20. Clyde
CLYDE
Stephen was at the tail end of his pregnancy. You wouldn’t know it by looking at him, at least not by looking at the things he was doing. Visually, you could tell. He was reaching the limits of the paternity pants he had, and his belly was low. The baby had definitely dropped.
He was absolutely adorable. And if you looked really carefully when the baby was extra active, you could see his belly dance.
Posy adored that and would put her favorite button on his belly to watch it move.
The first time I told her not to do that, that it wasn’t nice.
Stephen announced that if she didn’t he would, and it had since become their thing.
Stephen was full of energy. He’d woken up early and made breakfast the past few days, pancakes for both at Posy’s request. He took Posy to the park.
We had a date night. He ran multiple errands with anyone willing to go with him, including calling Remy over because he wanted to get some peaches at the farmers’ market when Posy and I weren’t home.
He even rearranged the silverware drawer.
My guess was his bout of energy had to do with being bored and being on paternity leave. But when he first took paternity leave, he was struggling physically. The pregnancy was taking a toll on him, and he needed it. Having the time off had obviously helped.
“Hey, Papa.” Posy came running in the front door, her hand clenched tight. “I found something for you when I was playing in the backyard.”
“Oh, what did you find?”
She ran over and slowly opened her hand. I couldn’t see what it was from the angle I was at, but his face lit up when he picked it up out of her hand. It was a shiny silver button. I should’ve known.
“It’s not even dirty,” he beamed.
“I cleaned it off for you.”
I could see exactly where on her shirt she’d done that. It was gonna be fun to get out.
“It’s got stars all over it. I love it. Where should we put it?” Stephen held it up to the light.
They bantered back and forth about where it belonged as a phone call came in from work. I ducked into the study to get it. And when I came out, my mate was bent over, breathing deeply, Posy looking at him like she didn’t know what to do.
“Hey. What’s wrong?” I rushed over.
“Nothing’s wrong,” he insisted. “Just a cramp. No big deal.”
“Do I get to meet my sister today?” Leave it to Posy to be the one to not only tell us when he was pregnant but when the baby was coming. At least this time, it wasn’t via a Sally-comment relay.
“I don’t know if that’s quite true. They’re not very frequent.”
That caught me off guard. I’d thought they were nonexistent.
“You’ve been having these all day?”
“Since yesterday.” He looked down.
“But you’ve been running around doing all sorts of things. You look on top of the world.”
“Oh, my dear sweet mate. That’s called nesting. It means the baby’s coming.” He righted himself. “See? All better now.”
He waddled over to the couch and sat down.
“If it’s all better now, why are you sitting down, Papa?” Posy said exactly what I wanted to.
“Because I know I’m about to get a lecture from you and Daddy.”
He wasn’t wrong. We had a pregnancy plan, and that included calling the midwife and Miss Caitlin, who would be the one responsible for Posy and to give Posy a way out if she didn’t want to stay for the entire birth.
From the very beginning, we wanted to ensure that Posy had as much or as little a part in the birth as she wanted.
“I’m calling Miss Caitlin.” Posy grabbed her phone. She was so excited we’d caved on that phone, but it was good that she had one. And she never misused it. It lived in the charger when she wasn’t out of the house.
“And I’ll call the midwife.”
Stephen looked like he was going to try and stop me and then grabbed his side. “Fine,” he grumbled.
The midwife asked a lot of questions, and I ended up having to put her on speakerphone because playing pregnancy-symptom phone tag was not the ideal way to do that. She said to call back when they were consistently three minutes apart.
Miss Caitlin came over, gave hugs, and then whisked Posy into the kitchen where they were going to be baking cookies and I imagined a whole lot of other things to distract her as I went out back with my mate.
I offered to help my mate shower, but he countered with walking in the back yard.
“Are you sure about this?”
“I need the air and to be with your wolf,” he said.
I left my clothes on the porch and shifted, and we paced the backyard.
I hated not having an exact time for how frequent his contractions were.
But if my mate needed this, he needed it.
We walked back and forth, and he told me stories about his childhood and everything about it that had to do with backyard fun.
Anything and everything to distract him from the pain.
I never had the buildup to the birth like this with Posy and hadn’t been prepared for the emotions that came with it. Seeing him in pain and wanting it to stop, but also being excited that the baby was about to be here and wanting it to continue.
And piled on that were a lot of emotions related to how Posy came to be part of my family and the court process we’d just been through to officially have Stephen be part of her family, too.
I figured I’d be nervous. How could anyone not, but the fear caught me off guard. Fear that something would go wrong with my mate or our baby. My wolf wasn’t helping. He was in full-on protective mode. Both my beast and I wanted to take that pain away. If only we could.
When it got to the point where he couldn’t make it halfway across the yard without doubling over, I shifted back and grabbed my phone to watch the time.
“Crap. It’s two minutes, Stephen.”
“It’s fine. I’m sure we have plenty of time.”
I wasn’t so sure.
I threw on my clothes after letting the midwife know it was time, and we went back inside. The place smelled wonderful. We’d been out a lot longer than I realized. There were cookies, rolls, and what smelled like a pasta bake in the oven.
“How’s everything going with you two?” I asked after telling them what was happening.
“We’re just trying to stay out of your hair until it’s time that you want us there.”
Posy was holding onto Miss Caitlin’s hand for dear life. She was nervous too.
“The midwife will be here any minute, and then we’re going to go into the other room to have the baby.”
We talked about having them outside, but we were worried that even with the privacy we had, the noises might have someone trying to come over for help. Nothing made a birth less peaceful than an emergency crew showing up because someone called and thought there was a murder.
“Posy, have you decided what you want to do?”
“I want to come in when the baby is almost here, but I don’t want to be there the whole time.”
Which we kind of knew was the plan. We’d discussed what birth was like and how we wanted her to feel included but not feel the need to have to be included. We also wanted to be flexible.
“Sounds good to me.”
She and Miss Caitlin finished cleaning up the kitchen and planned to watch a movie.
“Let me help you take a shower as we wait for the midwife.”
As I helped him under the hot water, I noticed his belly was even lower. I thought he’d dropped before. I’d been mistaken. He definitely had now.
From the time the midwife came, things were pretty quick.
My mate was so strong. I couldn’t imagine how he was doing this.
I could see the muscles on his stomach contract, but you wouldn’t know it by his reaction.
A little grunt here, a little grunt there, but he didn’t cry out the way I know I would’ve.
And when the midwife said it was time to push, Stephen sent me out to get Miss Caitlin and Posy.
We had a chair set up for them that would allow them to be near Stephen’s head so they could talk to him and comfort him, but where they wouldn’t be in the way for the midwife.
It was when it came time to push that Stephen didn’t hold back his agony.
His scream—no, his roar was so loud, so painful to hear.
He held my hand tightly, and I told him how well he was doing.
Posy did too. She was a great cheerleader.
The sound of the baby crying rang through the air. The midwife held up a beautiful baby girl. Posy wanted to hold her instantly, telling everybody she was right. It was a sister.
We had to explain that we still had to make sure the baby was okay, cleaned her up, and cut the umbilical cord before it was time for bonding and that Papa would be first.
Shortly after, the midwife laid our sweet baby girl on his chest, and she started suckling away.
Posy went into full-on sister mode.
“Evie,” Posy jumped right in with the girl name we had chosen, “you have the best papa and daddy that are on this planet and an even better big sister.”
I had to chuckle, but I didn’t correct her because I had a feeling she was right about the sister part.