Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 383(@200wpm)___ 307(@250wpm)___ 256(@300wpm)
“Everything is going to be okay, sweetheart.” My dad leaned over and kissed my sweaty forehead. “I’m going to go down and wait for the ambulance.”
I watched him leave, wishing more than anything I could be his little girl again, crying over a scraped knee. He’d bring me a Band-Aid and dry my tears, making everything better with a hug. Where had time gone? How was it possible I was now on the precipice of being the Band-Aid-getter and the tear-dryer? I wasn’t ready! I wasn’t qualified! This was some sort of time-warp mistake!
I closed my eyes as pain gripped me again, positive something was wrong because there was no fucking way people would have more than one baby if this was how it felt.
“Hang in there, honey.” My mom squeezed my hand.
“Okay if we stay with you?” Sylvia asked. “Whit is going to run up here when she sees the ambulance lights.”
“Where’s Noah?” I asked, desperate to know my husband was there.
“I’m here.” His deep, confident voice was reassuring. I picked up my head and saw him at the foot of the bed. The room was dim, and tears were blurring my vision—or maybe it was the pain—but the silhouette of his wide shoulders and chest made me feel safer. Noah wouldn’t let anything bad happen to me. He never had.
“I need to push,” I told him. “But I’m scared.”
“Don’t be.” Noah removed my underwear and my mom helped him arrange a blanket over my lower body. Sylvia sat on one side of me and April on the other, each of them taking a hand. Frannie and Chloe stood to either side of the bed, each holding two candles.
“You’ve got this, Meg,” said Chloe. “There has never been one thing you couldn’t do if you set your mind to it.”
“But this isn’t like a track meet or the LSAT,” I whimpered. “This is literally a life or death thing.”
“Thousands of women give birth every single day,” April said. “Our bodies are made to do this.”
“But what if I’m the one woman who can’t?” I cried. “What if I have the one vagina that’s shaped wrong? Or not big enough? I don’t think it’s big enough!”
“Trust your body,” Sylvia said, squeezing my hand. “Trust yourself. You’re stronger than you know.”
“Say it out loud, Meg,” Frannie suggested. “You can do this.”
“I can do this,” I said, although I was nearly delirious with the pain. “I can do this. I can do this. I’m stronger than I know.”
“Meg, baby, I think you should push,” Noah said from somewhere between my thighs. “I can see the head.”
That’s when I remembered I didn’t really want him seeing the whole thing. “Don’t look!” I yelled, even as I began to bear down. “You’ll never want me again!”
“Meg McCormick, I will always want you,” he said firmly. “You are the light of my life, the only woman I have ever loved, and every day I wake up knowing I’m the luckiest man in the world because you chose me. Now stop talking and push!”
Noah’s words of love and encouragement plus my sisters’ presence and support gave me a burst of energy. I listened as they cheered me on, breathed when they reminded me, relaxed between contractions, pushed when Noah asked, and found strength in knowing that the room was so full of love. Maybe this baby wouldn’t be born in a brightly-lit hospital room with doctors and nurses in charge, but he’d be born into a family who knew how to be there for each other when times were tough.
In my delirium, memories of my childhood washed over me, vivid with colors and sound and smells and textures. I could feel the sun on my face as my sisters and I ran through the orchard on a summer day. I could taste the apples we’d pluck off the trees. I caught the fecund scent of the horse stalls as we mucked them out. I saw us as five giggling girls making snow angels in winter, then going inside for our mom’s hot chocolate, begging our dad to play a board game with us—and he always did. I saw my parents slow dancing in the kitchen as they cooked dinner together, knowing that was the kind of marriage I wanted some day.
And I saw my brave, beautiful Noah—as a teenage lifeguard pulling me from the water when I’d gotten caught in a current, as a small town K-9 officer giving presentations at schools, as a devoted husband who was so emotional when he learned I was pregnant that he pulled me into his arms and cried on my shoulder.
Our little boy would know that kind of love, the kind that grows stronger every day, lasts forever, and gets passed down through the generations.
With one final effort, I felt my son enter the world, and I burst into tears with the sheer joy of it.