Chapter 22
REMY
Something was wrong. I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I could feel it.
I got up from my seat and waddled into the kitchen to get a glass of water.
My belly had officially hit the “enter the room before I do” stage.
Unlike some pregnant omegas I knew, I didn’t mind it.
If anything, I loved the visual reminder of our little one we were going to meet soon.
Very soon. The midwife said he’d probably be born in the next week or so. I could hardly wait to meet them.
Unsure what I should do about this off feeling, I ran through the checklist my midwife had given me, the one designed to tell me when I should call her.
I didn’t have a fever. I didn’t have a headache. Nothing hurt outside the normal discomfort that came with my third trimester. The baby had been moving. One by one, I looked at each and every symptom, and despite no red flags requiring me to see the midwife, my gut said something was wrong.
Unwilling to take any risks with our baby, I called the midwife. I figured it was best to call her first instead of calling my mate who would tell me to call her. I was beginning to think it was a case of prenatal anxiety.
She picked up on the first ring.
“Something’s wrong, but I don’t know what it is,” I blurted out.
“Describe what you mean to me.”
“That’s it. There’s nothing to describe past that. I went through the list about hydration and food and my heart rate, my temperature, and the color of the line on my belly—all of it. So I guess I’m calling just to have you tell me not to worry about it and give me some affirmation.”
“I can do that, but I believe my patients.” Her tone was suddenly very neutral, which was unlike her. She had a tendency to be overly happy and friendly. “If you say something is wrong, that’s probably your koala instinct. Why don’t you meet me at my office?”
That was the last thing I expected to hear, but I instantly agreed. If it was nothing, I’d waste a couple hours in the car. If it was something and I ignored it, I’d never be able to live with myself.
I called my mate and let him know what was happening.
Our midwife was nearly an hour away, which hadn’t been ideal, but because they specialized in shifter pregnancies, it felt like the safest way to go.
The past few visits had been at our place because we planned a home birth.
Being asked to travel there only made my anxiety soar.
Why did we need to go to the office? What were they worried about?
My mate was home in ten minutes and drove, telling me the entire way that he was sure everything was fine and that it was normal for us to be nervous, but that didn’t mean we had anything to be nervous about.
He was attempting to calm himself as much as he was attempting to calm me, his hands shaking as they held the wheel.
He was just as worried as I was.
We pulled into the practice, which was in an old Victorian that had been converted into medical offices. There was primary care, paternity care, and a dermatologist all in one building; it was a one-stop shop.
Someone in their infinite wisdom had put the midwife on the top floor, and I hobbled up the stairs, my center of gravity off-balance thanks to our little one.
They had one of those chairs you could sit on to be brought up, like in the commercials, but I’d have to be really bad off to use that.
If I could walk, I was going to. It was good for the baby to keep active.
Come to think of it, I kinda did get why they had it up there.
Our midwife greeted us at the front desk and took us back before we got a chance to check in.
“Perfect timing, I’m between patients.” She had us sit down, with me on the examination table and my mate in a chair, and then went through all my vitals. We skipped over the nurse intake altogether. “I want to do a quick ultrasound. That’ll put your mind at ease.”
Unlike some of the bigger practices, they had one on a cart and wheeled it in instead of a specialized room. It wasn’t fancy with 4D images and all that, but it worked. She ran it over my belly, up and down, left and right, but kept focusing on my pouch line.
“The baby looks great.”
I felt such relief. She wiped my belly and gave me a hand to sit up.
“So, it was just prenatal anxiety?” I asked.
“Unfortunately not. It looks like your body’s confused about what to do, because you are a koala with a half-human baby.”
“I thought they were a shifter, and that’s why I have the pouch.”
“They are, which is why your body shouldn’t be confused, but it is. Which means… you’re going to have a baby today. And it’s going to be by C-section.”
My stomach dropped. My mate, Hari, rushed to my side and took my hand.
“You don’t think the hospital’s going to think it’s weird that I have this line on my belly?” I didn’t really care that they would think it was weird from a personal perspective, but I very much didn’t want them to think of my baby as some sort of an experiment they could mess around with.
“Yes, they would think it was weird, which is why we’re going to do it somewhere else.” She kept hesitating with her words, and the tension was building in the air.
Hari must’ve sensed my distress because he took over the conversation.
By the time the two of them had gone back and forth, I realized they were going to do the C-section here, in their sterile room, which I didn’t know they had.
It was hardly an OR and hardly perfect, but since I could shift to heal afterward, they said it was low-risk.
None of this felt low-risk.
The midwife was joined by a doctor they shared the practice with and two nurses.
They went through all the details, every single one of them going right past me.
My head was spiralling, and concentrating was not going to happen.
Then they had me change into a gown, slapped on a bunch of monitors, and had me walk into the sterile room, promising my mate would join us in a minute in full scrubs.
That minute he was gone was agony. I was terrified and alone, at least in the sense that I only had medical people with me. I’d seen human C-sections in movies, and that was my only frame of reference. I hadn’t realized how different they were going to be for shifters.
The nurse was going to give me medication, one created specifically for shifters, that would pretty much numb my body.
Humans couldn’t use it because it would stop everything, including their heart.
They very much didn’t need to tell me that part.
From there they would work quickly to remove the baby and then give me a second shot to force my shift.
Shifter-medicine wise, I suppose it made sense, but the human side of me wasn’t buying it.
They draped a cloth so I couldn’t see what they were doing. This was not the birth I had planned. I didn’t need to have my ideal pregnancy, a healthy baby was my only necessity, but I wasn’t prepared for this.
One hand held my mate’s, the other a nurse’s.
Then they gave me the first shot. When they said everything went numb, they meant it.
It wasn’t just my skin; it was my emotions, too.
Suddenly, I was lying there without a care or understanding in the world, just staring at the ceiling, sort of understanding that my mate was there and that I was having a baby, but also completely out of it.
In the distance, I heard a baby cry, and then pain—so much pain that I blacked out.
When I opened my eyes again, I was on the floor in my fur, my mate wrapped around me, telling me everything would be okay, that our baby was perfect, and that I needed to wake up, his eyes filled with tears.
The midwife checked me over and then said it was safe to shift back. It wasn’t as easy as that. It took at least ten minutes before I was able to, but when I was, I stood up and saw our baby for the first time.
“Congratulations, my love,” Hari said. “We have a boy. A boy just as adorable as his daddy.”
We’d already picked the name Huxley but hadn’t told anyone yet, just in case he came out looking like a Bob or a Steve. I scooped him into my arms and brought him to my chest for his first meal. I knew instantly we’d picked the right name.
“He’s so perfect, alpha mine.”
“Just like his daddy.”