Only one more chapter after this! I'm sad to see it end...
40.
*Katelyn*
The pain just wouldn't abate. Sure, there were times when it wasn't so bad, but it never just stopped completely. Sometimes it was so bad that I just had to cry out in pain. And Rachel Morgan stayed there with me, just like she'd said that she would. I had a feeling that it was because we shared a similar bond – the threat of losing our husbands.
"You're doing good," she told me encouragingly as another contraction came and the pain rippled through me. I grit my teeth and squeezed her hand, hoping that I wasn't hurting her. She'd probably had a lot worse in martial arts classes, though, and she didn't say anything.
"You're close," the doctor said. "It won't be long now. This is a quick labor."
No, this is a painful labor, I corrected in my head. Had my mom really gone through all of this when she'd had me?
"The pain goes away," Rachel said as if she'd read my mind. "It hurts now, but it'll be okay in a little bit. It's worth it."
I had never thought that it wouldn't be. Actually, even though I was in a lot of pain, I was pretty excited to get to finally see the daughter that I had awaited for so long. I wondered who she would look more like or if she could possibly be an equal split of both Joe and I.
"Okay," the doctor said. "It's time."
The pain increased almost instantly when he said that and I felt like I could pass out any second. "Let's give her a little more sedative," he told the nurse. "Not too much, though. We don't want her passing out."
I'm going to pass out from this pain, I thought, just as a wave of soothing spread throughout my body. God bless painkillers. They're like heaven. I felt like drifting off to sleep. I felt like I was floating on a cloud and that any second, I would be carried up to paradise. It just felt so good…
"Katelyn, stay with me," I could hear the doctor say and I snapped back to the present. "I need you to focus, okay?"
I nodded my head and Rachel gripped my hand a little tighter. "It won't be much longer now, Katelyn. Not much longer."
I can do this, I told myself. I can do this.
The doctor gave me some orders, which I somehow managed to follow. Rachel helped by giving me encouragement and sometimes rephrasing the doctor's orders when I really didn't understand what he was trying to tell me to do. And even though I'd gotten more painkillers, I still felt quite a bit of pain towards the end.
Somehow, though, I managed to keep myself from screaming. I just kept telling myself that everything was going to be okay. That it was all going to be over very soon. And Rachel told me all of those things too, as she held my hand and used a rag to wipe sweat off of my face.
And then there was screaming.
"Let's get this cord cut."
It's over.
"You did it," Rachel told me.
But I couldn't see her face. My eyes were closed and I was breathing with relief, feeling as if a huge weight had left my body and now there wasn't much holding me to the earth.
The screaming had stopped.
"Let's get this bleeding stopped. Here, clean the baby off."
Bleeding.
Baby.
"There we go," the doctor was saying. "I think that should do it for a while."
A cool rag touched my face again and Rachel's voice said, "Katelyn?"
My eyes flew open and I saw her green ones looking down at me. She smiled brightly and said, "You did it, Katelyn. Do you want to meet your daughter now?"
My daughter. Unable to speak, I nodded.
The nurse came forward then, holding a little bundle of white blankets. She smiled at me and held it out. "Here you go. Congratulations."
I don't know how my arms did it, but suddenly, the little bundle was held close to my chest and I was looking down at my daughter. I can't even describe to you how I felt in that moment, because I was unsure myself. I felt so many emotions that tears streamed down my face. Never before had I seen something so beautiful.
She was tinier than I had pictured, even though I knew that all babies were little. And everything about her just seemed so perfect. I was almost afraid that I was going to break her, even though I wasn't holding her all that tightly.
"Oh," Rachel breathed from beside me. "She's so beautiful."
"She is," I agreed in a whisper. "And so tiny."
Rachel chuckled softly under her breath. "That's what I was thinking the first time that I ever held Cammie."
I wondered what color her eyes were. But, they were closed in a peaceful sort of sleep and I wasn't about to disturb that. She looked like an angel there in my arms, wrapped in a blanket. I couldn't believe that this tiny, perfect thing belonged to me. That I was responsible for her.
That I was a mother.
If you had told me a year before that I was going to be having a child soon, I would have called you crazy. But there I was, holding my newborn daughter.
"What's her name?" Rachel asked me.
I didn't know. I had wanted to wait to pick out a name for a time when Joe was with me. It hadn't felt quite right, trying to think of a name for our baby when Joe wasn't there. And even though a name would sometimes pass through my head, nothing had ever really stuck there. But suddenly, the words were out of my mouth. "Josephine," I said. "Josephine Catherine Solomon."
"That's beautiful," Rachel said. "Josephine Catherine Solomon."
And it was beautiful, I decided.
It was perfect.