Pregnancy hadn’t been Nora’s favorite thing. It had been cool to know that she was the one who was bonding most with the baby and that she got to feel every flutter and movement and get some kind of practice with being responsible enough to parent. There were drawbacks, though, like having to give up a lot of the things she loved, gaining weight, peeing every five seconds and having to deal with everyone wanting to touch her stomach. She hated the nausea, hated the sensitivity to smells and to being touched in places she normally loved being touched in. She loved her baby, though, and that felt like a big accomplishment for her. Everything had always been about staying tough and acting aloof and never giving up the truth about her feelings, but pregnancy had made a lot of that hard for her. Nora had cried more in the ten months she was pregnant than she had in the past ten years and the knowledge of that fact drove her crazy. Still, knowing that she was about to bring a baby that she knew was going to be cute as fuck into the world was a daunting, overwhelming, and incredible fact.
Labor started on Thursday. It was hot and she was forcing Anthony to go on another walk with her. Though she did her best not to stop, she struggled to go more than a few yards before she needed to stop and breathe for a few seconds. False contractions had been taunting her for weeks so when one of them hit her, she didn’t think anything of it until there was a slow trickle tickling at her leg. Squeezing the arm of Anthony’s she’d grabbed when the contraction hit her, she looked at him with wide eyes. “Either my water broke or I just peed myself,” she told him, letting him lead her back to the car where their hospital bags and everything they needed were waiting for them.
On the way there she called West and Marina to let them know what was happening and to meet them up there. She sent her brother a text and spoke to Anthony’s parents while he drove, somehow avoiding the traffic that generally made up the LA highways. At the hospital, she was taken back and examined, left in a general room for a few hours, and then finally taken up to the labor and delivery ward. Night was really setting in when their friends got there and Nora’s contractions were still far enough apart that they didn’t estimate the baby’s arrival until noon the following day. She ate the toast and popsicle that she was offered, managed to have a few decent conversations, and then finally, in the wee hours of the morning, after suffering through increasingly painful and frequent contractions, she got an epidural and managed to sleep for a few short hours.
6 a.m. hit her like a ton of bricks. She couldn’t sleep anymore, didn’t want anymore attention or ice chips or water or anything. She was dilated to a ten and, after almost 42 weeks, it was time for her to push. She had Marina on one side, cooing to her softly with words of encouragement and the knowledge to not touch her, and Anthony on her other side, helping support her neck and head with his hand under her pillow and letting her nearly break his other hand while she pushed. Nora had known that pushing would be the worst part, but she’d been trucking along through it without so much as a curse word because she just wanted it to be over so she could have her baby and her breakfast and a good nap.
After 42 weeks of waiting and almost an hour of pushing, Emilia Noel Grant came screaming into the world and immediately captured the hearts of everyone in the room. With her baby pressed against the skin of her chest, still covered in the evidence of her birth, Nora looked over at Anthony and smiled. She wasn’t upset about the tears that were falling from her eyes as she spoke to him, proof of some small change that had taken place within her the second that her squalling, red faced daughter had come into her line of sight.
“Here’s the opening line of the next chapter of our lives.”
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