he thought it was never going to happen, but bea finally had the baby. a boy, 10 lb 5 oz! bea was so big by the end, and he went six whole days overdue. by then he was obsessed with getting the baby out. they called my mom and got all the old wives tales. pineapple, okra water, castor oil. he tried so much that i don’t we’ll ever know what made the baby pop.
he’d been having back pain for a while since the baby dropped but didn’t seem interested in slowing down their growing, and i was rubbing his scalp while avery massaged his back when all of a sudden i just heard this long moan. i looked down and bea was making a face i see at work all the time. it was that look of agony and joy. the involuntary response to pain mixed with the relief that finally, finally, the baby is coming.
of course, there was a lot of work between that first big contraction and us meeting the little one. bea was in labor for about 32 hours. he kept muttering that in the nearly ten years since he’d had his last baby, everything had tightened back up. if it did, he had to take his time getting loose. the two of us waddled around the living room for hours. eventually i got too tired, with the baby weighing me down too, so i had to midwife from the couch while avery walked along with him, holding him up when the pains got bad enough that he wanted to squat during them.
he was progressing slowly, and even though he complained the whole time, he was such a trooper. he wasn’t even contracting frequently enough to go to the birthing center until hour 12, and it took till hour 30 for him to want to push. his water didn’t break until his first push.
sitting between his legs as he pushed on his hands and knees, my near due belly brushing against his trembling thighs—i’ll never forget that. kneeling there like i was, i couldn’t forget that in just a month or so i’ll be moaning like he was, feeling that pressure break into sharp pain and the baby crowns, stretching me wider and wider. i had to keep reminding myself not to get lost in that thought and focus on him. it’s second nature to me, but after two hours of pushing, bea swears he’ll never do it again. still, i see the way he looks at me, nursing the new addition to our family while the baby i’ll give to someone else rolls around in my belly. if i didn’t know better, i would think he might be willing to have just one more.