Page 85 of Kicking Up Dust

Blair brings me back to the moment by pushing my hand off the roundest part of her belly and toward the top. A second later, I feel our daughter kick me, and chuckle.

“She’s getting strong.”

“Her feet were in my ribs last night,” Blair deadpans, which makes me think comments of how strong our baby is are no longer welcome. Fair. I can’t wrap my head around how it must feel for her and I think that might be why women are the ones who handle pregnancy and birth because if men did, the human race would’ve been gone thousands of years ago.

“Have you thought any more about the epidural?” I ask gently.

She’s convinced she doesn’t want one and I can’t really understand why. I don’t know much about giving birth, outside of the mechanics of it, but it’s common knowledge it’s not exactly a walk in the park. Some women even tear, which makes me squeamish to think about.

Blair sighs. “I still don’t think I want it,” she says, turning in my arms. “I want to be able to move around and change positions and just… listen to my body. An epidural cuts down the amount of position options available. The most common birthing position with the epidural is either on your back or on your side and I’ve heard laboring on your back is one of the most uncomfortable positions there is to give birth in.”

“Then why is that the most common position?” I ask with furrowed brows. There have been approximately a thousand times during this pregnancy that Blair’s told me something about women’s health care that didn’t make a lick of sense.

“Funny you should ask that because I actually just looked this up,” Blair says, pulling out of my arms to go grab her phone. I groan. I love the internet when she uses it to research kinky little things she wants to do together and projects I can help her with, but her incessant need to Google pregnancy symptoms and questions bothers me.

“Human beings are the only mammals that choose to give birth on their backs. Even gorillas and chimpanzees, our closest relative species, give birth in a squatting or crouching position,” she reads off her phone and I grin at how proper and scholarly she sounds.

“Up until the seventeenth century, women also primarily gave birth in an upright or crouching position, usually with the help of birthing stools or chairs. One of the reasons for this change was that King Louis XIV had a fetish for watching women give birth and got irritated when a birthing stool would impede his ability to watch it take place.”

My face twists, disgusted. I love Blair with all of my heart and then some, but I cannot imagine finding her giving birth sexually attractive.

“Seriously?”

She locks her phone and tosses it over on the changing pad she’s strapped to the top of the dresser and wrapped in a sage sheet she keeps referring to as gingham, even though it looks checker-print to me.

“There’s some other stuff about how it was deemed more convenient for male doctors if the woman was lying on her back, but⁠—”

“The fuck does male convenience have to do with giving birth?” I ask, still wildly upset about the history lesson regarding some old, dead king.

Blair smiles, patting my cheek and pressing a kiss to my lips. “Good boy. I shall keep you.”

FORTY-SIX

COLT

Every morning I wake up and ask myself how I can make Blair happy that day. Most days, it’s easy. Gummy bears, or taking her to Cattleman’s for macaroni and cheese off the kid’s menu, or working on whatever project she’s added to the Honey Do List she put on the fridge for me.

Today, I think the best thing I can do for her is drive her to her doctor’s appointment and keep my mouth shut.

She’s thirty-seven weeks as of yesterday, which is full-term, as she’s told me no less than a hundred times, usually combined with the phrase I want this baby out of me! The fifth time she said it, I tried to gently remind her that the baby would come when the baby was ready to come, because I thought it would help, considering she was so big on the mother nature of it all, but all it got me was a chip clip thrown at my head.

Blair has surprisingly good aim.

As soon as Dr. Abernathy enters the room, Blair is asking to be induced. I press my lips together as tightly as I can manage to avoid laughing in surprise, but he must be used to this because he just pats her shoulder and sympathizes.

“Excited to have your baby in your arms, aren’t you?”

“Excited to not be pregnant anymore,” she corrects him, already catching on to the fact he isn’t going to do what she wants. She huffs and leans back in her chair.

The doctor looks over the information the nurse gathered before he came in and then offers a cervical exam if Blair would like one. She’s quick to agree, even though it leads to watery eyes when he tells her that her cervix is soft, the baby is in the right position, but she isn’t dilated even a smidgen.

“Do you want Cattleman’s?” I risk asking once the appointment is over and we’re both sitting in my truck.

“No,” Blair says with a sniffle. “I want the baby to come already. I’m so tired of being pregnant, it feels like it’s been going on forever.”

For me, it definitely doesn’t, considering I missed the entire first third of it. Regardless, my frustration about that doesn’t negate Blair’s discomfort, so I try to empathize.

“I know, mama. But right now, she sees you as the safest space in the whole wide world and she’s completely right. You are the safest space. I know because you’re my safe space, too.”