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Birth Plan

Tom Cantwell

    It was Maya who first suggested we open a bottle of wine when her contractions started. “The red,” she said. It was supposed to calm her down and loosen up her body.
    “Not the white? We have that one in the fridge.”
    “Red,” she said. “Here comes another.”
    I stood motionless, unsure whether to go to her or go back for the wine. I went for the wine. The case sat in our office closet under a stack of manila folders. The bottles stood upright, as they had for the eight months since our wedding. I held the bottle up to the window, wondering why wine had to lay flat and what we had lost by standing it up. In the afternoon light it looked like blood.
    “Ok,” I heard Maya say in the living room.
    “You’re doing great!” I called.
    “You should be timing them,” she said as I hurried into the kitchen. By the time I found the opener in the rag drawer instead of the utensil drawer and then popped the cork and found two clean glasses, Maya was calling another one. “Time it, Chris!”
    “Ok,” I said. “Hold on, let me find the stopwatch.” I ran to the office but couldn’t find it.
    “Hold on?” she said when I came back out. “Are you kidding me? How long was that?”
    “I don’t know,” I said. “I couldn’t find the stopwatch. Here.” I handed her a glass and she raised it to her lips before I could make a toast. It was her first drink since the champagne flute at our wedding, and as far as she knew, only the second since then for me, the other coming on our honeymoon at Maya’s insistence. She had sighed at the taste of rum on my lips and we laughed when she ordered a virgin.
    “Call Cinci,” she said, not even acknowledging the wine for which we had waited so long. It tasted great as far as I could tell, so at least I could stop worrying about laying bottles sideways. I dialed Cinci’s number off the birth plan, stuck to our refrigerator by magnets shaped like football helmets. She picked up on the fourth ring.
    “It’s on,” I said.
    “Really? Let me talk to Maya!”
    “Let me talk to her,” Maya said.
    I handed Maya the phone and went out on the balcony to shiver in the spring chill, smoke my last cigarette, and drink my wine. Cinci was Maya’s best friend from Michigan State, what I imagined a girl from Cincinnati would look like: blonde and big-boned with a snaggletooth and a snake tattoo wrapped around her ankle. Her real name was Jen or Jane or something. She moved west to Portland a year after they graduated and begged Maya to follow. It took Maya two years to talk me into it, though by then she would have gone with or without me.
    I went back in to find Maya laughing and saying, “Holy shit, it hurts!” More laughter, then, “Get your ass over here, bitch!” Maya reminded me of the Jack Russell terrier I grew up with, small and spunky with a bark out of proportion to body size and a big heart to match. She handed me my phone and said, “I love that girl.”
    We drank, my glass empty and hers half-full. “Want more?” I asked.
    She stared at me.
    “Do you mind if I do?” I asked.
    She tucked her head and rocked her pelvis. “Let’s watch The Princess Bride,” she said.
    “Ok.” I carried my second glass over to the dvd rack. Watching the movie was on our birth plan, wedged between Sex and Go for a walk under Things to do to pass the time. I knew sex was out; walking might be an option later because it was supposed to get things going. The movie would be a solid hour and half right there, maybe three glasses of wine for me, maybe ten contractions for Maya.
    “Inconceivable,” I said, shuffling through the movies.
    Maya made her grunt laugh but quickly said, “What?”
    “It’s not here.” Billy had borrowed it over a week earlier for his sick girlfriend. I had told him I needed it back right away, but that’s Billy for you. “Did you put it somewhere?” I asked.
    “Where would I put it?” Maya said.
    “I don’t know, but it’s not here. How about Lord of the Rings?” I held up The Fellowship of the Ring, the extended director’s cut, but Maya only stared at me. “I’ll see if it’s On Demand,” I said. She started another contraction before I found the remote, so I was right there for this one, rubbing her back and telling her she was doing great. Maya moaned and I reminded her to breathe. I brought her water when it was over.
    “How long?” she asked.
    “About thirty seconds? Let me get my watch.” I found it and turned on the television. Familiar courtside commentators appeared on the screen. “Game 7,” I remembered.
    “What?”
    “Nothing.” I scrolled through the On Demand choices, but no luck. Just above where The Princess Bride should have been was another title that caught my eye: Orphan. I clicked on it. “How about this one?” I said. “Orphan. A husband and wife who recently lost their baby adopt a 9-year girl, but there’s something wrong with Esther.”
    When I turned to Maya, her eyes almost looked like I remembered Esther’s in the trailer. “What the fuck?” she said.
    “Just kidding.” I clicked back to the main selection screen.
    “Kidding,” Maya said.
    “Yeah, joking. It’s in our birth plan, Maya. Remember?’ I walked to the fridge and read off the sheet. “Try to make Maya laugh, whether she gets the jokes or not.”
    “And joking about watching a fucked up movie about dead babies is supposed to make me laugh?”
    “Ok, my bad. I’m sorry, all right?” I drank my wine. “Wanna watch another movie? Or I can go out and rent The Princess Bride.”
    “Forget it,” she said. “Just put on the TV.”
    I clicked back to a beer commercial.
    “Here comes the next one,” she said. “Time it!”
    I used my watch and gave her the time, 43 seconds, just as a young pop princess started overdoing the national anthem. “For Christ’s sake,” Maya said.
    “I know, right?” I hit the mute button.
    “Are you seriously putting on a basketball game?”
    “It’s Game 7.”
    “I don’t care if it’s the fucking Super Bowl! Turn this shit off!”
    I flipped to a nature documentary and should have kept my mouth shut and watched the lions lope across the savannah. I should have remembered everything from the birth class about not taking Maya’s emotions and hormones personally. Maybe it was the wine.
    “You don’t have to curse so much,” I said.
    “What?”
    “You sound like that fucky-fuck neighbor of ours.”
    Given that we had vowed to call Child Services if we heard one more tirade upstairs, I turned expecting Esther from Orphan, not Maya staring down at her swollen belly.
    “I’m sorry,” I said.
    She looked up at the lions, now stalking a water hole. “Go get the movie,” she whispered.
    “As you wish!”
    No reaction.
    I quietly gathered my things, swallowed my wine, and swooped in for a kiss on my way out, but Maya retracted her cheek. Downstairs, I put my key in the Camry and paused. I would walk to the video store instead of driving to Billy’s in case Maya needed the car. Such chivalry on my part made me feel better as I stumbled down the sidewalk, half-buzzed and debating which was the greater shame, that I was half-buzzed off two glasses of wine or that I had just picked a fight with my pregnant wife.
    I hurried down the backstreets through a misty drizzle and tried not to think about Maya having contractions without me. Cinci would be there soon. I considered calling but kept my phone in my pocket. Maya was fine. If there was one thing we learned in class, labor could take a long time. I hadn’t visited the video store in awhile, and my surprise at finding a vacant hole in the shopping center quickly vanished. A casualty of the digital age, of course, and one less way for a guy to meet a girl. No more bumping in the aisles to share opinions or debate directors. I passed the beauty salon, the wireless store, and the insurance office before stopping at Game Time, where I cupped my hand to the darkened window. A fast break ended in a foul and the bartender poured a shot. I thought of Maya hugging Cinci, told myself I would only have one drink, and stepped inside to the smell of stale beer and popcorn.
    The sticky black floor grabbed at my sneakers as I walked to a barstool wedged between a middle-aged couple and two old timers. The bald bartender adjusted his nose ring and asked what I was having. I scanned the rows of bottles, figuring if I was only having one drink I might as well make it a good one. “Knob Creek,” I said. “Double on the rocks.”
    I loved how getting a drink was that easy. Five years legal, I still marveled at the simple freedom to catch a buzz whenever I wanted. For all the wrong reasons, the pregnancy had come at a good time. My body had been saturated when Maya handed me the news that morning, my head fuzzy and fingers puffy, shaking as I held the pregnancy kit with the pink + staring back at me. After an hour of discussion laced with arguments and tears, we still couldn’t decide, so Maya decided for us. We would keep the baby and get married. I told Maya I needed one shot and then I would go sober with her. “Sobriety solidarity,” I called it.
    “You’re so sweet!” she said.
    Turned out I needed most of a Jim Beam bottle stashed in our storage space. Now I let the Knob Creek simmer beneath my nose for several long seconds, the sharp smell carrying me back to my father’s workbench. I rattled the ice and sipped, closing my eyes. The taste sent a shudder through my system, the whiskey sliding down my throat and through my middle to where it settled like a spark in my belly.
    “That’s good,” I said.
    I watched the game and nursed my double and tried not to think about Maya. I timed it so I would finish the drink at halftime and hustle home. When the buzzer sounded, just like at a game, everyone started moving. The old timers set cash on the bar and left. I savored my last iced-down sip with my eyes closed, fished out my wallet to leave a tip, and looked up to see three girls claiming the empty stools. The one closest to me, blue-eyed with blonde hair in a ponytail, flashed me a smile that I tried to return. Her ring finger was as tan as the rest of her. I slipped my ring off beneath my wallet and tucked it into my pocket, relieved that I hadn’t spent any time in the sun lately.
    The bartender was on them right away. “Welcome, ladies! Can I see your I.D.s, please?”
    They were maybe of age and maybe not, and I didn’t bother checking the ring fingers of the other two, a tall redhead and a stocky Latina. The blonde got carded first and then turned to me. “Who’s winning?” she asked.
    I looked up at a car commercial. “Um, I’m not sure. It’s close, though.”
    “That’s all you can ask for,” she said.
    Really? Was it possible that this young, hot woman actually enjoyed watching sports? Inconceivable. Lost for words, I nodded and stared into my empty glass, then pulled out my cell phone so it looked like I had messages to check. There were none. The bartender got their drinks and asked me if I wanted another.
    “Sure,” I said. “Same thing.”
    “Double?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Alright,” the blonde said. She raised her red cocktail with a nod at me and clinked it against her girlfriends’ glasses. When my drink came she asked what I was having.
    I told her and she clinked my glass. I still hadn’t said anything particularly witty. The words on the tip of my tongue were, My wife is in labor with our first child right now. Instead, I said, “You rooting for anyone? In the game?”
    She shrugged. “As long as it’s good, I don’t care. We play, me and my girls. That’s Kendyl and that’s Maria.” They nodded at me and I could see it now, athletes all of them. Kendyl’s features were too rigid and defined for my liking, and Maria had already turned to scope out the rest of the bar.
    “And your name and points per game?” I asked.
    “Savannah. Fourteen.”
    “That’s pretty good,” I said. “Chris. Averaged ten if I was lucky back in high school. Who do you play for?”
    “U.P.,” she said. “University of Portland.”
    My first thought was that I could look these girls up on the computer and find out their ages and everything about them. I could probably get a team poster, but where would I put it with Maya wondering where I got it? “That’s awesome,” I said. “I’ll have to come to a game.”
    “You should,” Savannah said, and we continued talking, my words coming easier as we drank. We talked about hoops and booze and the store where I sold furniture, our voices rising in stride with the volume of the bar. Maybe I did most of the talking. The bartender gave us waters and I spilled mine in my lap. We talked right through the third quarter, until the bartender asked to fill us up. I was dangerously close to drunk and my wife was in labor with our first child.
    “I should probably go,” I said.
    “Oh yeah?” Savannah said. “What’s so important on a Saturday afternoon?”
    I wrinkled my brow and looked down at my phone. Still no messages. “Ok,” I said. “But just a single.” I knew I was drunk halfway through texting Billy because I was trying to spell everything correctly and taking so long to do it that the battery icon started flashing. “You watching the game?” I texted. “Im coming over for the Princess Bride.”
     Watching the 4^th quarter with Savannah, I started projecting our future, which of course started with sex. I couldn’t tell if her boobs were fake or perfect. I couldn’t imagine a serious athlete taking the risk of altering her body. Fake boobs usually turned me off, but the possibility of hers being fake somehow excited me. I’d heard it had practically become normal for girls to get boob jobs as high school graduation gifts.
    “Take a picture,” she said. “It’ll last longer.”
    “What?” I looked away but suddenly felt brave. Maybe it was the whiskey. “Ok,” I said, holding up my phone to take her photo. I framed her chest and noticed the battery icon flashing as I pressed the button.
    Savannah threw up her hands. “What the fuck, dude? I was kidding!” There was a sharp edge to her voice, her face severe as she hopped off her stool and grabbed my phone, backing away as she checked the image. I smiled when she turned the camera on me. She threw it in my lap and left for the bathroom. Her friends returned to their conversation.
    I ignored the flashing battery and scrolled back to the photo of Savannah, just a blur of hands reaching out to block the shot. I felt like a pervert and scrolled ahead to the photo of me, my eyes half closed and my smile crooked. The lean of my head made my hairline obvious, and the wet spot on my pants made it look like I’d peed myself. The room spun and the phone vibrated in my hand. A text from Billy came up: “Ok.”
    I threw all my cash on the bar and asked the bartender to call me a taxi. I hurried outside and stood beneath the drizzle, catching my balance with my hands on my knees before stumbling back to the overhang and scrolling to Maya’s number. During the time in which I paused, wondering what I would say, the battery died.
    Savannah did not come out. I pictured them in there laughing at me. I spun at someone staring, but it was only my reflection on the dark glass. When the taxi arrived, I directed the weathered woman reeking of cigarettes to Billy’s house. I asked her for a cigarette and she said we couldn’t smoke in the car. I told her we could smoke in Billy’s driveway and leave the meter running, so that’s what we did. I didn’t mention the news to Billy, just grabbed the movie and told him Maya was in one of her moods. I had the driver make one more stop before taking me home, at a convenience store for a pack of gum, a pack of Camels, and cash from the ATM. I stuffed three sticks of spearmint in my mouth, tipped the driver with a handful of cigarettes, and ran up to the apartment.
    They were gone. Instead of lions on the television there were dogs being trained. The wine bottle stood where I had set it, and beside it a note in Maya’s tiny handwriting. The room spun as I focused to read. Where are you? We left.
    I ran outside. Cinci had driven Maya, leaving the Camry for me, but there was no way I was driving. “Wait!” I yelled, racing down to the taxi still idling where she dropped me.
    The window slid down. “Sorry, man, I just got another fare.”
    “My wife’s in labor,” I breathed. “Please.”
    She twisted her face but met my eyes. “Alright,” she said. “But if you’re bullshitting me, I’m taking the rest of your smokes.”
    “Thanks,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I ran upstairs but had to pause from all the spinning. What did I need? I hadn’t packed my bag and couldn’t remember anything until I remembered the birth plan, which I pulled from the refrigerator, helmet magnets tumbling to the floor. The phone numbers were useless to me, and I assumed Maya and Cinci had everything listed under What Maya needs. I had my Coaching strategies and the chart I had drawn with all the labor stages. I folded the birth plan into my pocket and grabbed the movie, noticing the wine bottle sitting where I left it. I picked up the remote, let my thumb hover over LAST before pressing POWER, and bolted down to the taxi. “The new midwife center by Providence,” I said.
    The driver’s sudden ability to make good time didn’t help my spinning, and I almost threw up my Knob Creek in the backseat. I pulled out the birth plan, soft with sweat and rain, and had to focus to study it. We were probably in late first stage, the time-to-go stage. Maya’s contractions would be longer, stronger, and closer together. My job would be to help her relax and find comfortable positions. I could do that. I looked out the window to try relaxing and immediately saw the sign for Groovy Smoothie. “Stop!” I said.
    The driver hit the brakes. “What?”
    “We need to stop at Groovy Smoothie,” I said.
    She muttered under her breath, circled around, and dropped me in front. I found myself stuck behind a gaggle of soccer moms and their uniformed little girls. “Excuse me,” I said. “Can I cut? My wife’s in labor.” The moms spun and parted before me, their daughters clinging closer to their pant legs. “Thanks,” I said. “I need a double tangerine with a protein boost. Large.”
    Now I was ready. The driver cut short her cigarette and whipped us to the midwife center. I tipped her the rest of the pack. The receptionist did a double take when I burst through the door, wild-eyed and drunk, clutching a dvd and a smoothie and soaked through with sweat and rain. She edged back when I ran up but recognized me from earlier appointments and pointed me back to the last birthing suite on the left. I burst through that door in similar form, realizing as I did that I should have stopped for a moment to gather myself and put in fresh gum.
    Maya kneeled on the floor leaning on Cinci, who glared at me. Maya wore her blue bathrobe and nothing else. It fell away from her, untied. She was all curves, swollen breasts and the giant egg of her belly. Cinci’s hair was pinned beneath a black bandana. The midwife lightly touching Maya’s back smiled calmly, skeptical. She was the only midwife at the center I hadn’t met yet, having missed that appointment. Maya looked up with eyes that must have been as glazed-over as mine. I swayed in the doorway and watched her try to focus on what I held.
    “The Princess Bride,” I said, holding up the dvd.
    “Is that a double tangerine with a protein boost?” she asked.
    “As you wish!” I ran to her. “I’m so sorry I took so long, Maya.”
    She grabbed the smoothie and started sucking it down.
    “You’ve been drinking,” Cinci said.
    “A little,” I said. “Awhile ago. I can do this.” I introduced myself to the midwife but immediately forgot her name. She was a slight woman with clear blue eyes and long brown hair streaked with grey. She asked if Maya felt comfortable having me there. Maya just sucked on the smoothie. With my fate as a father hanging in the balance, my wife was letting me have it. When no one spoke, I unfolded the smeared birth plan and asked what stage we were in.
    “Late first stage,” said the midwife.
    I looked at my chart. “Do you need to use the bathroom, Maya?” She nodded. Cinci and I helped her up. “I got her,” I said, and Cinci reluctantly released her arm.
    “Thank you,” Maya whispered as I helped her onto the toilet seat.
    “Let’s have a baby,” I said. “Just not right here in the toilet, though.” She smiled and gave me a weak smack. “I know we want a water birth, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”
    “Stop,” she laughed, but I didn’t stop. It said so right on the birth plan, and for me personally, humor was the best way to cope with seeing and hearing my wife in pain.
    Three cups of coffee later, the vicarious adrenaline rush of labor had siphoned my buzz down to a headache. The midwife monitored Maya’s contraction lengths and cervix widths and finally announced transition stage. For Maya, the transition was from human to animal, her moaning and groaning now primal roaring. She drifted between worlds, vaguely aware of us but also at home in her happy place, which I envisioned as some misty grove of whispering, ancestral women. When Maya unleashed a howl that they must have heard in the parking lot, the midwife announced that we had reached second stage and it was time to get the tub ready for pushing. “You’ll be our first water birth in the new center,” she said.
    Getting Maya in the tub took some work, but once she reclined into the water, her body visibly relaxed. She gripped a handle with one hand and my hand in the other, drawing blood where her nails dug in. After two more contractions, her blood began turning the bath water pink.
    “The baby’s coming,” the midwife said. “I can feel the head.”
    “Maya, you’re doing it!” I said. “Our baby’s coming!”
    We had talked about me catching the baby, something Maya always seemed more confident about than me, and the conversation with the midwife had elicited another skeptical look, but now she invited me to leave Maya’s side and get ready. I squeezed Maya’s hand and slid by a control panel to take my place beside her legs. Cinci replaced me at Maya’s side.
    “Look,” the midwife said, pointing. “Can you see the baby’s hair?”
    I peered through the murky water, and sure enough, I saw a swirl of black hair on the crown of a head. “Maya! I can see his head! You’re doing it!”
     “Go ahead and touch it,” the midwife told me.
    I hesitated. The midwife nodded and I slowly reached down, my hand trembling in the warm water. I wasn’t prepared for the softness beneath my finger. “Oh my God!” I said. “Maya, I feel his head!” It was like a sponge.
    Maya roared.
    “Push!” the midwife said. “Push, Maya! This is it!”
    “It hurts!” Maya yelled.
    “The head’s out! Take a deep breath and get ready for one more push!” In a lower voice, she said, “Give me your fingers, Chris. Feel the chin? Just guide it out.”
    “Are you sure?” I whispered.
    Maya roared.
    “Push, Maya!” the midwife said. “Go ahead, Chris.”
    With my fingers under his tiny chin, I tugged as gently as I could, but the baby didn’t come. His shoulders were stuck or something. I saw a burst of blood in the water and froze.
    “I’ll take it from here, Chris,” said the midwife. “Go back to Maya.”
    I did with relief, sliding back down the tub, which suddenly came to life. With a roar of their own, the jets fired up and broke the water into a bubbling cauldron of blue light. Maya screamed. I realized that my elbow had hit the control panel. I pictured my baby down there, half in and half out of his bleeding, screaming mother and getting pummeled in the face by twenty pounds of pressure. I turned to the midwife, but she was feeling around in the tub with both hands. Cinci was holding Maya and yelling, “It’s OK! It’s OK!”
    I looked at the control panel but saw no obvious OFF button. Helpless and desperate, inclined to do nothing for fear of making it worse, I randomly started pressing buttons. The light flashed from blue to red just as the midwife lifted our crying baby out of the cauldron and into Maya’s extended arms. Suddenly serene, Maya cradled the baby to her breast and pronounced what we all could see. “A girl!” she said, breaking into tears. “My beautiful baby girl.”
    And she was beautiful. Wrinkled and coated in vernix like a yogurt-covered raisin, with a cone-shaped head and a contorted mouth screaming at the world, she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. She brought tears to my eyes.
    The jets suddenly stopped and the midwife turned off the red light. “I guess we need a cover for that panel,” she said. We laughed and stared at the baby. “Do you have a name?” the midwife asked.
    Maya looked up and smiled at me. “Grace,” she said.
    After my grandmother. I hid my tears in a bathwater hug.
    Cinci joined us. “That was incredible, Maya,” she whispered. “I want your autograph.”
    Our birthing instructor had always compared labor to an athletic event, which made me think of Savannah, a strong and beautiful Division I athlete who at the moment had nothing on Maya. “Yeah,” I said. “Who knew you could kick so much ass?”
    Maya winked. “Better watch your language there, Dad.”
    “Someone should get a picture,” Cinci said.
    “My phone’s dead,” I quickly answered.
    Cinci got a picture and Grace continued crying as the midwife lifted the birth cord out of the water so we could literally feel it pulsing with life. Translucent and nearly as thick as my thumb, it weaved like a rope and felt strong enough to hold my weight. When it stopped pulsing, the midwife guided me through cutting it.
    When it was time to move Maya, I took off my shirt and held Grace to my chest, the vernix sticky like double-sided tape. Suddenly I was a father with a wailing baby girl to protect. My future with Maya was anyone’s guess, but I vowed to always be there for Grace. She would need me when she skinned her knee or fell during a recital. I would protect her from unscrupulous boys and walk her down the aisle, and when she had a baby of her own, if the father ditched her in the middle of labor to go drinking at a bar, I would have his balls. If I had to, I would even go to one of those AA meetings where you stand up and say, “Hello, my name is Chris and I am an alcoholic.”
    With Maya safely in bed, I leaned forward and handed her Grace, whose wailing had settled to whimpering. “She’s got all her fingers and toes,” I said.
    Maya smiled and counted for herself before taking Grace to her breast.
    I remembered my wedding ring in my pocket.
    “Ready for third stage?” the widwife asked.
    “Third stage?” I had my hand in my pocket but had lost track of the birth plan.
    “Delivering the placenta,” the midwife said. “Don’t worry, Maya, it’s cake compared to what you just did.” She gently started tugging on the birth cord that went inside Maya, and at the first sight of blood, I turned away. I had seen enough for one day.
    “What are you gonna do with it?” Cinci asked.
    “With the placenta?” Maya asked.
    “Yeah, like I hear you can bury it under a tree that you plant.”
    “In some cultures,” said the midwife, “they even cook it and eat it.”
    “No thanks,” Maya said, and in the silence that followed, as Grace latched onto Maya’s nipple, I imagined a sizzling placenta and wondered if it would go well with our wedding wine.

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