Before she knew what was happening, Eliza had been whisked upstairs, her clothing seeming to fall off as she went; shoes, stockings, stomacher, pannier, skirt, petticoat, until she was dressed in nothing but her shift.
She had only had one contraction during it all.
Alice was waiting when they arrived in the bedroom, hot towels, a washbowl and a pitcher, filled with boiling water, at the ready. Alice had been Mama's midwife for as long as Eliza could remember, and would now be hers.
Angelica and Peggy had been shooed out of the room as soon as she was settled on the bed. Eliza knew they wanted to stay, and part of her wanted them to be there to support her, but another part of her didn't want her sisters to see her like this. She didn't know how she would act during the birth, or even how long it would last; her mother had been in labour for almost eleven hours when Rensselaer was born.
And even though she was already twenty-three, the desire she and Angelica had to protect Peggy had never gone away.
Alice placed her hand on Eliza's stomach, gauging the baby's position. "Mm-hmm," she mused. "The head is facing down."
"That's good isn't it?" Eliza said, feeling like she was six years old and asking after a friend who had just had a slight cold and was no longer feeling poorly. She realised how truly innocent she was to the new world of motherhood she was about to enter.
"Yes, but your contractions aren't even close to five minutes apart," continued Alice. "We have a long way to go."
As if on cue, another contraction hit, but it wasn't the only reason Eliza groaned.
She tried not to feel too embarrassed, though it proved to be a difficult task; everybody was constantly looking in between her legs, and boiling water, and murmuring things to each other, and generally acting as if she wasn't there. Even her mother was bustling around helping, as though she wasn't seven months pregnant herself.
She understood, of course. The baby was nowhere close to coming, as Alice had said, but it did nothing to relax, or more importantly, prepare her for what was to come; instead leaving her feeling more alone and scared. As much as the contractions hurt, in between them, she had nothing to distract her from her mortification at having company in what felt like such an improper situation.
She didn't even remember her water until it broke, soaking the bed sheets, and when she looked at the clock, she saw it hadn't even been two hours, though time had seemed to stretch out, making her feel like she was inside a giant never-ending tunnel.
Screams she didn't know she could make ripped from her throat. The contractions were coming quicker now, according to her mother and Alice who were timing them, since Eliza couldn't concentrate; unable to do anything beyond lie on the bed waiting for the next bout of spasms to attack her body.
"Five minutes," Alice said after Eliza recovered from the most recent contraction, her eyes on the clock. She then bent down to look under Eliza's shift again. "And you're fully dilated."
Eliza knew what that meant. It was time to push.
"Are you ready?" her mother asked.
She was wide-eyed and more terrified than she'd ever been in her life, but she nodded.
In later years Eliza wouldn't be able to recall what had happened after that moment. The pain had been so excruciating it was as though her body had been sent into a trance; it was so bad she no longer knew what she was feeling.
Nor did she know how her body was doing what it was. She pushed without knowing how to, as easy and naturally as breathing.
Alice and her mother had been talking to her, but she hadn't been able to make sense of the words.
It was only when it ended that she came back to herself; when the most beautiful sound in the world reached her ears; a sound more wonderful than any musical composition, more glorious than any song, more magnificent than anything heard in the natural world.
When she heard the cry. And there he was.
Philip.
Her son.
Eliza didn't mind being confined to her bed so much. On the contrary, she had never felt more wonderful. From the moment Alice had laid her son on her breast, Eliza felt like the world had turned upside down; shifted on its axis, never to be right again.
Except now, right would be wrong. She was overcome with a sense of beauty that she knew would never fade, and she never wanted her life to be as it had been before.
She couldn't imagine a world without Philip.
She caught strains coming from down the hallway. It was likely Cornelia was in the middle of her music lesson. For a moment Eliza felt wistful; she hadn't played the pianoforte since the very, very early days of her pregnancy. Between the war, Alexander's absence and all the other developments, both at home and in the country, that seemed like a lifetime ago.
By the time her exhaustion had gone away, she could not sit comfortably on the stool, her stomach had grown so.
But soon enough she would be able to play again. And as soon as possible she was going to teach Philip.
"Betsey," a voice whispered, rousing Eliza from her light slumber. She looked up and smiled broadly at the sight of her husband standing in the doorway.
One of the upsides of her confinement was that it had kept her from dwelling on Alexander's absence. With childbirth being something strictly forbidden for men, and every day since being more or less the same, when he arrived home, it felt like he had missed nothing.
"You're so beautiful, my love."
He looked transfixed seeing the baby in her arms, and it wasn't until she spoke that he was able to move at all.
"Alexander," she whispered back. "Come and meet your son."
And here ends this story. Thank you for all the reviews. I'll be back soon with more Hamilton stories, and I hope you all have a very Merry Christmas.
