Page 21 of A Hutch for Hoover

I made two and ate mine really slowly in case he needed more than the one I gave him. Only, he stopped a few bites in, and his face changed, giving me the telltale sign that either nausea or a stomachache of the nondescript version appeared.

“You want some Tums?”

He’d been eating them like candy for the past two weeks. The midwife said it was fine, so as gross as I thought they were, I didn’t judge.

“No, no Tums. But stay with me. And go get the midwife. But also stay with me.”

Those two things didn’t go together. He gave me the death glare when I started to tell him as much.

I opted to call the midwife and told my mate I’d be right back. The midwife didn’t answer my call. I texted them. Just as I was grabbing my keys to go get them, they called me back and promised they’d be right over.

“Where’d you go? I thought you left.” He was hugging himself, and I raced to his side.

I’d only been in the bedroom, but that had been too far for both my mate and my rabbit. I wasn’t leaving his side again until our baby was here.

“I’m here. And the midwife is on their way. Why don’t we get you out of these uncomfortable clothes?”

“You just want me to walk around naked, is that it?”

I couldn’t tell if he was teasing or not.

“Oh, I would never say no, but that’s not it. This baby is going to be here soon. And these clothes, they don’t fit you.”

He looked at me and growled. I deserved it. I truly meant he must be uncomfortable, but there was no talking my way out of the comment, so I didn’t even bother.

The midwife came maybe ten minutes later. After giving my mate a once-over, they asked him when his water broke.

“I didn’t know it had.”

“First-time fathers.” The midwife shook their head and went through a bunch of scenarios to see if they applied to Grant. One of them, he admitted he’d experienced. “That was it. The water broke eight hours ago, which means it’s almost go time.”

And it didn’t seem like it to me—if anything, he was acting slightly grumpy, nothing more. But I wasn’t going to argue with the expert. And good thing, too, because they were right.

The pains started to feel like actual contractions within a half an hour, my mate making sure I knew that. The pain level grew strong enough he was no longer able to hold it in, and we didn’t try to stop him. There was no shushing by me or the midwife. He could be as loud as he needed to be to get through this. If the neighbors had a problem with it, they could die mad about it.

I stayed by his side, holding his hand, doing whatever the midwife told me to, without telling him what to do. He’d been very sensitive about that, as he should be.

We did everything the midwife asked of us, including me giving him a shower with the hopes of the warm water to help relax his tense back muscles. He drank a ton of water. He also sat on a huge bouncy ball the midwife had brought for him to sit on. It seemed far too small, but I soon realized it only looked that way because my mate was so large. I was smart enough not to mention that.

Labor was in full swing. He tried different positions to get comfortable, unsuccessfully. When he started asking to go to the human hospital for a “freaking epidural already,” the midwife checked him and told him it was too late.

“Time to push.”

I held his hand, whispering words of encouragement in his ear, and the midwife directed him. And after the second contraction of pushing, the midwife could see our child.

“Push. You can do this.”

And my mate did. Our sweet baby girl was here. We’d never had an ultrasound and hadn’t known who was joining our family until that moment.

The midwife cleaned her up a little and brought her to his chest, saying something about delivering the placenta next. I wasn’t sure if I caught it right, since she wasn’t looking at me. I hadn’t even thought about what happened to the placenta, but it made sense that it had to come out. Did that mean my mate’s contractions kept on coming?

“Why does this hurt as much as childbirth?” He handed me our daughter right before he let out another bloodcurdling scream. The midwife looked at him, worry on her face, but then pulled out the heartbeat-detector doohickey and rolled it across his belly like she had during our consultations.

“Huh,” she said. “That wasn’t what I was expecting.”

I had no idea what she heard—none of it coming through to me.

“Is that a good ‘huh’ or a bad ‘huh’?”

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