Labor had started quickly the first time, and moved at a steady pace. This time it started slow, did nothing for several hours, and then hit her like a tidal wave, with pains so violent that she could hardly breathe when they were happening, or speak between them. She could hardly walk by the time the midwife arrived, twenty minutes after she called her.
“The pains are really awful this time,” she told the midwife, as she helped her into bed and was hit by another one. And it was agony when she examined her.
“The baby is coming down the birth canal very quickly,” she explained to Antonia, who was clutching the nurse’s hand and trying not to scream. “Maybe a little too fast,” the midwife said to her, and told her not to push, as she had last time, but this time it was impossible not to. She was screaming a minute later, and the midwife examined her again, and suspected what had happened. “The baby wants to come too fast, Antonia. You can’t push now. It’s got a shoulder wedged, and I’m going to have to move it, so we don’t wind up with a broken shoulder. We don’t want that.” She sounded professional and cool, glanced at her assistant and the nurse, and rapidly began the procedure, which was excruciating for Antonia, as they tried to dislodge the baby’s shoulder and shift its position. She succeeded after an agonizing quarter hour and by then Antonia was screaming and gasping for air between contractions.
“Can you give me drugs?” Antonia begged in a hoarse voice.
“It would slow things down,” the midwife said sympathetically. “Let’s just get the baby out quickly.” She told Antonia she could push then, which was nothing like the last time. Every push was an agony beyond belief, every contraction felt like it was tearing her apart. Several times, Antonia thought she was dying and about to lose consciousness. It was the worst experience of her life other than Hamish dying. At the end of two hours, she didn’t care if she lived or died, or if she ever saw the baby. All three women were urging her to push with all her strength or she would have to go to the hospital for a C-section. She didn’t care about that either, but the nurse was pressing down right above the baby, and shouting at her, and Antonia gave one last heroic push through the haze of excruciating pain, heard a wail that wasn’t her own, and quietly passed out.
She awoke a moment later with an oxygen mask on her face, feeling like her nether regions had been torn to shreds and beaten with a club, and she saw them wrapping a baby in a pink blanket, but she was too weak to hold her. The midwife told her that she had lost a fair amount of blood, but nothing to be alarmed about, and the baby was fine, it was a girl.
“That’s what her father would have wanted,” Antonia said and nearly passed out again. They put smelling salts under her nose, gave her more oxygen and a shot for the pain while they sewed her up, and an hour later she was drifting drowsily, listening to them talk in the distance, but not caring what they said. The delivery had been as horrible as everything in her life was these days. Everything was painful, sad, tragic, terrifying. This was just one more thing, and she felt none of the unbridled joy and peace she had felt when Dash was born, with Hamish at her side. He had been born in the midst of a glorious sunrise of vivid colors, as though he’d come straight from Heaven. Their daughter had been born during a storm in the dark of night, with the wind shrieking, as though Hell had overtaken them, and indeed it had, for many months now, ever since April, when Hamish had died.
Two hours later, they let her hold the baby, when Antonia’s vital signs were more stable. The baby girl had a small angry face and cried loudly, as though she hadn’t enjoyed what had happened either. They had displaced and dislodged her, and her little face was full of fury, and none of the gentle peace when Dash was born. When Antonia tried to put the breast to her mouth to comfort her, she screamed even louder. They finally took her away to calm her. But she cried for a long time.
“Some babies take longer to settle down,” the nurse said soothingly, but Antonia suspected that maybe this one was not going to be the easy, happy baby that Dash had been when he arrived. And who could blame her, with no father?
“What are you going to call her?” they asked her. She only weighed seven pounds, two ounces, but she had been much harder and more painful to deliver than her brother, who was two pounds bigger. Antonia wondered if it would have been as excruciating if Hamish had been there.
“The first time I was pregnant, her father liked Olympia for a girl. I thought I’d call her that. Olympia Lara.” They all agreed it was a beautiful name and said she was a pretty baby. They gave Antonia something for the pain and to help her sleep then, and the nurse and assistant midwife were going to spend the night to check them both. A baby nurse had been hired to take care of Olympia. She was arriving in the morning. Antonia had called her as soon as her water broke. Everything was organized and she could spend the next month recovering and getting her strength back, and then it would be Christmas, which was a nightmare Antonia didn’t want to think about now, since Hamish wouldn’t be there, or for the rest of her life.