aTRACKion

Chapter Forty Seven

"Okay Frankie, that burning you are feeling is the head crowning, my lovely...I need you to just breathe away that pain." The midwife is sounding so calm, so together—everything that I'm not.

"Pleeeeeeeese just get it out! Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeese! I can't do this! I can't!" My frightened screams echo around the delivery room, bouncing from one yellow wall to the next. "It hurts, please just get it out."

Stroking my tormented and sweaty brow, Doug is near. I can't see him, but I know he is near. "The baby is coming, Frankie...you're nearly there, darling."

With tears of pain sliding down my cheeks, I'm frustratingly shaking my head from side to side. "I'm not...I can't do this." My voice is broken, just like my contracting spirit. I'm so tired. So tired of the endless waves of pain and the endless pushing. I just want it over. I just want the constricting pain to end.

In my other ear, I hear my calm midwife once again. "Frankie, you are doing it, you really are." She assuringly starts rubbing my hand, the hand that's gripping the hospital sheet so twistingly tight. "Open your eyes, my lovely?" My eyes are pinched shut, to shut out some of the pain of my unforgiving labour. As the wave of my current contraction begins to die off, I slowly open my eyes to look at my midwife. As soon as I look at her, she smiles back at me. "You are nearly there, Frankie. When the next contraction comes, I want you to use it. I want you to push hard into your bottom, to get your baby's head out."

I hear what she's saying, I just don't think I have the strength to do it. Weak and worn out, I turn my head to where Doug is standing. He too, looks tired and drained. I know he feels helpless, I know he does. And yet, he is still trying to be strong for me. "You're nearly there, babe. I've just seen our baby's head. She has a lot of dark hair." His exhausted brown eyes briefly gleam at that, he is still so sure that we are having a little girl.

Lying my head back on the pillow, I can feel the beginning of my next contraction, I feel it squeezing its pain into me, and taking away all of my breathing. "It's coming!" I'm starting to panic, starting to fear that pain that is about to coil itself all around me.

Stroking my perspiring face, Doug determinedly says. "You're amazing, Frankie...you can do this, darling."

Could I do this? Could I really?

"Right, my lovely. With this contraction, I want you to bring your chin down onto your chest and push really hard into your bottom, okay?" My midwife urges me on some more.

In the grip of the most excruciating kind of pain, I do what I am told. My chin is down and I'm pushing so damn hard, I feel like my head might explode off my shoulders. With the terrifying push, I'm screaming. My scream is all that fills my popping ears. With the mighty force of the contraction and my will to free my body of what is causing that contraction, I try to push away the relentless and searing pain. Just when I think I have to give up, that I may possibly faint from the lack of being able to take a breath, the midwife is talking to me again. "Okay, your baby's head is out now, Frankie...now don't push, just pant." She starts showing me how to do it, and through my exhaustion, I find myself doing just what she is doing.

I can't see Doug, but again, I hear him. "Oh my god, I can see her!" He sounds thrilled, thrilled and emotional.

But I'm just concentrating on my panting. I'm just concentrating on this all being over soon. "The next one is coming." Breathlessly, I tell the midwife that I'm ready for the next contraction. I'm ready to deliver my baby.

"Now, just gentle pushing with this contraction, Frankie...nice and gentle, okay?"

Doing as she says, I gently bear down. In a wonderful instant, I feel the pain between my legs just disappearing, washed away with the sensation of warm amniotic fluid. In one dazed second, my newborn baby is being placed onto my exhausted chest. "Congratulations, Frankie...you did amazing." The midwife is rubbing our baby's back, encouraging it to cry.

Doug is hovering over us, elated but crying. "You did do amazing, darling...our baby is here."

As though he or she is agreeing with its daddy, the baby instinctually begins to cry, announcing to the world that he or she is indeed, finally here. Through all of his overjoyed tears, Doug is laughing. "Those are singing lungs, if ever I've heard them." He then kisses me, kisses me with lips that are so grateful and so happy. "I love you." Is what he sweetly then whispers against my parched and parted mouth.

"And I love you." I look up at him, feeling a wonderful kind of tiredness. Physically, I am depleted. Emotionally, I am euphoric. Staring down at what we have both amazingly created, I now desperately need to know whether we created a beautiful baby boy or a beautiful baby girl. "What have we got?" I'm gently lifting up the bottom of the towel that our little one is now covered with.

Doug is grinning, just as eager to know what sex our little one is. Ever so gently, he helps me to lift the towel. Then just as gently, he lifts one of our baby's tiny little legs, just enough for him to see whether our child is a boy or a girl. His grin almost starts stretching as far back as where his ears are.

Smiling up at Doug, I serenely then state. "It's a girl, isn't it?"

Looking so damn proud, like he's about to pop with smug proudness, Doug nods with that enormously wide grin of his. "She sure is."

**The video above is: DAUGHTERS - JOHN MAYER**