Mal Anne 1
A Stage Dive Short Story
“Pumpkin? Anne? You all right?”
I groaned, rubbing my lower back and various other parts of my body because oh my God. Four in the morning was such an awesome time for the baby to go to town kicking my bladder and various other internal organs. Sleep all day, party all night. It was fun to be a rock star’s progeny.
“Time to pee,” I mumbled. “Again.”
He clicked on the bedside light, bathing the room in a soft golden glow. Tussled blond locks stood out in every which direction. Damn the man for making bed hair look good. “Anything I can I do?”
“No. Go back to sleep, Mal.”
“Okay.”
Killer, our Boston Terrier, stirred in his little doggy bed and gave me a disinterested look.
Snacks and treats weren’t given at this hour, so there was no point in getting up.
He cuddled with his latest chewed-up Converse (another one of Mal’s) and went back to sleep.
Life was simple when you were a pupper. Especially a spoiled one like him.
I waddled toward the bathroom. Pregnancy was such utter bullshit.
Don’t get me wrong, the first six or so months weren’t too bad once the morning sickness stopped.
But then you just get bigger and bigger and bigger.
They called it a baby bump. Damn liars. More like a baby blimp.
No position, sleeping- or sexwise, was comfortable.
A pity because I enjoy both resting and banging my husband.
I can’t even remember the last time I saw my toes or put socks on without contorting myself in some weird manner.
Lower back pain was my new friend, and maternity yoga pants and oversize T-shirts were about the only things that fit me anymore.
I don’t care if people had been doing this since the dawn of time.
All that mattered was that for me, right here and right now, pregnancy sucked.
Thirty-nine weeks in and I just wanted my baby already. Now.
And then it happened. A stream of water shot out from between my legs, arcing up gracefully before descending and splashing all over the polished wooden floor, like I’d turned into a fountain or something. For a moment, I just stared, bewildered.
“Um, Mal?”
A sleepy grunt from over on the bed.
“I think my waters just broke.”
An almighty rustling of blankets and sheets came from the general direction of the bed. “What? Are you serious?”
“Don’t see how it could be anything else. Can you get me a couple of towels please?”
“You bet.” In a show of dexterity, the man leaped from the bed and ran toward the bathroom.
Unfortunately, he was in such a panicked rush that he made straight for the puddle, slipped and fell.
Crash, boom, bang. Killer barked and danced around us.
He stopped and sniffed the puddle once before going back to barking.
This was all apparently very exciting for a pupper.
“Fuck,” muttered Mal from the floor.
“Are you all right?”
“Yeah.”
“No concussion?”
He rubbed the back of his head. “I got a pretty thick skull.”
“That’s true. Maybe we should calm down and not panic.”
“Let’s not be too hasty. The more we panic now, the better the stories we’ll have to tell later.”
“That comment sums your life philosophy up perfectly. But I think in all fairness you should have told me that was your motto sometime before you made me complicit in reproducing your gene pool.”
“I’m serious. Now we have a great party story to tell about how I slipped and almost killed myself when your waters broke, and then swam manfully through the stuff to get you some towels.” Writhing pathetically across the floor, he managed to get to the bath towels on the wall.
“I can’t help thinking this story will be rather different depending on which of us is telling it.”
He arrived back with the towels, sopping the floor around my feet. “True. I’m too busy being heroic to even notice how hot my mostly naked body must look to you right now.”
“I know, right. All slick with amniotic fluid. What a turn-on.”
His work mostly done, he grinned up at me. “I love you, Pumpkin.”
“I love you too.”
“We’re going to be parents.”
I nodded. “Yep.”
“Solely responsible for a tiny little person who will communicate mostly by screaming at us. Or that’s what Jimmy said.”
“Well, he and Lena have twins. Hopefully just one baby won’t be so hard to manage,” I said. “Why don’t we worry about that later and get to the hospital now?”
“Good idea.”
Nice and slow, he got back to his feet and grabbed another towel off the wall, passing it to me.
With the towel pressed against my crotch, I grabbed a change of clothes, etcetera, then got busy cleaning up.
Mal appeared in a T-shirt and jeans, his hair dark from a ninety-second shower.
He looked at me and I nodded. The time had come. I was in labor. Okay. We could do this.
TWENTY HOURS LATER
“I can’t do this.”
Mal tenderly wiped the sweat and tears from my face with a wet cloth. “You can. I believe in you.”
“No,” I wailed. “What do you even know anyway?”
Mal opened his mouth to answer, but Lizzy got there first. “Just breathe, Anne.”
“Here comes another.” Breathing in pants, I pushed as the pain took me over from head to toe. “Oh God.”
Dr. Garcia, the OB/GYN, smiled encouragingly from where she stood between my legs.
Fuck dignity. It had no place here. And while everyone was being so supportive, I was the only one who could push this behemoth baby out.
Talk about unfair. I’d been so damn brave putting off having an epidural until it was time to push and therefore too damn late.
“The head is crowning,” said Dr. Garcia. “That’s it, Anne. You’re doing great.”
“Everyone is here for you. They can’t wait to meet your baby.” Lizzy smiled. Dark circles sat beneath her eyes. Fair enough considering we’d been at the hospital trying to bring this baby into the world for approximately seventy-two years and counting. Or that’s what it felt like.
“It hurts. Oh man, it hurts so bad.” Woe was me. “Wait. Who is humming the tune from Rocky?”
Mal pursed his lips. “Sorry. Just trying to be supportive.”
“New rules.” I pushed a strand of sweat-damp hair back off my face, focusing on the matter at hand. “No tapping out drumbeats on my belly while I’m in labor.”
“I was saying welcome in Morse code.”
“It’s a baby, Mal,” said Liz. “Pretty sure they don’t come into existence already knowing Morse code.”
“Since any child of mine, and of my awesome and right now particularly beautiful wife, is bound to be a prodigy, I don’t think we can rule anything out at this point.” Liz glared at him, and his shoulders sagged in an exaggerated fashion. “Fine.”
“No snapping selfies that include me when I’m in the middle of a contraction and posting them to Instagram.”
“I’m just so proud of you, and you know how much my two-point-one-million-more-than-Jimmy-has followers love you. Well…apart from a few of them. The more overly possessive, slightly fucking strange ones.”
“No photos, Mal.”
“All right, Pumpkin,” he said in a resigned tone. “Though in my defense, I did tell the documentary crew they couldn’t come in.”
“You did one thing right. Yes.”
At this, he high-fived himself. “Is that all the rules?”
“No humming inspirational movie themes during labor,” suggested Lizzy.
“And that,” I agreed.
He scratched his stubbly chin. “But what about the love theme from the Titanic?”
“They die. No.”
“How about we skip movies entirely and just go for ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’? Pretty sure I could hit the high notes.”
“Mal…”
“Some Nirvana, maybe?”
I said nothing.
“Fine.” He looked to heaven. “Whatever. But you’re sucking all the fun out of this. I thought we could all have a little nitrous oxide, kick back and relax. But no, you had to make this labor all about you. Way to share, Anne. You’re setting the baby a great example.”
Give me strength. “I’m going to pretend you didn’t say any of that because I don’t even have the energy to threaten to kill you, let alone hit you with something right now. How the hell do people do this more than once?”
Lizzy shrugged. “No idea. You won’t see me rushing back for another anytime soon, and Lena said she’s done.”
“See how you feel once you’ve got your baby in your arms,” said the midwife, Gaylin. She was nice. Having had children of their own, both her, Lizzy, and Dr. Garcia understood my pain.
Mal did not. “I thought we’d settled on three?”
“Then you figure out a way to carry and birth them,” I snapped. Being in extreme pain while you lay half-naked with your nether regions exposed to the world and your feet up in stirrups does not tend to put you in a great mood. Funny that.
“Yes, Pumpkin.”
Liz snickered. “Good answer.”
“Here it comes.” I gripped Mal’s and Liz’s hands brutally tight, pushing with all my might as another contraction hit me. “Get it out. Get it out. Get it out.”
“Nearly there, Anne,” said the doctor. “That’s it. Here comes the head.”
“Breathe, baby. C’mon, Pumpkin. You got this.”
“Push, Anne. Push.” I don’t even know who said that, but I pushed for all I was worth and then some. I pushed my goddamn heart out.
Not to be resentful of my not quite born child or anything, but this baby’s head was ginormous.
Quite possibly even bigger than their father’s ego, and that was saying something.
Another mighty push accompanied me yelling out cuss words like it was my job, and the baby slipped from my body and into the doctor’s waiting hands. Holy hell.
“It’s a boy!” Mal pumped a fist into the air. “We have a son, Pumpkin.”
My smile was a trembling, weary thing. Yet the joy swelling inside my chest was off the charts. “A boy?”
A cranky cry filled the air. I’d never been so relieved to hear anything in my life. I didn’t quite understand how worried I’d been about basically everything until I heard that noise.
“A healthy baby boy by the sound of things.” Gaylin, the midwife, smiled and clamped the cord and so on. “Congratulations.”