Page 70 of Forever Christmas
Chapter 26: Gavin
This labor is so much worse than the last.
It’s not that it’s harder on Corabelle. In fact, once the contractions increase enough that labor is inevitable and the epidural is set up, she sleeps through half of them.
It’s just so terrifying. With Finn, we were teenagers and had this stupid naive optimism. We had no idea anything could go wrong.
This time, I know what is on the line.
Corabelle’s parents arrive late evening, and she barely acknowledges their presence before tucking back down into her pillow. They gave up on flights and just drove straight through.
“Oh, baby, you seem so distraught,” Mrs. Rotheford says. But I don’t know how she gets that. Corabelle’s face is a mask. The nurses keep saying she is so calm and collected.I guess mothers just know.
The contractions are only a couple minutes apart when the nurse comes in and says she’s dialing down the epidural. “It’ll be time to push,” she tells Corabelle. “You’ll want to feel it.”
Corabelle’s expression makes it clear that no, she does not want to feel anything. Her eyes follow the nurse as she approaches the little machine at the end of the epidural line andpunches on the buttons.
I don’t know anything to do to make this any better. You see what a birth is supposed to be like in movies or on TV, and it doesn’t line up with what I’ve ever experienced.
Definitely not today.
I wish I had a magic wand that could sprinkle fairy dust over the room and turn everything merry and bright. The night nurse comes in with her holiday scrubs and candy cane earrings,and it strikes me that this might be the worst Christmas season of my life.
“Sounds like we’re getting ready to push,” she says. She secures the monitor on Corabelle’s belly. “We’re going to keep extra-good focus on his heart all the way to the end.”
“All this has to stay on?” Corabelle asks.
“It does,” she says. “Until the doctor says it can come off.”
They lift the back of the bed so she’smore upright. The big stirrups are attached in case she wants them. She doesn’t.
Mr. Rotheford can’t take the strain and goes to find some vending-machine coffee.
The first contraction hits after the epidural is turned down, and Corabelle immediately starts crying.
“Isn’t it bad enough without hurting too?” she says.
“Oh, baby, you have to have faith,” her mother says. “You have to believehe’s going to be okay. Did you pick out a name?”
Corabelle shakes her head.
I bought a book of baby names a few weeks ago, but we never went through it. Until last night when we worked on the butterfly mobile, we had scarcely acknowledged that we were expecting a baby at all.
Her mother looks up at me. “Is the bassinet ready? The clothes washed? I can run home as soon as he’s born and get itall prepared.”
“It’s done, Mom,” Corabelle says, sounding a lot like her sixteen-year-old self. “I wasn’t completely useless.”
Her mother strokes her hair, fingers brushing out some of the tangles. “Okay, darling. That’s good. I think it will be fine once he’s here. The not knowing is what’s hard.”
She can say that again.
Another contraction comes, less than a minute after the first. One ofthe nurses stays down at Corabelle’s knees. The other hovers by the monitor.
“You’re doing great,” one says. “Not much more to go.”
But there is more to go. Another hour of pushing, in fact. Corabelle’s dad wanders in, sees his daughter all splayed open, and heads right back out again.
I hold one hand and her mother holds the other. Corabelle’s face is splotchy. She’s quit talking to any ofus, going into some zoned-out state just to get through.
