Above All

-One Hundred-Three-

Signals of the end

Purest bliss towards love's grace

Night covers reckless

Layton:

        "Oh, fucking hell!" Amani called out loudly. I inhaled deeply when she grabbed my arm with severity as another strong contraction pulsed through her body. It seemed like forever before she finally unclenched and let out a gasp; this one was long, harder, and fiercer than the previous ones before and I could tell she was already fatigued from the hours of labor she already had to endure thus far.

          We had gotten to the hospital in the middle of the afternoon and now it was pretty late within the night before dilation began to progress. In the beginning, it was a lot easier with her contractions more spread apart that she could pace herself between them. While they timed those, we walked around to keep her focused on anything other than the pain; when that didn't work as much, we tried the other lovely devices like the birthing swing and exercise ball to help ease the discomfort she was suffering from.

            Though despite that, the pain only grew in intensity, so we eventually decided the birthing tub would do for her and it seemed to have relaxed her a lot more than the other options which was great; but when those contractions did come.... man were they strong.

            "That was a really big one, your majesty, hm?" The midwife named Riha stated as she took a peek at the monitoring screen that detailed all Amani's information from her heart rate to the baby's and the contractions graph that showed the pattern between each of them as they came.

            I was completely wired since the beginning of her labor process. It was very difficult seeing Amani in pain; I wish I could take it all away from her, but knowing that I was just useless in this entire ordeal until she finally gave birth to our child was a little discouraging; I was trying my best to be the comforting support she needed while she went through these contractions, but on the other hand, I was also still panicking because this was all so real... soon enough, in a few hours I would be a dad!

            I was excited, but also on the verge of collapsing due to anxiety and stress.

            "Why is this taking forever and a day? I want this baby out of me." Amani whispered in a deathly cool tone, her head rested on my lap a muffled grumble as the doula kneaded her lower back to ease the tension from her while she knelt in the birthing tub.

            Amani's mother who had been with us since the start of the entire thing gave her a soft sigh, pushing some of her coils away from her face. "Oh, Amani baby... I was in labor with you for nearly sixteen hours. It's always the longest when you have the first one." She informed her.

            Sixteen hours! I couldn't believe what I was hearing; thinking that Amani's mother was going through pain as grave as that for an extended period of time seemed like a death sentence. I tensed up immediately thinking of Amani going through the same for an even longer time; it was already gearing up to ten hours since we first arrived here and she was six centimeters dilated. 

            "Did you get an epidural?" I asked her curiously wondering if maybe Amani would consider it even though she wanted to try to go for an unmedicated birth. I watched as Amani's mother shook her head, "We had Amani at the residence in Doe... in privacy so the fewer people knew of her birth, the better." She answered.

            That made sense.

            I still couldn't imagine even with the staff around helping with the birth, how exhausting it might have been to not only keep the matter private but deal with the aftermath of what they would do now that she would be born; it must've been very difficult to decide to eventually take Amani out of Idizia and to another country where she would spend the majority of her living under false pretenses.