Читать книгу Still - Emma Hansen - Страница 8

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IT IS A TUESDAY, the last one of my pregnancy. March is rounding the corner into April, and the transition from winter to spring has begun. My mother and I are out for lunch on West Fourth Avenue after a walk by the ocean, with the city on the other side of the bay, lambent in the soft northern sun and decorated by the earliest signs of cherry blossoms. In the restaurant, we sit in a narrow booth—my belly pressed up against the table edge, not quite able to fit in the space provided—and wait for our food to arrive. I shift uncomfortably in my seat but don’t have the energy to bother suggesting we move.

My mother has two speeds: racehorse fast or complete standstill. There is no in-between. Most of my childhood memories of her are of her back, with me toddling behind, trying to match her pace. My father, by contrast, has only one setting: always moving, yet somehow always late. I inherited that trait from him.

It’s nice to catch my mom at a slower pace than usual, and I relish the new ease our relationship has gained during my pregnancy. We were never especially close when I was growing up. Desperate for my independence, I spent most of my adolescent years trying to push her away, until I moved to New York after high school. Living under the same roof was never good for either of us. Living abroad had helped, but this baby is helping the most.

“Are you nervous?” she asks, putting her phone facedown on the table.

“What, about the birth?” I think about it for a moment. “Actually, no,” I answer honestly. I’m really not all that nervous. During our birthing classes, we’ve gone over things as thoroughly as I figure is possible and I know what to expect. “We don’t have much of a birth plan,” I continue. “I’m pretty open to whatever is needed.”

She nods, “That’s a good way to go into it.” Then, tucking a wayward strand of red hair behind her ear, she muses, “I wonder if he’ll come this weekend? Near his due date?”

“Wouldn’t that be something?” Imagining it then, I smile. My due date is this Saturday, and early deliveries run in the family. I’m already further along in my pregnancy than my mother or grandmother had ever been in theirs.

The waiter arrives with our salads, and we continue to talk and laugh and wonder about all that is to come.

After our meal, my mom and I plan to meet up again on Friday for another walk along the ocean. She’ll call me after her hair appointment. I’ll call her sooner if there are any signs of impending labor. I return home to take a nap and fold the laundry in the nursery. Little clothes in neutral colors lie spread across the floor: a onesie that wraps around and ties at the side; mittens made to look like the paws of a bear; a sun hat that seems enormous in comparison, meant for the summer months when he’ll be older. I imagine the stains of milk and mud and berries these bits of fabric will collect, and all the things we’ll do together fill my mind—these tiny clothes from the growing pile before me seeming to come to life in my daydreams of what’s ahead.

Aaron comes home later in the afternoon to find me at the computer. I’m writing a post titled “Pregnancy-Approved Smoothies” on the blog I started last year, as a way to fill the gaps between my modeling jobs when we were still living in New York. He kisses me hello as I hit publish.

“How about mushroom risotto for dinner?” he asks, heading to the kitchen.

“I was going to make a salad,” I reply. If it were up to me, we’d eat salad every night. It’s why Aaron often does the cooking.

“Sure, salad is an important part of a meal,” he teases, and I throw a pillow at him. He laughs sweetly, then peers into the nursery I’ve finished organizing, taking in the car seat, the stroller, the storage unit full of children’s books and folded swaddles and toys.

“Wow.” He beams. “We’re really ready for him!”

I’ll never tire of his passion. The way he is all in when something excites him. Like the time he came home to our New York apartment saying, “You’ll never guess what I found!” then proudly revealed the pile of wood he had rescued from a construction site dump, which he proceeded to transform into beautiful hand-built seating for our patio. Or when he announced, “I’ve learned another language!” and pointed at the cryptic type on his computer screen, patiently explaining how he had taught himself the software coding that would become his career. Aaron is a living, breathing database full of information. If there is anything I ever wonder, I don’t need to look it up—he will know. It was one of the things that first made me fall in love with him.

I go to the doorway and wrap my arms around him as we gaze into the nursery together. I think back to nine months ago, and my anxious tears when those two pink lines first appeared on the pregnancy test. We hadn’t been trying to avoid pregnancy, but at twenty-four and twenty-six, it wasn’t exactly part of our plan to have kids this young. But Aaron was all in for this too.

“We can do this,” he reassured me after I’d given him the big news. “I’m excited.”

And I believed him. And I’m excited too.

That evening, Aaron and I head out to our appointment with the local community birth program. We chose the program, run by a team of doctors, midwives, and doulas, at the end of my first trimester. Being young and healthy, I didn’t feel the need to be under the care of an obstetrician, but being cautious, I wasn’t comfortable with the idea of a home birth either. This program seemed like the perfect medium. We like their philosophy of restoring pregnancy and birth to the community-oriented experiences they had been traditionally.

The way the program works, our prenatal appointments are piggybacked onto a two-hour group lesson with other couples who are due around the same time as us. We are the youngest couple there by nearly a decade. The first day we walked in, we both felt shy about our youth. But we quickly realized that everyone else was just as lost as we were, and over the months we’ve bonded with the other families. Most of us are expecting our first child, and the weekly progress of our pregnancies is an intimate experience we’ve shared. Some of the other women and I go to prenatal yoga together on the weekends, and I’ve taken a particular liking to the French-Canadian couple who often sit next to us.

The familiar faces are all there tonight, along with three new attendees. A few of the couples have given birth already and are there with their newborns. They are so small, their scrunched-up faces looking even smaller beneath the layers their parents have swaddled them with. “We don’t know how much to dress them in!” they exclaim. I can’t imagine how completely their lives have changed, but I watch in wonder as they navigate the needy cries of these tiny humans. Aaron and I gape at each other, communicating without words. All of a sudden, everything seems to be happening very quickly.

As we’re called away from the group for our checkup with our midwife, I think again about how lucky I’ve been to have a healthy pregnancy, free of complications. This is in contrast to the complicated birth stories my mother has to tell. With me, the oldest, my mother developed a liver disorder called ICP and had to be induced at thirty-eight weeks. With my middle sister, Alana, my mother slipped on ice at thirty weeks and ruptured her membranes, then developed gestational diabetes while on bed rest, delivering by cesarean a few weeks later when the baby went into distress. Alana, born at a relatively healthy five pounds, only spent a few days in the neonatal intensive care unit under the bili lights for jaundice. With my youngest sister, Rebecca, my mother had dangerously high blood pressure and required another emergency cesarean at thirty-three weeks. Born at only three pounds, Rebecca spent time in the NICU too.

So I was expecting complicated. Because of my mother’s history, I’ve been monitored a little more closely than normal—borderline tests redone and a few extra ordered when necessary. But at each appointment my unremarkable results have been attributed to my youth and active lifestyle. The baby is always lively, his heartbeat is strong, his growth on track. With every passing week I’ve grown more convinced of the assurances of the birth team that everything will continue to be normal.

We step into the sectioned-off area near the front where our midwife, Fiona, is waiting. She asks us how we’re doing. I say we’re fine, just fine, and ask if she can guess the baby’s weight. The only thing I am a little bit nervous about is him fitting out of me. My hips are narrow, and I am not entirely convinced a baby can exit through them. Surely a lot of bones will have to shift. Fiona laughs and places her hands on my belly, feeling around our baby’s body and smiling at the nudges he gives her. She estimates seven and a half pounds, and I let out a sigh of relief. I can do seven pounds.

“Of course,” she says, “it’s only my best guess.” Sensing that I need reassurance, she adds, “I will say, I’m usually very close.” She grabs the Doppler off the top of her desk to monitor his heart rate. “Let’s have a listen, shall we?”

I know the drill. I lift up my shirt and watch the wand slide the jelly down the slope of my bump. Immediately, we hear the whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.

“All is good! What a chill baby,” Fiona notes, moving the Doppler around a bit.

I listen to the sound of his heartbeat. Like a galloping horse. The rhythmic melody circles around the room. But a tiny voice speaks up from the back of my mind through the noise. Is it a bit slower than usual? I shush it. Everything is fine. We are fine. Nothing bad can happen at this point. We are nearly there, almost home. The voice goes away and I return to listening to the beating of his heart. A little longer, I suggest. Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh.