“Not for three weeks,” says Luke. “It must be early.”
“Are you all right, Becky?” Martha peers at me. “Do you need drugs?”
“I’m using natural methods,” I gasp, gripping my necklace. “This is an ancient Maori birthing stone.”
“Wow!” says Martha, scribbling. “Can you spell Maori?”
My stomach tightens again and I clutch the stone harder. Even with the pain, I can’t help feeling exhilarated. They’re right, birth is an amazing experience. I feel as if my whole body is working in harmony, as if this is what it was designed to do all along.
“Have you got a bag packed?” says Martha, watching me in alarm. “Aren’t you supposed to have a bag?”
“I’ve got a suitcase,” I say breathlessly.
“Right,” says Luke, snapping his phone shut. “Let’s get it. Quick. Where is it? And your hospital notes.”
“It’s…” I break off. It’s all at home. Our real home.
“Um…it’s in the bedroom. By the dressing table.” I look at him in slight desperation. Luke’s eyes snap with sudden understanding.
“Of course,” he says. “Well…I’m sure we can make a stop-off if we need to.”
“I’ll nip up and get it for you,” says Martha helpfully. “Which side of the dressing table is it?”
“No! I mean…um…actually, there it is!” I point at a Mulberry holdall that I’ve suddenly spotted in the hall cupboard. “I forgot, I put it there so as to be ready.”
“Right.” Luke drags it out of the cupboard, with some effort, and a tennis ball falls out of it.
“Why are you taking tennis balls to hospital?” asks Martha, looking puzzled.
“For…er…massage. Oh God…” I grip the Maori stone tightly and breathe deeply.
“Are you OK, Becky?” says Luke, looking anxious. “It seems to be getting worse.” He looks at his watch. “Where’s this bloody ambulance?”
“They’re getting stronger.” I manage to nod through the pain. “I should think I’m probably about six or seven centimeters dilated by now.”
“Hey, the ambulance is here.” The photographer pokes his head through the front door. “It’s just pulling up.”
“We should get going.” Luke holds out his arm to me. “Are you able to walk?”
“I think so. Just about.”
We head out the front door and pause on the top step. The ambulance is blocking the whole road, its blue light flashing round and round. I can see a few people watching, on the other side of the street.
This is it. When I come out of hospital…I’ll have a baby!
“Good luck!” calls Martha. “Hope it all goes well!”
“Becky…I love you.” Luke squeezes my arm tight. “I’m so proud of you. You’re doing amazingly! You’re so calm, so composed….”
“It just feels totally natural,” I say with a kind of humble awe, like Patrick Swayze telling Demi Moore what heaven is like at the end of Ghost. “It’s painful…but it’s beautiful too.”
Two paramedics have got out of the back of the ambulance and are coming toward me.
“Ready?” Luke glances down at me.
“Uh-huh.” I take a deep breath and start walking down the steps. “Let’s do it.”
EIGHTEEN
HUH. I DON’T BELIEVE IT, I wasn’t in labor after all. I don’t have a baby or anything.
It doesn’t make any sense, in fact I still think they might have been wrong. I had all the symptoms! The regular contractions, and the back pain (well, a slight achy feeling), just like in the book. But they sent me home and said I wasn’t in labor or prelabor or even approaching labor. They said they weren’t real labor pains.
It was all a bit embarrassing. Especially when I asked for the epidural and they laughed. They didn’t have to laugh. Or phone up their friends and tell them. I heard that midwife, even though she was whispering.
It’s also made me rethink this whole giving-birth thing. I mean, if that wasn’t the real thing…what on earth is the real thing like? So after we got back from the hospital I had a long, frank talk with Luke. I said I’d given it some careful thought and come to the conclusion that I couldn’t do labor, and we were going to have to find some other solution.
He was really sweet about it, and didn’t just say “Love, you’ll be fine” (like that stupid midwife phone advisory service). He said I should line up every form of pain relief I could, never mind about the cost. So I’ve hired a reflexologist, a hot-stone-massage person, an aromatherapist, an acupuncturist, a homeopath, and a doula. Plus I’ve taken to phoning the hospital every day, just to make sure their anesthetists haven’t all gone ill or been trapped in a cupboard or anything.
And I chucked out that stupid birthing stone. I always thought it was rubbish.
It’s now a week later, and nothing’s happened since, except I’m bigger and more lumbery than ever. We went to see Dr. Braine yesterday, and he said everything seemed just fine and the baby had turned into the right position, which was good news. Hmph. Good news for the baby, maybe. Not for me. I can hardly walk anymore, let alone sleep. Last night I woke up at three A.M. and felt so uncomfortable I couldn’t even lie in bed, so I went and watched this program on cable called True-Life Births — When Trauma Goes Bad.
Which was maybe a mistake, in hindsight. But luckily Luke was awake too, and he made me a cup of hot chocolate to calm me down and said it was really unlikely we’d ever be stuck in a snowdrift with twins about to be born and no doctors for two hundred miles. And at least now we knew what to do if we were.