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“I’m not sure I can do this. I’m not sure I can do this,” she said in a breathless voice.
Marc kept a firm hold on her hand, but he put his arm around her shoulders. He peered down at the foot of the bed. The doctor and nurses were waiting for the baby to emerge, and Alex stood just behind them continuing to monitor the situation as well. Marc wanted him close just in case anything did happen during the birth.
“You’ve got this, babe. You are going to be a terrific mother, and he knows that. It all starts right now,” he said to her as he kissed the top of her forehead. “Now push,” he said.
“I’m pushing!”
“Push harder.”
“You push yourself, you bastard! You’re not the one who’s giving birth here. I’d like to see you try.”
Jesus Christ.
Alex covered his chortle with his laugh.
He should have told the doctor to give her an epidural earlier. Women in labor were quite frightening. Marc remembered an article about the Huichol tribe’s custom of sharing labor pain. The wife would tie a rope around the husband’s scrotum and when the wife struggled with a painful contraction, she’d pull the rope as hard as she could. Good thing that he lived in modern civilization. His balls were saved from barbaric torture. “Babe, darling, take a deep breath and calm down…”
“I can’t calm down! The baby is coming out.”
“Then push!” Marc regretted that he couldn’t use his gift of persuasion on her. It’d come handy in situation like this.
“I’m pushing. I can’t.” Kelly screamed. “I hate you, Marc!”
“No, you don’t.”
“I can’t do this.”
“Yes, you can. Push!”
Kelly let out one more earth-shattering, piercing, elongated yell just before it was followed by the squawking cry of a baby. She then collapsed on her back in exhaustion. It had been a long labor. She started having contractions yesterday, and the past four hours were spent pushing. A relief washed over him. He wasn’t the one who gave birth, but he felt bone-tired, too.
“Congratulations, Mr. DaVaca. It’s a boy,” said the doctor.
He knew that. The firstborn in the DaVaca clan was always male.
Marc watched in awe as the doctor cleaned mucus from his infant son’s mouth with a suction device. He then clamped the umbilical cord. The nurse wrapped him in a blanket and proffered him to his mother.
“Mr. and Mrs. DaVaca, meet your son,” the nurse said. “He’s a handsome baby.”
Kelly burst into a round of fresh tears, while Marc was transfixed at the sight of his son. He felt his own eyes starting to water, which wasn’t like him at all. The baby had stopped crying and now watched them with equal curiosity.
“Hello, son, welcome to planet Earth,” Marc whispered. The baby gave him a “what you talking about” kind of look. Marc chortled.
The doctor gave them five minutes’ bonding time before he took the baby again for some aftercare. The doctor performed Apgar assessments and declared the baby healthy. One nurse quickly cleaned up the baby and weighed him while the other nurse took the infant’s measurements and made his foot imprint on paper. When they finished, the nurse wrapped the infant in a blanket and donned him a cap and gave him to his mother once again.
“He looks like you,” she said.
Marc chuckled. “No, he looks like his beautiful mother.”
She smiled at him, and then she looked down at their son again. “I can’t believe that we made him. He’s perfect,” she said.
The baby gave a throaty howl, and Marc laughed. “Now that is the call of a DaVaca.”
He felt someone move closer to him and saw Alex standing there. “A new father beaming with pride,” Alex said. “Congratulations. He’s healthy and happy.”
Marc ran his palm across the baby’s cheek realizing that his hand was bigger than his son’s head. The tiny body felt so fragile in his arms.
He looked at Kelly. “What are we going to name him?”
