“You can't be! You're having a scheduled c-section.”
“Well, tell that to the twins, because they have other ideas.”
“Oh my GOD! DECLAN!” she screams. “Don’t leave yet! You have to stay home with Ellie till I can get a sitter here!”
“WHY?” he bellows back.
“AMANDA'S IN LABOR!”
She sounds like her mom.
“LABOR?” I hear him boom.
“I'll meet you at the hospital!” she gushes. “Maybe you'll have a vaginal birth after all!”
“Maybe?” I've become so resigned to the idea of the c-section that her comment makes adrenaline spike through me.
Or maybe I'm just dehydrated. The floor looks like Walden Pond right now.
Andrew's phone rings.
“What?” he snaps.
Declan's voice comes through, though I can't hear the words. A great whoosh of fluid pours out of me, and I freeze.
Cord prolapse. Cords and amniotic fluid. Random portions of childbirth class start flooding into my brain.
“We really need to go now,” I urge.
“José's pulling the car around. He already covered the backseat with plastic.”
“He did?”
“Last week. Just in case.”
“Wow. That's... thorough.”
“Suzanne's right behind you, so Gerald told José and it was on his mind.”
José's knock on the door makes us both look. The bag has been sitting by the door, ready just in case, but I never thought we'd reach in case.
Once we scheduled the c-section for Thursday, I thought that was it.
Thought we had four more days.
Shakes take over my body as I stand there. Andrew hands me a stack of kitchen towels and I hold them, staring dumbly.
“For between your legs,” he says.
“I'm going to gush the entire time and have to be in public like this?”
“Is it any worse than having your breasts exposed at a wedding and falling into a pool to rescue a dog?” he quips.
“I guess we're about to find out.”
José takes in the scene as he comes into the kitchen, eyebrows shooting up as he watches me waddle/drip.
Waddle/drip.
Waddle–
“Stop!” he says firmly, running upstairs, emerging within seconds as Andrew thumbs toward the front door, my bag in hand. As my husband disappears, José rushes down the stairs, a bedsheet and stack of towels in hand.
He thrusts one big bath towel into my hands. “Here. Put it between your legs.” Then he takes the sheet and twists it, as if he's going to tie it to a joist and escape out a window. He places it on the floor between my legs.
Andrew returns and halts dead in his tracks. “José? What are you doing?”
“Andrew. Take that end.” He points behind me. “Amanda, hold the towel up between your thighs. All the way up.” One end of the sheet in his hand, he juts his chin at Andrew. “We're making a toga.”
“A toga?” Andrew asks incredulously. “What are you talking about?”
“It's genius!” I gasp. José's fixing my problem.
“How did you know what to do?” I ask.
Kind, dark eyes meet mine. “My sister had a baby six months ago. And Gerald warned me.”
Within ten seconds, I have the ends of the sheet tied over one shoulder, the thick towel absorbing my amniotic fluid, and we slowly make our way to the car. Halfway down the porch stairs, my back starts to crack my hips in half.
Andrew pulls out his phone, presses on the glass, and suddenly, “Love Will Find a Way” by Yes starts playing. I close my eyes, breathe slowly, and let my mind take me to a quieter place, turning inward until the pressure eases.
We climb in the back of the car, my ass jutting up because of the weird toga-diaper thing I've got going on, but at least I'm not in pain.
“My sister says that hypnosis stuff doesn't work,” I hear José mutter to Andrew.
I don't say a word, my hands on my belly, doing an inventory of the boys. Lefty eases to the right just enough to confirm he's fine, but Righty is being awfully quiet. I can't find his head, the location different now.
Maybe he's not transverse anymore.
Maybe I don't need the surgical birth.
Instantly, panic fills me. I didn't think I had a choice. But the idea of possibly being able to deliver vaginally fills me with diffuse terror.
“What's wrong?” Andrew whispers, hand on my knee. I can tell he doesn't know what to do with himself as José navigates the car quickly on the back roads, hitting the entrance to the Pike with a professional precision that infuses me with gratitude.
“I'm not sure I want a vaginal delivery.”
“Why would you have one?”
“Righty's head isn't where it was last night. Maybe we can do both twins vaginally after all. I spent a lot of emotional energy accepting a c-section, and now...” I make a helpless sound, hearing it echo in my ears, down my throat, nestling under my heart like a cold, scared mouse.
“Here.” He hands me a stainless steel water bottle and I take a sip. It's honey ginger water, with a touch of lemon. Ice cold, too.
“You made this for me?”
“I've had a few in the fridge, ready for this. You said you didn't want to puke orange Gatorade all over the place and never be able to touch it again, so I followed Hope's electrolyte solution.”
The concoction is perfect, like drinking in Andrew's love.
And not the kind with a high protein count.
I sit up slowly, back muscles pulling in toward my spine, my hips cranking in as if someone's turning a gear. The tightness makes it hard to breathe, the band of pressure pulling my pubic bone up, down, in, out, everywhere at once. The deep, searing stretch and contraction is something I have to ride through.
We hit a pothole and I feel like my nerves turn into fireworks.
“Andrew,” I gasp, losing control. “I can't. I can't I can't I can't–”
Strong hands go immediately to my hips. He twists his torso to accommodate me, eyes within inches of mine, laser focused and intent.
“Breathe,” he says, counting a long inhale. “Expand your belly as you inhale.”
“I can't!”
“You are.”
The confidence in his deep baritone unlatches some of the stubborn muscle fibers encasing the babies and I feel
