Monday 7th September 2015, 5:20pm
"Where's my chunky monkey?" Tom joked as he entered his home where he expected to find his wife getting up to mischief. But instead, he found her cooking dinner in the kitchen.
"Call me that again and you can cook for yourself tonight." Sam threatened playfully.
"What're we having?" Tom asked as he slipped his shoes off.
"A three course authentic Chinese meal." Sam announced and Tom smirked as he noticed that the black and white checkered apron had only just been able to have been tied up at the back of Sam. Whereas usually, she would wrap it around herself and then tied it up at the front because the strings were so long.
"And I'm guessing you chose to do this to keep you busy all day." Tom concluded.
"Yep."
"Well it smells delicious. By the way, Fletch is coming around in about five minutes to drop something off." Tom stated.
"Drop what off?" Sam demanded as she put her hands on her currently non-existent hips.
"A beside sleeper. It's a three sided cot that we can have on the side of our bed when you want him to sleep next to you or I, and then you won't have to get up in the night to feed him. Fletch said he wanted to give his one to us because there is no way that he's having five kids, and because we're giving him the puppy." Tom explained. "Anyway, has there been any changes today? Have you had your show?" Tom asked curiously.
"No I haven't had my show. But - bear in mind that you told me to tell you everything," Sam began to which Tom gave her a prompting look. "Right, don't panic but I had a little bit of diarrhoea. But I promise it was only once and I feel fine now." Sam stated.
"When was this?"
"Just after I woke up this morning."
"And you didn't text me sooner?!" Tom protested.
"Yeah because I didn't know if your phone was lying about in the staff room like it usually is and I didn't want anyone else to read a text from your wife saying 'I've got diarrhoea.'" Sam retorted. "If someone like Robyn had gotten hold if it, it'd be around the entire ED by lunch and if Fletch had found out, he'd never stop making diarrhoea jokes." Sam stated.
"Fair enough." Tom smirked.
"Bring it straight through mate." Tom smiled as he helped Fletch to carry the light brown wooden bedside sleeper into their bedroom where there was an exercise ball, a canister of gas and air and a medical bag from the hospital.
"What's all this?" Fletch questioned.
"Sam wants a home birth without a midwife." Tom replied as they placed it at the edge of the room because the baby was not born yet and so it would only get in the way.
"Thanks for this Fletch." Sam said as she leant in the doorway.
"You're wel- Jeez, you have gotten massive since I last saw you!" Fletch laughed.
"I would've thought that seeing as you have four kids that you know that that is a very inappropriate thing to say to a very hormonal woman who is not in a very good mood because she's overdue." Sam remarked as she folded her arms and rested them on her bump. She was standing with the apron on over her grey tracksuit bottoms and white vest top.
"Yes but you're not any ol' hormonal woman, you're Sam Kent which means that I know that you haven't cried throughout your entire pregnancy." Fletch said smugly. "And trust me, that is something to be proud of." He added. "Look there are a few midwives' tales to kick start labour if you're really that desperate."
"I'm listening." Sam quipped.
"I not sure why but having a spicy curry somehow helps, having sex could help because semen could soften your cervix, and this one worked for Nat when Mikey was overdue. Also, it's a bit awkward but nipple stimulation tricks your body into thinking that you're breastfeeding which releases oxytocin and that makes your uterus contract." Fletch explained.
"And that's why they call them 'tales'. Fletch they're not going to work, it was probably just a coincidence with Mikey." Sam replied.
"And this is why being a pregnant doctor isn't always a good thing; you think you know it all but trust me, just because something hasn't been proven, doesn't mean it's not true. You can't prove that there's such a thing as gravity but everyone knows that that exists." Fletch stated to which Sam twisted her lips and looked down at the floor.
"Right, I'll show you out. I think our dinner must nearly be done." Tom said as Sam was clearly in deep thought. Both men squeezed past Sam at the doorway and then Tom let Fletch out before he went back and Sam was in the kitchen again. "Right, why don't we spend some time together tonight and see if they really are tales?" Tom suggested softly. "You don't have to do anything and as soon as you say stop, I'll stop. And of course, we don't have to do anything if you're not in the mood." They hadn't had sex for almost a fortnight and even then it wasn't as good as it could've been because Sam had heartburn. He was almost always in the mood for sex, but of course Sam was rarely up for those sorts of things.
"No, I do want to." Sam said quietly as she pretended to be stirring the stir fry to avoid eye contact with him. "Can we do it in the shower? After dinner?" Sam asked more confidently once she realised that maybe she would be more comfortable there than lying on her side on the bed, plus pregnancy seemed to make her sweat more and she would be able to hide that if they were both under the stream of the shower.
"Yeah, of course we can." Tom nodded.
"And now, we've just got to let nature take it's course." Tom concluded as he wrapped a towel around his waist and then he wrapped a beach towel around Sam's figure as she too stepped out of the shower, because she could no longer fit a bath towel all the way around her body. Sam smiled as she put her hands on Tom's bare chest, went up on her tiptoes and kissed Tom on the lips before she returned to her original height to prevent her from getting a leg cramp. "Well you're certainly in a better mood." Tom smirked.
"What can I say? You never fail to impress me." Sam remarked before she walked into the bedroom.
"Have you come up with names for the puppies yet?" Tom asked.
"Not quite." Sam admitted. "I will do soon though." She added. "In fact, why don't you name the male?" Sam suggested as they were only going to have one male dog left once Fletch took his pup when it was old enough to leave, and then there would be two female pups, the only male one and Shadow.
"Because whatever I decide to call it, you won't like it." Tom laughed.
"No I work you can decide what to call him." Sam stated.
"Alright, he's called Fergie after Alex Ferguson." Tom concluded to which Sam grimaced at the stupid name. "I told you you wouldn't like it!" Tom protested.
"Well can you imagine shouting Fergie across the park?" Sam argued. "Plus it's not a very masculine name. Why don't you just call him Alex?" Sam suggested.
"Fine, Alex it is." Tom concluded.
"I really don't want to go overdue." Sam mumbled.
"Labour induction won't harm our baby." Tom said reassuringly.
"I know but I don't want to have to get that far because then I won't be able have a homebirth; it'd be too risky."
"Well, we can try our best to get labour kick started But at the end of the day, our son is gonna come out when he's ready."
Tom had just had a shave when he entered the living room to find Sam kneeling on the floor in front of the whelping box where she was moving a puppy that had crawled away from Shadow and was whining because it was clearly lost. Sam smiled as the puppy was more than content when it was united with it's mother and siblings before she turned to see Tom standing in his pyjama shorts and a shirt.
"You've got shaving cream in your ear." Sam commented.
"No I haven't." Tom argued.
"I know, but you normally do." Sam stated bluntly. "I've come up with names for them." Sam added.
"Yeah? Well you'd better have a good way of remembering them because it's very easy to get them confused when they all look like scrawny little black and white guinea pigs." Tom stated.
"Well Shadow is the biggest, but when the others grow up, she's always going to have the purple collar. Alex, the only male male is always going to have the red collar for Manchester United, the one with the dark blue collar is Fletch's pup that hasn't been named yet because his kids haven't decided. And this little girl with the pink collar is called Panda, and this one with the light blue collar is called Zoe." Sam stated and Tom burst out laughing.
"You've called a border collie puppy after our boss?!" He laughed.
"Yeah. Zoe is stubborn, she thinks she's in charge of the others and she doesn't like competition. Neither does our boss!" Sam joked and both laughed for a while before they calmed down.
"But seriously though, I can't shout across a park Fergie, but you can shout Panda?" Tom queried.
"Yeah but she suits the name Panda because she's black and white, in what way does Fergie suit a male border collie?" Sam remarked.
"Alright I give up. So we've got Shadow, Panda, Zoe and Alex." Tom listed so that he would remember them, but he was sure to get them confused in one way or another.
"Right. I'm gonna go to bed." Sam announced.
"Yeah me too. It's been a long day." Tom sighed as he got up. Honestly, he wasn't really very tired because it was only 9pm but he knew that because Sam was so heavily pregnant, she was a light sleeper because anything seemed to wake her up. And that meant that if Sam went to bed early and then Tom got into bed an hour later, Sam would be woken up and he knew that she needed all the sleep she could get. They both brushed their teeth before they got into bed and cuddled up, awaiting the arrival of their son...
Tuesday 8th September, Midnight
Sam awoke to an annoyingly familiar feeling: a full bladder. But she really couldn't be bothered to get up and get out from under the comfy, warm duvet where she felt safe. And so she closed her eyes again, and it didn't take long before sleep overcame her.
1:30am
I slowly opened my eyes into the darkness to realise that yet again, I had woken because I needed the toilet and I must've woken half a dozen times in the last hour or so because of the same reason. I gave up because I knew that I would have to get up eventually and so I carefully tiptoed through the darkness until I closed the bathroom door and switched the light on so that I didn't wake my husband. The light was scalding, but I needed to see where I was going. I pulled my pyjama bottoms and underwear down, sat on the toilet and for what seemed like the millionth time in the last few weeks, I emptied my bladder...
Sam woke because she felt uncomfortable, and she almost felt a tingling feeling between her thighs. And it took a couple of seconds until she realised that she was wet. Finally, she thought, her waters had broken. But just to make sure, she reached down and put her hand in the warm puddle that had formed on top of the waterproof sheet that was protecting the matress. She brought her damp hand to her nose, only her heart skipped a beat when she realised that it wasn't amniotic fluid; it was urine. No she wouldn't have... Maybe she hadn't gone to the toilet after all. Maybe she had dreamt that she had gone to the toilet, but she had actually wet the bed in her sleep. Her heart was pounding in her chest as she tried to think of a discrete way that she could deal with the situation, only before she came up with an idea Tom stirred and he had woken up too.
"Sam, Sam I think your waters have broken." Tom whispered excitedly as his boxers were wet from the puddle on the sheets.
"It's not my waters." Sam mumbled.
"What?" He asked, as she was being very quiet and so he hadn't heard her.
"It's not my waters." She repeated quietly.
"Oh. Did you have an accident? It's alright, it happens; your bladder is under a lot of strain at the moment."
"I'm sorry." Sam sniffed. "I don't understand, I thought I'd gotten up to go... I'm so stupid." Sam muttered to herself. She didn't understand why she had wet the bed because she hadn't done so since she was a little girl.
"Hey, don't cry remember you've made it this far and you are not allowed to cry now, you hear me?" Tom said sternly as he reached behind him and switched on the bedside lamp. Tom slid out of bed and Sam watched him in confusion before she realised that he had gotten her a clean pair of pyjamas, underwear and a panty liner. "Why don't you go and get cleaned up and changed in the bathroom, and I'll quickly change the sheets?" Tom ordered rather than suggested as he pulled the damp duvet back and Sam had to peel her legs open as she sat up in her dripping wet shorts and the back of her shirt was wet too where the liquid had seeped upwards. "It's okay, we'll forget about this and we won't speak about it again, I promise." Tom whispered reassuringly before he kissed Sam on the cheek and then she got up, took the pile of clothes from Tom and waddled uncomfortably out into the bathroom.
Tom put the pillows on the floor because those were still dry and clean. But the duvet was wet so he took that and the bed sheet and he put them in the washing machine. Then, he was left with the clear plastic waterproof sheet on the mattress that had a pool of yellow liquid in the centre of it where there was a slight dip in the bed. He soaked it up with kitchen roll and threw that in the bin, before he used antibacterial wipes on the sheet, dried it with some paper towels and then he put a clean sheet over the matress. They didn't have a spare duvet and so Tom set on gathering several blankets that they could sleep under for the rest of the night.
Meanwhile, Sam had just thrown her soiled pyjamas and underwear in the bin because she was ashamed of them and she knew that even though they could be cleaned, they would only bring back the memory of that night. She then slowly went back to the bedroom where Tom was still making the bed up so she flicked the living room light on and knelt down in front of the whelping box to check on the puppies. All four of them were fast asleep, all with their heads facing Shadow's belly where they had fallen asleep whilst they were feeding, but Shadow was still awake with her sleepy eyes looking directly at Sam - she knew Sam could be trusted with her puppies and that she wasn't a threat so she hadn't gotten up. Sam was so proud of her dog - she was only a year old when she had become a mother and many had doubts about whether Shadow could even give birth safely. But Shadow had defeated them, and not only and she had a fairly good birth, but she had turned as maternal as some humans as she loving fed her puppies and licked them clean every day. Sam gently stroked Shadow's head and neck but she jumped when she realised that Tom had entered the room.
"You wanna come back to bed?" He asked softly and Sam nodded so he slipped his hands under her arms and hoisted her onto her feet before they both went to the bedroom. "The duvet was a bit wet too so I thought we'd be alright with blankets for tonight." Tom explained.
"Thank you... For cleaning up. You didn't have to."
"No, but I wanted to. I'd do anything for you." Tom stated as they both climbed into bed, and Tom snuggled up to Sam from behind. "He's already being a little pain in the bum isn't he? First he's late and then he does this." Tom smirked as he turned off the light.
"Don't blame him, it was my fault. I woke up and I need the toilet but I fell back asleep again; I should've gotten up." Sam muttered ashamedly.
"I wasn't blaming him and I'm not going to blame you because it was no one's fault; it was an accident. Now get some sleep because some of us have got work in the morning." Tom joked halfheartedly and Sam rolled her eyes before she nuzzled her face into her pillow and tried to put the night's event behind them.
Coming up: Sam finally goes into labour! But will it be after an induction, or naturally?
Thanks for reading, please review :)