45. Babies are Rude
forty-five
Babies are Rude
Dylan
T hree weeks later…
35 weeks pregnant.
“That may just be the biggest pack of Oreos I’ve ever seen,” I say to Leah as she walks up to put the pack in the cart.
“You haven’t seen anything yet, Beethoven.” From behind her back, she pulls out three more packs of other flavors.
“Are you okay?” I ask. “Seems like an awful lot of cookies.”
“They’re for your daughter. Do you really want to tell her no to something that she has been craving like none other?”
“You’re going to play the baby card? Really?”
She stares a hole right through me.
“Okay, get the cookies,” I tell her. “Get even more cookies. We can have a charcuterie board of Oreos.”
She still doesn’t look thrilled with me, but her picking out a couple more flavors seems to help.
The past few weeks of us dating have been great. Having her next to me in bed every night has been wonderful, and I’ve been doing my best to make sure she’s doing okay. I can tell she’s getting uncomfortable, though—more uncomfortable than she has been.
Her feet swell, and she’s hot all the time. She snaps at me if I breathe too close to her. But I’m enjoying every moment of it, even the moments when she’s pissed at me because I know she won’t be pregnant for much longer.
We walk past the aisle of alcohol, and Leah looks at it and sighs. “Six more weeks until I can drink again.”
“Didn’t you say you were going to breastfeed?” I ask, not thinking the question may upset her.
But I was wrong.
“Can’t you just let me have my moment?” She snaps.
I now see what Jack went through with Liz. The pregnancy hormones have completely taken her over, and nice Leah has left the building.
She discovered a couple of stretch marks last night, and she spent an hour crying and then an hour yelling at me for ruining her body.
After that, she apologized and offered sex, but once we started to get into it, she decided she was too hot and uncomfortable and sex wasn’t on the menu. She fell asleep early, and I handled it myself.
Having a homemade porno on my phone of my girlfriend sucking my cock definitely has its perks. A few minutes of watching that while I jerk off was enough to get the job done and help me not go to bed with blue balls.
This third trimester has been a roller coaster ride, but we are making it through. Five weeks to go, and we will have a cute little baby. Over the next couple weeks, we are going to get the nursery ready and take some birthing classes.
We walk a little further in the store, and Leah gets distracted by a whole selection of snack cakes. I watch her as she stares at the assorted boxes and tries to pick which one she wants.
All of a sudden, she whips around and gasps, “Oh my God!”
“What’s wrong?”
She leans forward and whispers. “I’m pretty sure I just peed my pants.”
“Huh?”
“I think I just peed my pants! But I have no idea how. I just went to the bathroom ten minutes ago. I know my bladder is being pushed on, but this is ridiculous.”
It suddenly occurs to me that this probably isn’t because of her bladder. All those parenting audiobooks I listened to are paying off.
“Leah, I don’t think you peed your pants. I think your water just broke.”
Her eyes go wide. “No! That can’t be it! It’s too early!”
“You’re 35 weeks. It’s not unheard of to go into labor.”
I take her by the hand and lead her out of the store.
She looks back at the cart and says, “But my Oreos!”
“Baby, you can’t eat them right now anyway. It would just be a tease buying them and not being able to have them.”
I get her into my truck, and we start driving toward the hospital.
She says, “There’s no way I’m in labor, right?”
“Sounds like labor to me,” I tell her. “But maybe not. Let’s go to the hospital and let them tell us for sure. ”
“If I’m not, can we get Oreos on the way home?”
“Congratulations, Leah! It’s time to have a baby,” the nurse says as she hooks Leah up to the monitors.
“No, I can’t be in labor. It’s too early. We don’t have the nursery ready, and we don’t have the car seat installed. We haven’t picked a name.”
She smiles. “You know who doesn’t care about any of that stuff? Babies. They’re rude like that—always wanting you to be on their schedule.”
“Will my baby be okay?” Leah asks, her voice cracking.
“Thirty-five weeks is a little early, but we are going to do everything we can to take great care of you and baby both. You’re not the first early baby we’ve seen.”
Leah is poked and prodded for the next few minutes while the nurses get her ready to have a baby. I try to stand out of the way but am anxious to be right by her side again to try to assure her everything will be okay.
Finally, they get us into a room, and the contractions start. At first, Leah describes them as just a slight twinge, but it doesn’t take long for her to start yelling obscenities every time one hits.
When the nurses leave us alone, I sit on the bed next to Leah and hold her hand. “You doing okay, gorgeous?”
“No. Nothing is okay. We should have finished the nursery by now. We should have talked about names. I just feel like we aren’t getting off to a very good start. Hell, my body has finally decided to reject the baby and is spitting her out before she’s finished cooking.”
“Baby, everything is okay,” I tell her. “We will get everything done I promise—even if I have to work night and day when we get home to make sure it’s done.”
“I’m not ready,” she says, barely loud enough for me to hear.
“You know what?” I smile. “I am. And I’ve got you.”
She chuckles. “You know, that’s what you said to me when I freaked out because I was pregnant.”
“I meant it then, and I mean it now.”
A contraction hits, and I coach her to breathe through it. She looks at me like she wants me to catch on fire, but her anger toward me seems to be distracting her from the pain.
A nurse comes in to check some numbers on the monitors and then tries pumping some medicine through the IV line.
“What’s wrong?” Leah asks.
“The baby’s heart rate is just a little low, so we are trying to raise it a little.”
All of the color drains from Leah’s face.
“Hey,” I say. “It’s okay. The nurses know what they are doing.”
The next few minutes are filled with complete terror. I try to hold it together for Leah, but I’m freaking out on the inside.
The nurse walks out, and Leah turns to me. “I need you to promise me something.”
“What?”
“If something goes wrong, I need you to do whatever you can to save the baby even if that means putting me on the back burner. I need you to make sure the doctors know that. ”
“Leah—”
“Dylan, promise me!”
I sigh. “I promise.”
After giving her a kiss, I say, “You know, for someone who doesn’t think they’re ready to be a mom, you sure as hell are acting like a good one.”
When the nurse comes in, she’s accompanied by our doctor. He looks at the screen and whispers with the nurse for a moment.
He walks over and rubs his hands together as he speaks. “Leah, I could give you a bunch of medical jargon about what’s going on, but right now, we need to get that baby out.”
“Do I need to start pushing?”
“No. You’re not far enough dilated. We are going to have to do a c-section.”
Fear is written all over Leah’s face, but they don’t give her much of a chance to respond before getting her ready for transport to an operating room.
Everyone crowds around the bed, so I take a moment to walk away and text my mom. If anyone knows how to handle stressful situations, it’s her. I’d like her here in case anything goes wrong.
I follow them up to the operating room and scrub in so that I can be with Leah the entire time.
When they let me inside, I stand by her head and try to comfort her as best I can.
She looks up at me with wide eyes. “Dylan, I’m scared.”
“I know, baby. I’m here. It’s all going to be okay.”
Trying not to cry, she says, “In case something happens, I need you to know something. I love you. And I’m not just saying that because I may die. I’m saying it because it’s true. I’m sorry I’ve been too afraid to say it before now.”
“I love you too, Leah. So fucking much.”