Chapter 13: Parenthood

Two weeks after their date, Helen called Danny at 3 in the morning.

“I’m having contractions,” she told him matter of factly. “I think I should go to the hospital.”

Danny was awake in a second and almost bolted from his bed.

“I’ll be picking you up in 10 minutes,” he promised, but Helen protested.

“Easy! Give me time to shower and brush my teeth. Get a shower yourself! This may take a day or more. You know that.”

“I’ll be with you in twenty minutes then, and we’ll go when you’re ready to go. ‘Kay?”

“Great! Trudy is with me, so no worries. Gotta go! See you in a few!”

Danny sat on his bed for a few seconds, trying to get a grasp of the situation. He was going to be a father now. At least Helen appeared to be calm. That was unexpected but welcome and made up partly for the panic he felt himself.

‘Okay,’ he told himself. ‘Time to be a grown-up!’

The three S – shit, shave, shower – took him less than ten minutes. Leaving a short note for Ashley on the kitchen table and remembering in time to take his cellphone, Danny rushed from the apartment and ran downstairs for the underground parking, taking two steps at a time. He stopped two flights down and cursed. Running back up to the apartment, he grabbed the keys for the Volkswagen instead of the Mini, and started to run downstairs again.

The lights in Trudy’s house were on when he stopped in the front and sprinted for the door. Trudy opened before he could ring the doorbell and gave him a brief welcome hug.

“She’ll be down any minute.”

“How frequent are her contractions?” Danny asked immediately.

“Every five minutes or so. She’s definitely going into labour. Her kit is by the door already.”

“Are you here, Danny?” Helen’s voice could be heard from the second floor.

“Yup! Do you need help?”

“Yes, please,” Helen started, and Danny was bounding up the stairs already. “Easy! It just would be nice if you could help me with the socks and shoes.”

She was wearing a maternity dress that went down to her calves, but no socks or shoes. Danny could guess why. He knelt down in front of her.

“Can you lift it?”

Helen complied, but started to giggle. “Now you have me barefoot and pregnant.”

“And you have me groveling at your feet,” Danny returned with a grin while he pulled the wrinkles from the cotton socks.

Once done, he offered his hand to Helen. “Ready to become a mom?”

“As ready as I’ll ever be!” She started to stand but sank down on the chair with a grimace. “Damn!”

Danny hugged her from behind, the way he had learned in the birthing classes and the contractions passed.

“Let’s get down before the next one,” Helen said matter-of-factly. She was as cool as a cucumber.

With Danny’s help, she climbed down the stairs. Trudy held the door open for them and took Helen’s kit, and they all piled into the Passat. Danny helped Helen sit and put on the safety belt before he sprinted around the car and jumped into the driver’s seat.

At 3:30, the streets were empty, and not 15 minutes later, Danny stopped the car in front of the maternity ward. Trudy went in to alert the nurses while Danny helped Helen exit the car and supported her when a fresh contraction hit her. She gave him a grateful smile when it passed and quickly covered the final twenty yards to the entrance. Inside, a nurse-helper produced a wheelchair and Helen was quickly whisked away while Danny stayed to sort out the paper work with the receptionist.

Once he finished that, he quickly went outside to text Ashley, Marsha, Tyler and Irina about the impending addition to the family. Then he switched off his cell and went to find Helen.

She was in a semi-private room, but she was alone save for Trudy. Somebody had dressed her in a hospital gown but left the white cotton socks on her feet.

“Hey, Good Looking!” Danny greeted her.

“Smart ass!” she answered, but with a smile. “They say it’s going to take a while yet. Any ideas how to entertain me?”

It took a while. In fact, it took until 4 p.m. until her water broke and another hour before the midwife declared her ready to go. The obstetrician who had checked on Helen sporadically suited up and joined the midwife with two more nurses and a medical student. Danny was also given scrubs and told to stand by Helen’s side. The contractions had been coming with increasing frequency for two hours and Helen was getting exhausted. It was Danny’s job to keep up her morale.

At 7:10, the tiny head of Larissa Gertrude Westbrook showed between Helen’s shaved vaginal lips and at 7:15, Danny and Helen heard the first weak cry from their newborn daughter. Danny was pressing her hands so fiercely that Helen gasped a little.

“Not so hard, Danny!”

He was all apologies then and felt sheepish while the nurses’ eyes over the surgical masks showed mirth.

“Sorry, darling,” he babbled and kissed her forehead. “We have a baby girl!”

“Yes!” Helen exhaled.

The ob-gyn offered a scissors to Danny to cut the umbilical cord, but he declined, feeling too shaky for that task. The contractions continued for another five minutes until Helen managed to squeeze out the afterbirth, after which little Larissa was placed on her tummy. It was a very emotional moment for them both as they watched the tiny girl that would be their responsibility. Fortunately, Danny remembered something Marsha had told him and he gently took Helen’s hand.

“How do you feel?”

She gave him a weak smile. “Like I just had a human being come out through my ... umh, vagina?”

“You did it, Helen! You’re a mom now, and you were so brave all day. I’m very proud of you.”

“That’s sweet of you, Danny. You were my rock all day. Thank you!”

Larissa was taken by the midwife to be weighed, cleaned and tagged while Helen closed her eyes in pure exhaustion. Danny watched her silently while the ob-gyn, assisted by the med student, closed the episiotomy cut. Then the nurses cleaned her and covered her with absorbent materials and an elastic mesh diaper. The pediatrician also showed to make a first assessment. Helen was very sleepy by now, so it was Danny who received the good news that they had a perfectly healthy baby girl.

Helen, now largely asleep, was transferred to the maternity ward while the midwife took Larissa to the nursery. Danny was told to visit Helen’s room in about one hour, by which time the nurses would have spruced Helen up a bit. Larissa would then be brought to Helen’s room for a first attempt at breast feeding, as Helen had specified.

Danny noticed how sweaty and grimy he was, and he made a quick run home. Ashley was there and so was Lynn, and they hovered around in the bathroom as he showered and told them of everything. Ashley had the phone ready for him to call Tyler and Marsha and inform them of the birth of Tyler’s first grandchild. Irina was next, and she promised to be at the hospital as soon as possible.

After a brief deliberation, Danny called Earl Gunderson to let him know about being an uncle now. Earl seemed very happy about the news, but he also gave Danny a ration of shit which Danny shrugged off. As long as Helen found nothing to complain about his performance as father, that was fine.

Battling with himself for a minute or two, he also called the Gundersons’ home. Her father answered the phone and Danny spoke quickly.

“This is Daniel Westbrook. I just want to let you know that Helen gave birth to a girl this evening. Her name is Larissa. She and Helen are fine.”

“I couldn’t care less about the slut or her daughter!” Gunderson snarled back. “Tell her to go...”

Danny ended the call before Gunderson could finish and squared his shoulders. No help or support would be coming from that corner. Helen and little Larissa were his responsibility alone. Well, not quite alone. Irina, Tyler, Marsha, Ashley and even Lynn would help where they could, and Helen had her grandmother for support. All in all, they were not worse off than most young parents, even better because there would be no financial worries.

Tyler Westbrook had watched with approval as Danny shouldered his responsibilities and had been delighted when Helen and Danny announced that their child would bear the Westbrook name. When the birth date came closer, he established a trust fund to the tune of two million dollars to support the child’s upbringing and education, with Marsha serving as the trustee. Danny had been told not to reveal this to Helen because Tyler and Marsha planned to spring the news on her at the baptism.

Shaking himself out of these thoughts, Danny readied himself to drive back to the hospital. In the hallway, he found Ashley and Lynn.

“We’re coming along,” Ashley informed him. “I wanna see my niece.”

“Me too,” Lynn grinned.

Danny grinned back. As far as he was concerned, Lynn was his sister-in-law.

“Sure thing, Auntie Ashley and Auntie Caitlyn! Every girl should have spinster aunties.”

“Oh, you’re going to pay for that, Danny-Boy,” Lynn promised. “Let’s saddle up!”

Trudy was with Helen when they entered the room, and in her arm rested little Larissa. Danny might as well not have come at all since the four females’ focus was on the cloth bundle with the red face peeking out. He watched quietly from a few feet away as Ashley and Lynn hugged Helen and Trudy before giving Helen the Third Degree about the birth and everything. Danny noticed that all women’s voices were pitched at least one octave higher than normal, with Lynn positively squealing all the time. It turned out that “Aunt Lynn” had the greatest experience in handling newborns, a task that had fallen to her as the oldest girl in her family, but that some of the principles she had learned from her mother clashed with contemporary views of child rearing. Danny made a mental note not to consult Lynn if Larissa was ever sick.

“Danny?” somebody was talking to him, and he tried to focus. “Danny!”

It was Helen and she held out her hand. He stepped close and put his hand in hers.

“How are you doing?” he asked.

“I’m on this huge hormonal high!” she stated, causing high pitched giggles all around. “Have you seen our Larissa?”

Danny nodded and smiled. “Yeah. I just feared for my health here, trying to get between her and her aunties.”

Ashley blushed a little and offered the bundle to Danny. “Here, Daddy Danny.”

For the first time, Danny held his daughter. The experience almost overwhelmed him and he sat carefully on the side of Helen’s bed. Her hand came to rest on his thigh.

“She’s beautiful,” Helen whispered. “I shouldn’t say it, but it’s true.

Before Danny could answer, the door to the room opened. Tyler, Marsha and Irina stood in the door and took in the scene for a moment, before Marsha surged forward to start another hug fest. Tyler held back a little, but Irina looked at her son with shining eyes. Danny got up.

“Wanna hold her, Mama?”

Irina nodded with brimming eyes and accepted the little girl.

“She’s so pretty!” she whispered, obviously not trusting her voice.

Marsha was next to hold her and no less emotional. Even Tyler had moist eyes when it was his turn to hold his first grandchild.

“I can still remember Ashley when she was this small.”

“Hard to believe these days,” Danny quipped provoking squawks of outrage from all the females.

By 9:30, everybody was running out of steam. Larissa was returned to the nursery where a severe looking woman in scrubs was sitting on a hospital chair, intently watching the newborns through the large window. Danny looked at his father who shrugged.

“Better safe than sorry. It would be too easy here to make a grab.”

Danny sighed. Sometimes it sucked to be a rich kid.

A very tired Danny attended classes on the next morning before visiting Helen during lunch break. She was looking chipper and she gave him a smile which grew bigger when he handed her a Danish almond pastry and a medium latte.

“Oh, that’s sweet of you, Danny! Oh, God! Before I forget, I breastfed Larissa all on my own this morning!”

“You did? Wow! I already envy the little pooper,” Danny laughed, causing Helen to blush.

“Behave and try not to make me laugh. I have muscles hurting I didn’t know I had.”

“Oh, my, of course,” Danny flinched. “I ran by the students office this morning to give them a heads-up by the way. Are there any things you need from there?”