It’s what we’ve planned all along: the baby would come out into my hands. My hands that are trembling like a freshly shot buck. Anticipation hangs thick in the air as I help Tess sit in the small birthing pool. I climb in between her legs and massage her calves as she molds her body against the side of the pool, dragging deep breaths in through her nose.
“Tess, look at me. Eyes on me, baby. Breathe…we’re gonna have a baby now.”
“I’m so scared, Scout. Excited but scared.” Her sweet smile and big, tear-filled eyes nearly gut me in the intimate moment we share.
“Hey, sweetheart. Me too. I promise you, I’m here all the way. But you’ve got to push now.”
She clings to my arms as if I’m her lifeline as her feet jam into my hips. All the air escapes her lungs while her face fills with blood. Over and over we do this, until finally I see the sign I’ve been waiting for—a small wisp of hair.
“Tessie girl, I see our baby.” I’m shouting at her like I’ve spotted Santa in the night sky. “Keep going, honey. You’re doing this…come on, girl. Come on…give it to me, baby.”
“Scouuuuut!” she screams with a huge push, and then I see a tiny, bright red, scrunched face, shortly followed by shoulders that are as wide as my forefinger is long. The knot in my gut is heavy as a bowling ball. I feel giant and fragile at once as I sit in this warm bath helping my gorgeous, darling wife give birth to our very first child.
“Tess, here she is. She, Tess. We…we have a girl, sweetheart.”
A tiny, blond-haired, screaming baby girl. I can hardly speak as wee cries come from her tiny, bright red lips in life-affirming waves. She is the smallest, most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen or held in my hands. Tess is crying harder than I am, arms reaching out to me as I lay our wet, blood-covered angel baby onto her chest.
“Scout, she’s so…tiny. So beautiful… Oh Scout, look at her.” Tess is smiling through her tears, her very first “I’m now a mother” smile. I’m shattered. Every rule I know gone. Every bit of love I have sitting in front of me. Every ounce of me claimed by these two beautiful girls whom I’m holding in my arms. My whole world, my whole heart, my whole soul owned by them and the exquisite rawness of the moment we share.
“Wow, look at her go.” My arm is around Tess’s shoulder as I watch our minutes-old baby girl suckle milk from Tess’s remarkable, engorged breasts.
“She must have gotten her hunger from her daddy, huh?”
Yeah, you heard that too? I’ve just been called a daddy for the first time. I feel like I’ve been given a shot of estrogen because I’ve cried about nine times in the last hour alone.
“I like that word…daddy.”
“You’re gonna be a really good daddy, Scout,” she says, looking right at me.
“You’re already a good mama, sweetheart.” She’s not good—she’s perfect, exquisite, and my everything. “I’m kind of a jealous daddy right now, watching our little nipper suck on your gorgeous holy grails.”
“Oh my God. I knew this was coming. I knew you’d try to edge out our baby once the milk got flowing.”
“Don’t kid yourself, mama, I’m next in line at the ice cream stand.”
“Yeah, I’ve got your number, Scout Steele.”
“You did it, Tessie girl. I’m so proud of you. We made a baby and you just gave birth to her.”
She lets out a big sigh, then nudges me with her elbow. “Gigi—don’t you think, honey?”
“Gigi. No question, baby.”
I look at Tess in the quiet moment as we sit surrounded by the flickering softness of candlelight. Joy and satisfaction settles in her sparkling, sleepy eyes along with a smile as bright as the sun on a July day that pours across the width of her face. Gigi’s eyes are closed and look like perfect, dewy rose petals. Her petite face is smashed up against Tess’s left breast as though they are glued together. On Gigi’s right cheek sits a red birthmark about the size of corn kernel. It wants to be a heart, and more than likely when she’s a teenager she’ll color it in with blue face paint in a rebellious moment. One thing I know for certain is that she’ll never do is try to make it disappear. Gigi will learn full and well, just like her gorgeous mama did, that love and beauty are inside things that you forever own. And no one can ever take those gifts away from you.
Amongst many other things, I know we can promise her that.
###
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About A. Wilding Wells
Gratefully obsessive writer + storyteller. Nature lover. Menagerie wrangler. Mother of four. Joyfully married. Bon vivant. Country dweller. Bohemian dreamer.
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A Mess of Reason Page 25