Unlearning

CHAPTER 17

June 2018

Samantha, age 28

I woke up before sunrise again. My daughter seemed to be an early bird. She was doing somersaults in my belly – that's what it felt like, even though the midwife assured me there was no way she had the space to do that this late in the pregnancy. I was almost at the finish line, I couldn’t imagine two more months of this like the humans had to endure. Physically, my pregnancy has been wonderful, calm and healthy, but my mind kept coming up with all of these scary scenarios so I just wanted it to be over. I wanted to finally hold my pup in my hands, see her with my own eyes, and reassure myself that she was fine. James, the father, was a male I fell in love with all over again. He made me want to have a dozen children with him, and if he continued having what felt like a mild breeding kink, we just might.

We read all the books and followed all the momstagrams, purchased unscented products, the most natural fabrics, all the non-toxic wooden toys. We wanted our pup to be as connected to nature as we were, to live a life pure and untainted by pollution for as long as possible. I worried about the world she was being born into. I worried about her future, I thought about her mate. James seemed to sense when my mind was spiraling and he cooed and calmed me, pet me gently and fed me my favorite foods, and took me on walks. I took long baths and listened to parenting podcasts, trying and failing to imagine myself with a toddler who was testing my boundaries. I felt full of life. I kept caressing the parts of my pup that she jabbed the outer part of my stomach with, and she seemed to like it. I was convinced that we were developing our own form of communication. She let me know she was happy about the food I was eating by doing little dances, and I massaged my belly to let her know I appreciated her letting me know. It sounded silly, but to the two of us it made sense. I jealously guarded her inside me, like a beautiful secret. I imagined my body feeding her, building her from scratch, forever intertwining us in a mother-daughter bond. Not only would she carry my DNA within her forever, but I’d also read that babies leave parts of their DNA in their mothers' bodies so that mothers are forever chimeras, forever changed by motherhood on a molecular level, never alone again, not even in their genetic structure. I’d think about things like these before sunrise while looking at my sleeping husband, imagining our daughter in our bed between us, whispering to her: “we're waiting for you, Sage”.

In the middle of doing the dishes, I dropped a plate and it shattered on the tile floor. Through the bond I was shaken by James' anxiety and anger mixing with... fear? It was the first time I’d felt something like this from him and I hurried into his home office where I found him on the phone.

“She's here right now, I'll tell her. Yeah, thanks for calling Lainey.”

“What happened, why is Lainey calling you,” I asked, unable to keep the fear out of my voice. James took me by the hand and led me to an armchair.

“Alaina was at work when they brought your idiot mate in. He seems to have overdosed on wolfsbane and they are working on him right now. She doesn't know if he will make it, and she got worried thinking about you and Sage, she thinks they should induce your labor right now just to be on the safe side,” his heartbeat was deafening. I took a deep breath, my heart racing as well.

“Let's drive to the clinic and ask my doctor what she thinks,” I tried to seem composed, but inside I was seething. That motherfucker. When would I be free of him? Why was he constantly causing trouble for me? I could feel a faint thread of sadness from my wolf. Brandon's wolf never did anything to us, and he was still partially her mate. I chose to focus on the anger, it was better than the fear and worry that was gripping my heart. Sage seemed to feel it and she nudged me from the inside, as if to say “I am here, mommy, we can do it.” That was also something I chose to believe.

My doctor agreed that it was better to avoid risking some grave consequence coming out of Brandon’s stupidity, although I wasn’t due for another 20 days. The death of a mate could be deadly for wolves. Even though were neither marked nor mated, no one wanted to risk something happening to a pregnant she-wolf. Induction in itself was a risk and was definitely not part of my birth plan – I wanted to go all natural, no drugs, in a tub, and now it was all ruined, it was all – I felt a warm hand gripping mine, and another soothingly going up and down my back.

“Breathe, baby,” he whispered in my ear. “I know my she-wolf can do this, are we ready to meet Sage?”

I managed to nod in what I hoped was a determined way, but I felt smaller and weaker than ever. I didn’t know what to expect, I hadn't focused on this part of the pregnancy books. Hell, I knew more about C-sections than this. I'd always imagined my water would dramatically break and there would be a frantic drive to the hospital, but here I was, on my back, with my legs wide open, while the doctor was shoving a gel-coated sponge inside me to soften my cervix and induce labor. What followed were 14 hours of draining irregular contractions, the pain maddening, but not regular enough to be considered active labor. There was no walking around, no bouncing on a ball like I had planned. I was in bed, being crucified by the pain every now and then, vomiting in a trashcan, cursing the day Brandon was born. At some point they gave me another drug intravenously and then it was showtime. As soon as I was fully dilated, they expected me to push, hadn't they witnessed the last 14 hours? I was given sugar water and chocolate milk, and while James was wiping the sweat off my brow, I pushed as best as I could. Two hours later, I felt her slide out. It was almost as if it was happening to someone else. I was just relieved it was done. I heard her cry and as I was chanting thank you, God in my mind, I just wanted to go to sleep. They put her on my belly while we were waiting for the placenta, and she was surprisingly warm. I'd seen so many pictures of weird-colored, vernix-covered newborns and they never seemed warm, yet my daughter felt like she’d just gotten out of a hot bath, which in a way I guess she had. In the coming months, I’d revisit these moments every night before bed, analyzing every little detail and committing it to memory, reliving it obsessively, but right now I felt myself zoning out. The exhaustion was real.

James was crying and looking at Sage, and I was happily looking at the both of them. We did it. She was here. I heard and saw nothing else. I just kept looking at her tiny limbs and I thinking I know you guys, you've been poking me these last few months, nice to see you. We were taken to a room next door where we were covered in blankets to spend the next two hours doing skin-to-skin. The nurse put Sage on my breast and she was quick to latch, the strength of it surprising. I worried whether anything was coming out. Should I be feeling it? Can you even feel the milk coming out? I should have been better prepared. I remembered reading all kinds of things about breastfeeding, but I couldn’t remember anyone mentioning that. She wasn’t fussing so that seemed good.

James and I just gazed at each other, we were beyond words. Neither of us could have imagined that today would end like this. My birth experience had been nowhere close to the birth plan I'd made. But that was the thing with being me, or being cursed with having Brandon in my life. Nothing would go the way you'd planned it. But looking at Sage and James, I thought that maybe, just maybe, things went better than I could have planned. With Sage suckling and James watching over us, I finally let myself doze off.