13. Amie
thirteen
Amie
“ D oes she have a middle name?”
“Nope. Just Maisy.”
We’re lying on our backs on the picnic blanket in the living room. Maisy has fallen asleep between us, hanging on to Cam’s left arm. It’s long past her bedtime, but I can’t bring myself to disturb her to take her to bed. Cam has been here for four days, and tomorrow is his last with us. We’ve spent the afternoon at a soft play centre and the evening on the blanket under the fairy lights, doing jigsaw puzzles and talking about our favourite dinosaurs.
“Do you?”
“Alison,” I answer. He smiles.
“Amie Alison Caine. I like it. It suits you.”
“What about you?”
“John,” he says quickly. A sigh. “Pretty boring. Mom liked Camden, Dad liked John. No cool story about it.”
“I like it, though. It’s unique, but classic.” I smile.
“Will you tell me about her—Maisy? Everything I missed… Being pregnant, giving birth. What she was like as a baby?”
I push up onto one elbow, my hair falling over one shoulder as I roll to face Cam. His face is serious, green eyes bright in the twinkling lights. I move my gaze to Maisy, smiling softly at her peaceful, sleeping face, and I think back over my pregnancy and the day I went into labour.
“I feel so awful,” I groaned. “Sorry, K, I know we had plans but—” I slapped a hand over my mouth again, jabbing a finger at the ‘mute’ button on the screen before flinging myself towards the toilet bowl and emptying my stomach again. Once I was sure I was done—this time—I reached up to pull the flush handle, then grabbed for my phone again.
“Sorry, K,” I whispered. I didn’t even have enough energy left to speak.
“Don’t be sorry, love,” Katy said. “I’ll be there in twenty minutes. Get back into bed.”
True to her word, twenty minutes later, I heard her key click in the lock, and Katy’s footsteps thundered up the stairs. She found me still slumped on the bathroom floor, a towel rolled under my knees and my head resting on my arms on the toilet seat.
“I brought you some Sprite and crackers,” she said quietly, pulling her wares from a cotton tote. “And some soup for later, if you feel up to it.”
She took a flannel from the stack on the shelf and soaked it in cold water, before wringing out the excess and draping it over my head.
“Thanks, K,” I whispered. “Get that out of here.” I waved a hand in her direction. She had set her travel mug on the edge of the sink, but the smell of whatever was inside it was turning my stomach again.
I didn’t need to look at her to know how her eyes widened. One SOS text and a few hours later, all three of my best friends were crowded into my tiny bathroom. Paloma sat in the tub with her knees tucked up to her chest whilst Ruth and Katy took up the floor space. I perched on the edge of the closed toilet seat, elbows on my knees with my head in my hands.
“I can’t look,” I said. My throat felt thick, my head woolly, and my stomach was churning. That wasn’t new. It had felt like a washing machine for days.
After a moment where my friends all looked at one another in a stalemate, Ruth rolled her eyes with a dramatic sigh and reached up to snatch the plastic stick from the edge of the sink.
“Two lines,” she announced. “It’s positive. You’re preggo, A.”
“God… I had no idea how to be a mum. Still don’t, honestly. Just making it all up as I go and hoping I don’t completely fuck her up,” I say. I’m rambling. Cam is looking at me so intently with his moss eyes and I feel this inexplicable need to fill the silence with something—anything.
“You’re an amazing mom,” he says quietly. “Look at her. Look how beautiful she is, how smart, how kind. That’s on you, Amie. It’s all on you.”
I press my lips together and blink back the sheen of tears coating my eyes.
“Oh my god,” Katy breathed. “Is that—”
“That’s your baby, Amie,” the ultrasound technician confirmed. Katy held my hand tightly and we both stared at the fuzzy image on the screen. The technician indicated with the end of a pen as she pointed out the tiny sprouting limbs, and the gentle flicker of a heartbeat. Then she pushed a couple of buttons and a rhythmic whooshing sound filled the room.
“And that’s the heartbeat.”
I swear my heart stopped in that moment. My entire being was suddenly consumed with this new life, this tiny jellybean on the screen—a baby. My baby. It suddenly felt very real, and my mouth felt dry. Katy squeezed my hand.
“You okay, love?”
I nodded, tears falling unbidden.
“That’s my baby,” I said. “I’m having a baby, K.”
The technician left the room for a moment, leaving me and Katy alone. Katy looked from the screen to me and back again, taking in the tiny, barely-there swell of my still-flat belly.
“Holy fuck, Amie, you’re really having a baby.”
“I really am,” I laughed through tears. “Will you be there?”
“Every step, A.” Katy hugged my head and shoulders as I lay supine on the table, looking at the frozen image of my baby on the screen.
“I mean—I mean when I give birth. I don’t think I can do it without you, K. Will you be there?”
Katy hesitated. “Of course. Never thought this is how you’d invite me to see your foof, but if you want me there, I’ll be there.”
“I remember the first time I felt her move,” I say to Cam. I’m not even looking at him anymore. I can’t stand the intensity of his stare, so I’ve rolled onto my back and I fix my gaze on the ceiling instead as I regale him with stories from memory lane.
“Ruth and I were having lunch, we were gonna meet Katy after her shift to go shopping. I had just taken a bite—” I stop to laugh at the memory. “I had just taken a bite of pizza and she just… hit me. Right in the ribs. Guess she was a little pizza fiend even then.”
“What did it feel like?” he asks. God, I wish he could’ve felt it. I imagine what it might have been like to press his hand against my swollen belly, to hear him talk to our daughter inside. I imagine what it would’ve been like to have him with me on those days when she sapped all my energy, when carrying the weight of a growing baby felt like too much. What it would’ve been like to have him by my side when I went into labour, holding my hand as we welcomed her to the world together.
I wish, I wish, I wish.
“It kinda felt… it kinda felt like a tickle at first. The first one was gentle. And then she went all out. She was relentless. Once she started, she never stopped moving.”
As if to prove a point, Maisy shifts in her sleep, rolling closer to Cam and tightening her hold on his arm.
“Still hasn’t stopped,” he says with a chuckle.
I rocked my hips as I stood under the spray. My back ached. I had been having contractions for two weeks: always irregular, but insistent enough to make me take notice. I moaned as the hot water hit my body, rolling my neck and shoulders and sighing into the steam. Showers had become the best part of my day and lately, with my whole body aching, overworked and exhausted from sustaining an extra life, I’d been taking two or even three a day.
A contraction took hold—the first of the morning—and I leaned forward, letting the water fall onto my lower back and hips. The heat felt heavenly, relieving the ache and the pressure as I braced one hand on the tile, the other lifting the weight of my bump. I closed my eyes and breathed deeply, trying to clear my mind as my belly tightened and released.
Once it passed, I continued my shower, shampooing and conditioning my hair and shaving whatever I could reach. Then, I turned off the spray, grabbed a couple of towels and slapped my damp feet from the tiles of the bathroom to the plush carpet of my bedroom, where I padded to the dresser and chose my comfiest clothes. My only plan for the day was to wash a few loads of laundry, and I could quite happily do that in a threadbare, oversized tee.
I was perched on the edge of my bed, pulling on my leggings when another contraction hit. They’d never been this close together before, and this one was more intense than the last. I huffed out a breath through puffed-out cheeks, rubbing low on my belly with one hand. The baby was awake, shifting and kicking as best they could in what tiny space remained between my hips. When it was over, I finished dressing, fastened my watch around my wrist and headed downstairs with an armful of towels and underwear to be washed.
I loaded the laundry straight into the machine, then sipped at some peppermint tea as I prepared my breakfast. I was spreading almond butter on a slice of toast when the third contraction hit, this one even stronger than before, and I groaned out loud with the intensity of it, rocking my hips backwards and gripping the edge of the kitchen counter for support. All the air left my lungs in a whoosh and I took shaky breaths, moving one hand to press against my dancing baby as my muscles tightened harder, harder than ever before. Eventually, they released and I let out an audible sigh of relief. I glanced at my watch: twelve minutes. They were twelve minutes apart, and they’d definitely never felt like this before.
I took my toast to the living room and nibbled at a corner of the bread, but I wasn’t hungry anymore. In fact, it felt like I was swallowing a lump of concrete, and my stomach churned in rebellion. I took another sip of tea to wash it down, but it didn’t help much. I left the mug and the plate on the coffee table and sat on the edge of my favourite chair, leaning forward with my elbows on my knees. I kept half an eye on the gold watch face on my wrist.
Twelve minutes after the last one, just like clockwork, another contraction gripped my belly, and I cried out as its intensity stole the breath from my lungs.
When the pain eventually subsided, I grabbed my phone and with trembling hands, typed a text into a group chat.
It’s time, I wrote. I’m scared.
Maisy shifts again and kicks out a leg, her knee colliding with my belly.
“I was only thirty-seven weeks. That’s full-term—she wasn’t considered a preemie or anything. But she was still early. And so tiny. I never thought—I never knew a person could be so small.”
He swallows hard, his Adam’s apple bobbing as his throat works to stifle the raw emotion. It’s hard to miss the vulnerability in his green eyes. Storms rage in those majestic jungles and I know the pain of missing out on so much is an even tougher pill to swallow now he’s met Maisy. My stomach knots and I close my eyes in a long blink, trying to stave off my tears before I continue.
I moaned as another contraction overtook my body. They were no longer confined to my belly: the pressure, the intensity, the wave of pain was all-consuming, sweeping from head to toe. I leaned forward, resting my head on my knees, and bracing my hands on Katy’s shoulders while she stroked my hair. Behind me, Paloma pressed the heel of her hand into my lower back, offering a little relief from the bone-rattling vice grip my muscles had on my lower body.
“You got this, A,” Katy whispered. “You’re doing so good.”
“I—can’t—oh—” The pain crescendoed and released, and I fell forward, knees dropping to the side and forehead resting on Katy’s shoulder.
“You can,” she promised. “You can do this.”
Paloma moved to take a seat beside Katy, and she mopped my neck with a damp washcloth. Like a needy cat, I shifted my head, desperately seeking cool relief.
“It hurts so bad, Lo,” I whispered, looking up into my best friend’s eyes.
“I know, honey, I know,” she whispered back, brushing a thumb over my cheekbone. “And it’s gonna hurt some more, but I promise, it won’t hurt forever. You’ll have that beautiful baby in your arms and all of this—all of this will be a memory. I promise.”
“I got the ice!” Ruth announced herself as she returned to the room, nudging Katy with her hip to make space. She settled in front of me and fed me an ice chip, gently tucking a curl behind my ear and wiping away an escaped tear with her thumb. “And I stole these from the nurses’ desk.” She finished and pulled a pair of KitKats from her pocket and offered them to Lo and Katy.
“Only you, Roo,” Katy chuckled, eyes full of tears as she took the offered treat. It was immediately discarded, pocketed and forgotten as I moaned again, gripping Roo’s hands as hard I could.
“Oh—Jesus—fuck, OW!”
I was only barely aware of what happened next. Katy moved and a trio of nurses entered the room. I maintained my death grip on Ruth with my left hand and Paloma moved around to take my right. Suddenly, my calm, quiet birthing room became brighter and busier. Katy was holding my thigh, pulling my knee up towards my chest.
“Push, Amie,” a nurse commanded. I let out another cry and let my body take over.
Twenty minutes later, the room filled with cries: mine, Katy’s, Lo’s, Ruth’s, and—a baby’s. I sobbed out loud at the rush of relief as my baby finally slipped free, and my friends cried as they caught their first glimpse of their godchild. Katy caught the baby, just the way we planned, grasping the crying, wriggling form in gloved hands and placing it straight on my chest.
“It’s a girl,” she choked out, grinning widely at me with a tear-streaked face. One of the nurses used a towel to rub my baby dry before Paloma covered us both with a soft yellow blanket, the one she bought specifically for the day I gave birth to my baby. My daughter. I sobbed openly, wrapping my arms around the tiny, screeching girl on my chest, tipping my head back against the stack of pillows and scrunching my eyes closed. I hadn’t even looked at her yet, but I was so overwhelmed by how much I loved her already. My sweet girl.
“Hi, baby girl,” I choked out through tears. “I love you so much. And I know your daddy would love you too. You are so loved.”
Ruth pressed a kiss to my hairline, one hand coming to rest over the wriggling bundle on my chest. I opened my eyes to look up at her.
“You did so good, sweet thing,” she whispered through tears of her own. “You did it.”
“I hate that you had to go through it all on your own,” Cam sighs sadly. He looks away and I reach over to grasp his chin between my thumb and forefinger, turning his head back to face me.
“I was never alone, Cam,” I tell him. “I had my mum, I had Katy and Lo and Ruthy. I still have them, and more importantly, Maisy has them too. We’ve never been alone.”
There’s a war in his eyes, emotion changing the shade from emerald to forest.
“I just wish I’d been here too.”
“I wish you could’ve been here. But you’re here now,” I say. “That’s what matters. That’s what’s important.”
“I’m here now,” he agrees. “And I’m not going anywhere.”