So I stayed.
In the end, Irene, the midwife, showed up right at the hour she had promised. She was the perfect image of a midwife, mature, thick, severe, and no-nonsense but at the same time wonderfully gentle when she needed to be.
The labor got more intense throughout the day.
I would rub Chelsea's back, wash her face, fetch whatever she wanted, including a quick trip to the grocery store for a gallon of something called
Moose Tracks
ice cream and a jar of cherry peppers, and hold her hand, something that became a painful experience as the day wore on and the contractions more intense.
The baby came at 2:08 p.m. I know because Irene had me countersign the official birth certificate, an act that gave me an odd rush of pride.
If you've never seen a baby being born, I recommend it. It's an amazing combination of sexy, frightening, clinical, and gross, and I could probably come up with a dozen more adjectives. In Chelsea's case, since we were at home, we just left her naked as her labor progressed.
I watched as her labia swelled and stretched.
I watched as Irene would check and note dilation levels, and watched the transformation of her cervix from a tiny opening to the baby's doorway to the world.
I watched as her body was covered in sweat, her hair wet with it, and I gave her little sips of ice water and, of course, held her hand as the contractions came faster and faster.
In the end, I watched as her face reddened with that final push and the baby slipped out, almost easily after all of that work, and after Irene did something with a squeeze bulb I heard that famous "first cry."
I had the honor of cutting the cord and then putting it into a freezer bag and into the freezer, something both Irene and Chelsea seemed to think was important.
Finally, in an act of intimacy I find hard to describe, Irene had me reach
inside
Chelsea and massage her now-cramped uterus.
She was exhausted by then. Irene laid the baby on her chest, that scene you've seen in movies and TV, and Chelsea smiled that smile you've seen in movies and TV.
And then she slept.
Irene showed me how to diaper and bundle the baby, took Chelsea's blood pressure and hooked a little clip to her finger, entered some numbers in a little book, had me sign the Birth Certificate, smiled, and said, "You did good for a first timer," patted my arm, and finished with, "Okay, David, I'm off to register this birth. Tell Chelsea to call if there's a problem and I'll see her tomorrow."
And there I was, alone with mom and baby.
But that was anti-climatic too.
The baby cried, waking Chelsea just like evolution had trained her. I gave her the baby and watched as she nursed for the first time.
Okay, my dick got hard.
The next day I helped Chelsea into the bathroom and made a "He-Man" breakfast of a six-egg omelet, a dozen strips of bacon, fried sliced potatoes, and orange juice. I served her in bed, feeding her as she smiled and said, "Thank you" with each bite.
By the third day, she was fully mobile again, and I LOVED looking at her.
The huge baby belly was gone, but baby fat remained and that stretched-out skin didn't just disappear. I thought the soft flap of her belly was sexy and the matched rolls outside of her shoulder blades beautiful. The tracery of stretch marks just added to the attraction.
When she invited me to sample her milk I didn't hesitate and found myself addicted. The baby and I would share when the baby cried every couple of hours.
On the fourth day, she called me from the bedroom.
"Come here, David," she said and had me lay back on the bed.
"I'm too sore still for vaginal sex," she said, "but you deserve relief and I know your right hand isn't that much fun. So lay back and let the new mom take care of you."
For the rest of the week, she would give me oral sex at least twice a day, "lunch and a bedtime snack" as she referred to it.
I found, to my great surprise, that I enjoyed taking care of her baby, well, and of her for that matter.
I was mildly surprised when her first trip outside of her house after the baby was born was to Theta Cubed where she auctioned me off.
"Why?" I asked, hating the whine in my voice and the tears that overflowed my eyes.
"Oh, David," she said, being so motherly right then that I just wanted to latch on to her breast and be fed, "it's still the best seven hundred twenty dollars I ever spent, but I need to adjust to my new life, sweetheart. And you, my dear, still have plenty to learn."