A Countdown to Life

They tell you to read all the books and follow the mom-fluencers and go to the classes. But I don’t think anything could have really prepared me for that moment of your water breaking. The moment we had been counting down to was finally here and we were going to be parents!

Me! A parent!

Even now as I paced the waiting room after filling your paperwork, I could barely believe it. It’d been about a half hour since they admitted you, maybe twenty since I finished with the forms. Where was the nurse? When would I be able to join you in the room? It was trickier here… not being the biological father and all. At least my mother-in-law was on her way from work, she said it’d only take her fifteen minutes to reach us but she must have gotten stuck in traffic. Rush hour baby; the lil’ one couldn’t wait for after peak traffic time.

“Oneg will you follow me? Seems your baby is in a rush to get out, I haven’t seen this fast of a labor in a long time.” A middle-aged nurse ushered me along, thankfully speaking English. My wife must have told her. Thank goodness. That’s the plus of going to the rich neighborhood’s hospital.

My wife, in all her beautiful sweaty screaming glory, was both thrilled and enraged by my appearance.

“Where the fuck were you? Get over here and get this baby out of me!”

It took me a moment to compose myself and process what to do. I quickly went up to her side and held her hand, which she immediately proceeded to squeeze the juices out of as another contraction hit.

“This is happening real fast you two, do you want to be down at this end?” The nurse asked from the other side of my wife.

Before I could answer, my wife made direct-dagger eye contact with me, and gritting between her teeth said, “you stay right fucking here.” Another contraction ripped through as she let out a scream.

The nurses kept encouraging her to push, and each time she did, she crushed the bones in my hand just a bit more- but it felt glorious.

It had been only ten minutes since I joined in the delivery room, but we were getting close. “You’re doing amazing princesa, and after we’ll go get McDonald’s, I promise.”

She tried to smile but pain interrupted her features as she pushed again.

“Is it almost over? Please tell me it’s almost over!” She yelled at me, sweat dripping down the side of her temple, her hair partially matted from moving against the bed.

“We’re almost there, minutes, seconds, you can do this mi amor.”

The nurses notified that the head was visible and to keep pushing; I couldn’t believe that our baby was almost here.

“You got this amor, andale push!”

She let out another scream as I could feel her effort and strain. We were mere moments away, the air in the room charged with love and pain and life.

And then, the most beautiful sound emerged; our baby’s cry.

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Ahh!!! This was so exciting to write hehe. I hope this story will come to life soon, gosh. Hopefully in the next two years...

This is a short story for the first challenge in our August Summer Writing Extrav-again-za! Your task is to create a short story that includes some sort of countdown. Either the countdown is happening for a reason as part of the plot, or you structure the story with numbers counting down in some form.

You can find out more about James' and I's Summer Writing Challenge Extrav-again-za below: