I had the baby October 5th, 2024, and it’s been a woozy wash of lovestuck glee punctuated by battery acidic bursts of crazy grief since then.

I didn’t get this the first time.

In the hospital, waiting to be induced, Husband kept wanting to go out to get ‘just one more cigarette.’ This didn’t happen the first time, either. We were more cautious with each other then, and knew each other less. We didn’t know what was about to happen, then.

“You should get some coffee, or maybe an energy drink instead,” I snapped, this time.

“I’m fine. I’m awake.”

“Ok, but I need you to stay awake.”

“I’m going to!”

He fell asleep midway through, last time. He woke up when I started screaming, though.

He didn’t get coffee or an energy drink. He had a few more ‘one more cigarette’s. They induced me incorrectly and failed four times trying to give me an epidural.

“Someone wake him up,” I snapped shakily the third time they were trying to thread my spine with the catheter.

“Wake up,” some nurse snapped at him. I felt bad, when he jolted awake. Not because he had been awoken, but because I had involved someone else in Us.

She didn’t get it.

He did, though. He stood and held my hands.

They figured out they’d put the fucking foley balloon in the wrong place and did it again, a new nurse gritting her teeth and shoving her whole hand hard up in inside me, jamming the balloon into my cervix while I sobbed into Husband’s arm.

The things we do for these freaking babies.

After epidural four failed I gave up the notion I’d do this painlessly. Au natural it was, and wasn’t that so freaking unfair, jeezus.

“I need to push,” I said a few hours later, shuddering against the side of the bed. “I feel like I need to push.”

Husband blinked, shook himself more awake. “Wait, should I get the nurse then…?”

I gritted my teeth. “Probably.”

He got the nurse.

“I need to push,” I told her. “I want to get on all fours.” I knew I needed to do this the same way I knew I needed to keep breathing. My legs shook, though.

“Well, let’s just see then, shall we?” She simpered, and reached up inside me, person number ten billion that day to be there.

“I mean, you’re more dilated, for sure. I’d say about eight centimeters. We really want you to be around ten before you start pushing, though.”

“What? No, I need to push…”

“You’re not ten centimeters yet, so–“

“The baby doesn’t know I’m not ten centimeters yet!”

Husband’s grip on my arm. A squeeze. I almost punched him, but then he snapped, “Just go get the doctor.”

She all but rolled her eyes. Left the room. We clung to each other, and the sounds that rose up from within me became more animal.

Another nurse a few minutes later, another hand inside me. Still just eight! Hold it, you know? Maybe cross your legs. They shoved a weird ball between my knees and I was on my side, guttural groans seeming pulled from me. I was a magician’s hat, and the screams were scarves, and I could not stop it, I could not stop it.

“She really feels like she needs to push!” Husband was shouting, someone new.

“Please,” I groaned, “I gotta get on my hands and knees, please…”

“Ok,” new nurse. “Ok, I mean… you’re technically not supposed to yet, the doctor’s not here, but I mean… you’re your own person. I certainly can’t stop you from pushing.”

A stillness. I breathed. “Hands and knees,” I said, shaking, and they helped me rise.

There was a watermelon nestled in my hips. Water, clear and oddly sweet smelling, flowed from me like a trickling stream, never ending. I let out a moan of relief, swaying slightly back and forth.

“Ok,” nice nurse said, “ok, so you’re… pretty far back on the bed. Why don’t we–“

“I’m coming up the bed!” I shouted, and it turned animal on the end as I pushed myself forward, dragged myself upwards. Husband’s hands pushed on my legs, helping. I could feel him shaking.

“Ok,” nice nurse said. She was underwater, far away. I wanted to gnaw a place to hold with my teeth into the top of the bed. My knuckles whited out where they gripped the edge. “Ok, this is gonna be a good birth.”

I wasn’t there anymore. Or at least I wasn’t human. I shed that as soon as my teeth clamped down on the clean sheets, and a groan rose from me again, spry and living, and I heard nice nurse saying something quickly to someone at the door, and Husband’s nervous eyes flickering like a candle over the scene, and I was a motherfucking bear and this was nature and everyone better catch up cuz this baby was coming.

A commotion by the door. A couple fresh faced kiddos walk in, teenagers decked out in doctor’s coats. They are laughing, joking, giggling, one puts down their coffee by the door. They sit like eager pups at my ass as I sway, as I groan, and one particularly pimply boy goes, “Ok, we’re here! You can start pushing.”

“I’ve been pushing!” I fucking shout, and his eyes widen, and Husband laughs a barking crack of humor into the room.

I breathe in power and Doogie Houser’s eyes widen and he leans forward into my crotch, hand reaching, voice awed, “Oh wow, I see the head-!”

A shout. Fire at my ass, and a splatter, and Husband lets out a manic laugh again, and I don’t find out till later I sprayed that baby doctor with shit and blood, but he recovers quickly, shouts, “Oh wow, there’s the baby!” and then it is chaos.

My son slides from me like an eel. My daughter seemed to cling to the inside as they ripped her from me, but my son swan dives out and they barely catch him in time.

I can feel the umbilical cord between my legs. such a strange sensation.

He lets out a gurgling cry behind me and I laugh, cracking open into my human heart again, laugh, “I want to hold him! Can I hold him?!”

There are people running into the room. Nice nurse is suddenly at my side, eyes wide, stricken with glee. “Ok, so,” she says, and she’s breathless. There’s yelling. Husband is swearing, laughing. Someone asks him if he wants to cut the cord. “He’s still very much attached to you, so one second–“

He cuts it. I don’t feel it, and isn’t that weird.

They turn me over. There is blood and shit up my legs, and I am bleeding freely, and the air has never felt so oxynigated and pure. My skin is a living organ, and I see them gather my son in a blanket, bring him over to the circle of frantic pediatricians that have just barreled into the room.

This is what happened with our daughter. Out and they cut her right away, pulled her right away, circled around and shielded her from me and wouldn’t answer my questions. I knew something was wrong. I knew, then, that something was very wrong.

In the same way, in this moment, I know he is ok.

I laugh, and the laughter breaks me, and I’m sobbing and laughing laughing and laughing and I say, “Hey buddy! Hey baby, it’s ok, we’re here!”

Doogie Houser before me suddenly, and he is indeed splattered with blood and poo. “That was so fast!” he gushes, and then raises a bloody hand. I cackle, high fiving him. The room explodes with laughter. Husband jumps like a startled deer, turning back to me, mouth slightly agape, stricken still.

“He’s fine!” I say to Husband, grinning. I am so sure. “He’s fine! Go, go look!”

A baby cry ripping through, and my heart soars. I knew it.

They plop him on my chest, he blinks up at me, grey-blue eyes of my father and Husband’s entire T-zone and I’m giggling madly.

There’s talking, commotion in the room. More hands inside me, this time sewing me up, someone informing me the degree to which I’ve broken myself, whatever. Nice nurse at my shoulder, a raised eyebrow and a grin. “Just for reference,” she says, “what was going through your head while you were… doing that?”

I laugh. “I have to get the baby out,” I say. Duh.

She laughs, too. “Makes sense.”

Husband at my side. Our son noses at my chest, and the bear part of me remembers, and I shove my tit in his mouth without thinking about it. He gnaws, hungrily.

Everything the opposite of what it was with her.

They took her right away. We didn’t hear a peep for 45 minutes of what had happened. My room, crowded with people who didn’t love me, and Husband apart, separate, not knowing me well enough yet to be afraid in my bubble with me.

“Holy shit,” he keeps saying, now.

I cackle, madly. I am still bleeding. I will bleed for a long time. “I know,” I say. Our son makes little squeaking noises as he slurps away. “I know, right?”