

“It’s not working,” Alistair said, his voice cracking. “The buttocks are stuck. I can’t get a finger past the sacrum.”

“Oil,” Jane panted. “More oil. And change my position. The squat is failing.”

They tried oil. He poured the entire vial between her legs, soaking the rug, the baby’s purple-stained bottom sliding greasily but refusing to pass the pubic bone. He tried what the scrolls called “manual rotation,” pressing on the baby’s hip through Jane’s abdomen with one hand while the other tried to hook under the little thigh. The baby’s leg was folded, not extended, which was a sliver of mercy. But the hip itself was a stone lodged in a ring of fire.

Jane’s labor had become a thing of brutality. The contractions came one on top of another with no break, a continuous wave of crushing pressure. Her squat turned into a slump. Her legs gave way. She collapsed onto her side, sobbing, the baby’s buttocks still protruding from her body, that small purple globe mocking them both.

“The bed,” she gasped. “On my back. It’s the only position left. I know it’s worse for breech, but I cannot hold my legs anymore. We have to try.”

Alistair lifted her. She weighed nothing to him, a bundle of bone and sweat and rage. He laid her flat on the bed, on her back, head on the pillows. Her belly rose like a mountain. He propped her hips on a folded blanket, tilting her pelvis. It was the worst possible position for a natural birth, the one that narrowed the pelvic outlet and fought gravity. But Jane had no strength left to squat. No strength left to kneel.

“Pull my legs back,” she ordered. “Open me.”

He took her ankles, slick with fluid and blood, and pressed her knees toward her armpits. The baby’s bottom, still crowning, now pressed even harder against her perineum. The skin there was a thin, translucent white, stretched to the point of tearing.

“Push,” Alistair commanded, and Jane pushed.

Her face turned from red to purple to something almost black. A vein bulged at her temple. She released a sound not human, a scream that became a roar that became a howl like a wounded animal caught in a trap. Her entire body arched off the bed.

The baby’s buttocks emerged another inch. Then stopped. The vulva, stretched around the baby’s hips, began to tear at the fourchette. A thin line of blood ran down to the sheets.

“The other leg,” Alistair said desperately. “I saw it move in the squat. It’s folded at the hip. If I can reach it…”

He pushed two fingers inside Jane’s tortured body alongside the baby’s flank. He felt the tiny knee, bent. He hooked his fingertip under it and pulled. Jane’s scream was a single, sustained note of agony. The leg unlocked. It slid down, emerging from the birth canal in a gush of fluid and blood, a perfect little thigh and calf and foot, the toes curled like tiny seashells.

“One leg out,” Alistair breathed. “One more.”

He reached again, deeper this time, past the baby’s hip, past the abdomen he could feel through the thin wall of Jane’s vagina. The second knee was tucked higher. He hooked, pulled, and felt the joint give. The second leg slipped free, flopping out beside the first, dangling from the still-stuck buttocks like a broken doll’s limbs.

The baby was now hanging from Jane’s body, legs loose, but the hips and lower torso remained trapped. Jane looked down at the legs of her child, limp and bluish, and a sob tore from her chest. She thought it was dead. Alistair saw the umbilical cord, finally, pressed flat between the baby’s abdomen and the wall of the birth canal. It was still pulsing. Weakly. But pulsing.

“The baby is alive,” he lied, because he had to believe it. “But the shoulders are next. They’re wider than the hips, Jane. I have to get the arms out before the head.”

He had read one sentence about this in a forbidden medical text. To deliver a breech after the legs, you rotated the baby’s torso. You freed the arms like a magician pulling scarves from a sleeve.

He grabbed the baby’s slippery hips, his fingers sinking into the bruised flesh. He rotated the little body forty-five degrees. Jane shrieked. He rotated again. The shoulders shifted inside her. A tiny arm, folded across the baby’s chest, slid through the cervix and into the birth canal. Alistair hooked it with a finger and pulled it down. The arm emerged, followed by a hand, followed by fingers that curled reflexively around his thumb.

The second arm did not come.

It was wrapped behind the baby’s neck. A nuchal arm, the text had called it. A strangulation risk. Alistair reached into Jane’s body up to his wrist, feeling the tight, hot, flesh-on-flesh seal. He found the little elbow, bent backward. With a courage that terrified him, he pushed the baby’s torso upward slightly to create a hair’s breadth of space, then swept his finger along the arm’s length, unbending it.

The joint made a sound. A small, soft, terrible click. Jane felt it inside her and vomited onto her own chest.

The second arm came free, sliding out in a slick of mucus and blood. The baby’s torso unwound, and now, finally, the only thing still inside Jane was the head.

But the head was the largest part. And the cord, already compressed, was now wrapped loosely around the baby’s neck.

“The cord,” Jane whispered, her voice barely a breath. “Cut it.”

“I can’t. I have to deliver the head. If I cut it now, the baby bleeds. If I don’t, the head crushes it. Either way…”

He didn’t finish. He took the baby’s body in both hands, the little legs dangling, the arms limp, the buttocks still purple but now streaked with Jane’s blood. He lifted the baby upward, toward Jane’s belly, pivoting on the fulcrum of the pubic bone. The head was lodged behind it.

“Push,” he screamed. “Push with everything.”

Jane, broken and bleeding, her perineum torn to the anus, her thighs slick with oil and sweat and her own waste, gathered a breath from some deep, ancestral well of survival. She pushed.

The head descended into the birth canal. Alistair saw the dark swirl of hair on the baby’s scalp just inside Jane’s opening. He pulled downward, toward the floor, following the natural curve of the birth canal. The head crowned, the widest part stretching Jane’s torn flesh even further. She tore again, a second-degree rip running forward now, a Y-shaped gash that made her see white light.

“One more,” Alistair said, tears streaming down his face. “One more push.”

Jane screamed. The head emerged. The face was pressed against her perineum. Alistair turned the baby’s body so the chin could clear the pubic bone. He lifted the head upward, and the nose and mouth appeared, then the eyes, shut tight, then the forehead.

The entire baby slid out in a rush of fluid and blood and something that looked like dark, tarry meconium. A long, silent moment passed. The baby lay on the bloody sheets, blue-gray, limp, a boy. The cord, wrapped once around his neck, was a tight purple noose.

Alistair hooked a finger under the cord and lifted it over the baby’s head. He put his mouth over the baby’s tiny nose and blue lips. He breathed.

The baby coughed. Then coughed again. A thin, reedy cry filled the bedchamber, a sound like a cat caught in a grate. Then louder. Then a full-throated wail of outrage at the cold, the light, the brutal journey into the world.

Jane, her eyes closed, her body shaking with aftershocks, smiled a small, bloodstained smile. Alistair placed the squalling, bruised, perfect boy on her chest. The storm outside the window began to quiet. The snow fell softer now, as if the sky itself had exhausted its rage.

The king and queen looked at their son, born of snow and blood and a father's hands that had learned to be gentle in the most brutal hour of their lives. The midwife would arrive at dawn. But the heir had already arrived, his bottom still faintly purple, his legs kicking at the air, proof that even a castle locked in ice could forge life from the fire of two people who refused to let go.