Chapter 17 #2
The hospital classroom is bright, sterile, and smells faintly of hand sanitizer. There are other couples. Some look excited, some terrified. One man looks like he was told there would be free beer and now he's pissed to learn it isn't true.
Hamish takes the front row seat and pulls out a notebook.
A notebook.
"Are you taking notes?" I whisper.
"Aye. I'm learnin'. Gotta prepare ta be a good da right from the start, even when all I can see of her is the top o' her wee bonnie head."
It should be adorable. Right now, it is adorable. My husband, the father of this baby, a giant Scottish footballer with a knee injury and a future in sports broadcasting, is sitting front row in a childbirth class like it is the Champions League. It makes me want to cry.
The instructor, Rachael Morton, starts with the stages of labor: early labor, active labor, transition. Pain management. What to expect in the hospital.
Hamish nods along, writing, whispering to me.
"Early labor," he murmurs. "That's warm-up drills."
"Hamish," I whisper, trying not to laugh.
"Active labor is the first half. Transition is extra time."
"What are you talking about?"
"This is easy. It's just like the game. Ye need ta be flexible when the play changes. Limber fer unexpected hits."
Then the instructor mentions breech. Not as an alarm, just a topic.
"A breech baby at term may require an external version attempt or a scheduled C-section."
"That's changin' formations," Hamish whispers.
Is he seriously going to do this all night?
Then the video starts. It's not a cute animation. It's a serious educational video with diagrams and pelvises and a narrator who says intense pressure in the same tone you'd use to describe a new smoothie flavor.
When breathing is mentioned, a couple near us starts panting in unison. The instructor encourages it.
"Breathe with your partner."
Hamish turns to me, eager.
"We should practice."
"No," I whisper, but he starts anyway.
"In through the nose—"
But the video is showing a baby's head moving through a pelvis and all humor leaves me.
This isn't theoretical anymore. This is my body and I'm the one who is going to have to do this, and right now the baby is breech and the video is talking about surgery and there are strangers panting and the room is too warm and I can't swallow.
My bravado dissolves. My chest goes tight in the familiar way it did when I was younger and thought I could make life better by being prepared enough.
I cannot do that here.
My hand slips from Hamish's and I stand up too fast. The room tilts. I make it to the hallway, where the fluorescent lights buzz and my breath comes sharp. I brace one hand against the wall.
The classroom door opens behind me.
"Amy?"
I don't look at him because if I look at him, I'll break.
"I'm fine."
He steps close, not crowding me, just near enough that his presence blocks out the hallway. He drops the jokes completely. As I inhale, I take in his scent, the soap he showers with, the light cologne that rubbed on him from his coat, his minty breath.
"Ye're no' fine. Ye're scared."
That word pounds on my chest and opens something. My eyes burn.
"I can't," I whisper. "I can't do this. I can't do all of it.
Breech, and surgery, and pain, and you leaving, and being a mommy.
.. I can't be the person who handles everything.
Who always knows the most efficient way, who can strategize and find a better solution.
I used to be good at it, thrive on it. But I don't know how to be that person anymore. "
He takes my hands and holds them between us like something fragile.
"Amy. Listen ta me. Dr. Biswas said ye need not worry. Breech now is no' breech forever."
I nod, shaky.
"We've got things to try—exercises, positions, version. C-section if we need it. None of that means ye've failed, and it doesna mean we're in trouble. Nothing bad is going ta happen ta this baby. Nor ta ye."
Tears slip out. He brushes them away with his thumb.
"And I'm no' gonna be chasin' a career while ye do this alone. Dinna let yer brain tell ye that."
"I know you say that. But you have work. The exhibition game—"
He exhales and I can hear his own fear, tucked under his words.
"Aye. And I'm scared, too," he admits. "About the baby. And my knee. About no' bein' able ta run, no' bein' able ta provide the way I thought I would. I've got all that in me."
"Hamish—"
"But I can still be here. I can still show up. I can still hold ye when ye're fallin' apart in a hospital hallway wi' yer lovely arse hanging out the back, screamin' fer ice chips and cursin' God fer giving ye a bocce ball ta push out a hacky-sack hole."
"Romantic," I whisper, and he smiles.
"Aye. I'm a poet. I could write a thousand sonnets if the topic is yer fanny."
I tilt into him and he wraps his arms around me, careful but firm, holding me like he can keep my insides from shaking apart. We stand there until my breathing slows, until the hallway stops spinning.
"I'm sorry," I tell him.
"Dinna apologize," he says immediately. "This is big. Ye dinna have ta be brave every second."
I pull back just enough to look at him. His eyes are bright, soft and fierce at once.
"I'll be there," he says, leaning down to me. "For every second I can control. And the seconds I canna control, we'll plan around them together."
I nod, but I don't actually believe him. I believe in him, but I can't be as positive as he is. Not yet.
"Ye want ta go back in?" He nods toward the classroom.
I think of the video. The panting. The pelvis diagrams.
"No." It feels like progress to admit it.
"Good. Me neither."
"You were taking notes."
"Yer more important than the notes. We can watch videos on YouTube and catch up before the next class."
We slip out. I text Rachael my apologies, telling her I don't feel well, which is the truth. On the drive home, Hamish rests his hand on my knee.
"May's gorgeous," he says. "We should get outside more. Help the bairn ta turn with nature."
"My mother would love that sentence."
"She'd put a crystal in the sun and start a fire."
When we get home, my phone buzzes with gifs of upside-down pregnant women. A voice memo from my mother begins with: "Amy, I had a vision involving you, Moonbeam, a golden harp, and the shaman I met in Taos when your father and I..."
I turn the phone face down.
On the couch, my feet in his lap, Hamish rubbing my arches, we write a plan.
Do the exercises daily
"Forward-leaning inversion, knee-chest, pelvic tilts, breech tilt with pillows." I read aloud from Dr. Biswas's sheet.
"This one looks like ye're tryin' ta become a piece o' furniture," Hamish muses, pointing at a diagram.
"Like a distressed ottoman," I agree.
"Or starrin' in a verra unique porn film."
Keep an open mind about external version
If needed, a C-section is not a failure
Ignore fruit acrobatics and crystal grids
NO PINEAPPLE UP MY WIFE'S ARSE, Hamish writes in big letters.
"Who said anything about my ass?" I squeak.
"Drawing a firm boundary," he replies, so serious it makes me laugh, and the baby kicks.
He sets the notepad down and looks at me, really looks at me.
"Ye steadier now?"
"I'm still scared."
"Aye. Me, too." He brushes my cheek with his knuckles. "But I'm here. Wi' ye. We can do the exercises, we can plan, we can let the doctors do their jobs."
"And we can ignore my mother."
"Aye. We can ignore yer mother." He grins, then his expression shifts. "And we can love each other through it. I canna be yer everything, Amy. Our lives are too big fer that. But I'll be yer greatest source of love and connection, and wi' that, we can handle whate'er life throws our way."
The words settle into me and I nod, voice caught in my throat.
I put my hand on his face, feeling the scratch of his jaw.
"I need you," I say, and it comes out smaller than I mean it to, not a demand but a confession. "Not to fix anything. Just to be close. I need to stop thinking."
His eyes search mine. He doesn't crack a joke. Doesn't deflect. He just nods, once, and pulls me gently toward him until my forehead rests against his.
"Then stop," he murmurs. "Let me."
He kisses me, and it's nothing like the frantic, athletic kissing of the second trimester. It's slow and deliberate, his mouth warm, his hand cradling the back of my head. He kisses me the way you'd hold something that isn't fragile but is precious. The distinction matters.
I am not breakable. But right now, I need to be held like I matter more than everything that's scaring me.
His hands move to the hem of my shirt and he lifts it carefully, fingertips tracing the underside of my belly, the stretched skin warm and taut.
I'm big now. There's no pretending otherwise.
My body has become a landscape he has to navigate differently every few weeks, and he does it without complaint, without hesitation, with a kind of quiet reverence that makes me ache.
"Lie back," he says, and I do, settling into the couch cushions while he kneels on his good knee beside me. The other leg extends carefully, brace and all, and I watch him arrange himself around his own limitations the way he arranges himself around my belly.
We're two people whose bodies are not doing what we planned. His knee won't cooperate. My baby won't turn. And yet here we are, adjusting, finding the angle that works, making room for each other no matter what.
That thought cracks something open in me, and I reach for him.
He unclasps my bra and his mouth finds my breast, gentle, so gentle.
They're tender now and he knows exactly how much pressure I can take.
His tongue circles my nipple and a sound escapes me that has nothing to do with lust and everything to do with relief.
My body has been clenched for hours, braced against bad news.
His mouth is the first thing that tells it to let go.
His hand slides down my belly, over the curve, lower. When his fingers find me, I'm already wet, already desperate for the contact. The first slow stroke makes my hips lift off the cushion.
"There ye are," he whispers against my skin. I don't know if he's talking to me or to the part of me that went missing in the doctor's office, the part that knows how to feel something other than afraid.
He takes his time. There's no urgency in his touch, just attention.
His fingers move in long, slow circles, reading my breathing the way he reads the game, adjusting when I tense, pressing firmer when I arch toward him.
He watches my face with those green eyes, and I let him see everything. The fear. The gratitude.
The need.
"I love ye," he says, low and rough. "Every inch. Every worry. Every plan ye make at three in the morning. Every spreadsheet. Every spiral."
I laugh, watery gasps, and the laugh turns into a moan as his fingers find the rhythm that undoes me.
"Even the Kanban boards?" I manage.
"Especially those." He kisses my belly. "Ye're the most beautiful, competent, terrified and sometimes terrifying woman I've ever known, and I'm so glad ye chose me."
I pull at his shirt and he sheds it one-handed, shifting his weight to his good side. I push his joggers down and take him in my hand, hard and warm, and his breath shudders against my neck.
We rearrange. It takes a moment. His knee needs a cushion, and my belly needs space, so we end up on our sides facing each other, my top leg hooked over his hip, his hand on my thigh holding me steady.
It's not graceful. It's not what it would have looked like a year ago, when we were both lighter, less afraid, and our bodies did whatever we asked.
But it's so, so good.
He enters me slowly, watching my face the whole time, and I gasp at the fullness. Not just physical. The fullness of him being here, of choosing this, of knowing that tomorrow is uncertain and he's inside me, connecting.
"Okay?" he asks.
"Yes." I grip his shoulder. "Don't stop."
He moves in slow, deep strokes that I feel everywhere, his hand between us, still touching me, still circling my clit. My forehead presses against his and our breathing tangles.
His thumb presses and the orgasm builds, not like a wave but like warmth spreading outward from my center, slow and inevitable. My fingers dig into his back. His breath comes faster.
"Let go, Amy," he whispers. "Ye dinna have ta hold anything right now."
So I don't.
The release moves through me in long, rolling contractions that make my vision blur and my throat close.
Not the sharp, bright orgasms of the second trimester.
Something deeper, something that comes from the place where I keep my fear, and washes it out, temporarily, leaving me empty and warm and trembling.
He follows, burying his face in my neck, a groan that vibrates against my pulse. His hand stays on my belly even as his body shakes, palm spread wide, holding what we made.
After, he doesn't move. Neither do I. We lie there, foreheads touching, legs tangled, his hand still between us, still resting on the curve of our daughter.
"Better?" he asks, voice rough.
"Better," I whisper.
Not fixed. Not solved. Bronwyn is still breech, the world is still spinning, and I still can't control any of it.
But my body is quiet now, his is warm, and the fear has retreated far enough for me to breathe.
After, we're tangled on the couch, my head on his shoulder. My phone buzzes on the table. Hamish reaches over and silences it without looking.
"Good man," I whisper.
"Aye," he says, kissing my hair. "I'm protectin' ye from pineapple butt plugs."
I laugh, tired and warm, and the baby kicks, as if joining in.
Outside, the late May evening stays gorgeous.
Inside, Hamish's hand rests on my belly, mine rests over his, and the fear quiets.
It's not gone.
Just quieter.