“What are you doing?”
Was that a trick question? I told him we were going to the hospital.
“First of all, I don’t think it’s time, and secondly, you’re in your PJs.”
I suspected the hospital staff had seen stranger things than an expectant father wearing his pajamas.
My panther who’d been a proponent of a home birth told me we had to get to the hospital now.
I have to listen to Bronson, who's listening to his body.
Pfft. There’s too much listening and not enough doing.
My mate paced over the floor, with me following him and my panther repeating the baby was coming. The contractions were closer together than when I’d woken up, and Bronson agreed I should call the hospital.
The nurse I spoke to was calm, unlike me. It was a wonder she understood what I was saying because I ran all my words together.
“As this is your first baby, you can stay home. Come in when the contractions are five minutes apart and lasting for a minute.”
A minute? Had we learned that in class? All the knowledge I’d stored in my head had vanished.
Bronson didn’t seem as fazed by the news as I was, and we went back to pacing, cramping, and grunting. My beast suggested caterwauling, but I shushed him, saying Bronson’s body would tell him what to do. He grumbled about bodies being unreliable communicators.
“It’s okay, babe.” Bronson lay on the sofa, and I covered him with a throw.
“What’s that?” I sat with him, putting his feet on my lap and massaging them.
“Everything is going as planned.”
He was so calm, but perhaps he and the baby were communicating in code.
Over the next few hours, I timed the contractions and wrote the details on my phone. I created a spreadsheet and obsessed over the numbers. But as they got closer together, my mate couldn’t get comfortable in the intervals. He gripped the back of the couch as another took hold and practiced his breathing techniques.
I put one hand on his back and rubbed in small circles as we’d been taught. Trying to ease my mate’s discomfort reduced my anxiety a little.
Bronson sagged against me, moaning that it hurt. “And they’re getting stronger.”
“It’s time, love.” We’d reached the five-minute mark, and I wanted my mate and our baby in capable hands.
He waddled toward the bedroom, and I was at his heels saying he didn’t need to change his clothes, but he headed for the shower and stood under it while still in his paternity shirt.
“I stink, so I need to wash off the sweat.”
Now? Okay. I helped him shower and dried him off. But I got the wrong clothes and he needed the right ones. But I didn’t knowwhich they were, and we bickered until I got all the clothes from the drawer and he chose what he wanted.
“Ready?”
He cocked his head and headed back to the bathroom. “Gotta pee.” I went back with him, but as he finished, his water broke. There was another shower and more contractions that were closer than five minutes apart. I wasn’t near my spreadsheets. Damn.
I managed to get my mate into the back seat, though we stopped halfway as his body was wracked by a cramp. After buckling him in, I took off and skidded around the corner. Shit, I was supposed to be looking after Bronson and the baby, not causing an accident.
I hit a red light and another. At the second, Bronson's body contracted again. All I could do was outstretch my hand and breathe with him as the light turned green and I put my foot on the gas.
“They’re closer,” he yelled as he panted and hee-hee-hooed. I breathed with him, wishing we could fly over the rooftops and land in front of the hospital. Sweat dribbled into my eyes, and I blinked. There might have been tears mingled with the sweat because I was terrified my mate and baby’s health were at risk.
I sped along the road, thankful there wasn’t much traffic in the early hours of the morning. My mate moaned, saying the baby was coming, but he didn’t mean in the car. Or did he?
“Oh my gods, the pressure.”
