Chapter 16

Katherine sat up in bed with a start, she felt the movement inside her again and an involuntary spasm. She cried out in pain, clenching her fists. She had had many in the last hour but that was the most painful. She wasn't due for another week – in the middle of August – and she wasn't even out of the first week – she couldn't be in labour.

Katherine took a deep breath and sighed, closing her eyes, staring at the shadows in her room caused by the moonlight. She sighed and panted, and sat up in bed. There was silence in the house, and she wiped her brow, glancing at the clock, it was 3am. She stretched her legs and rubbed her eyes, it was time to be asleep and she felt awake.

Clearly, the little bugger inside of her was turning and it had disturbed her, so she sat back down and slid under the bed covers gently. There was no movement and she felt her bump, all was asleep.

"Do you mind," she hissed at her bump. "Some of us need our beauty sleep." Katherine had barely closed her eyes when she felt it again, a fierce spasm, gripping the top of her bump tightly and she cried out in shock and pain.

Charlotte came rushing in. "What's up?"

Katherine gripped her belly and stared at her mother. "I've had a contraction. I have had two."

Charlotte sniffed, she was bleary-eyed and tired. "Time them."

"What?"

"Time them." Charlotte looked at her watch and sat down on the bed with Katherine, it may have been 3am but she had been up all night with her husband talking about Paul and the business.

Katherine gripped her mother's hand and took deep breaths trying to be calm and rubbed her belly with the other one.

"You OK?" Charlotte asked and Katherine nodded wiping her mouth and panting with every breath. She groaned and held her breath before gasping.

"It hurts," she wailed. Charlotte looked at the watch and then her daughter.

"We better go to the hospital."

Katherine barely registered an objection as her mother picked up her overnight bag and told her daughter to get dressed. Katherine screamed and squealed in the car as her mother drove her daughter to the maternity unit at the local hospital, her pregnancy seemed to amplify the jolts in the road. The nurse moaned the moment they rang the bell, Katherine should have telephoned before leaving but she was taken to a Delivery Suite the instant she described the length of time between the contraceptions.

Katherine needed the Gas and Air and gleefully put the mask over her face, finding the experience quite enlightening and carefree, like her mind being occupied and transported to another dimension. She felt the world spinning but the mask certainly eased the pain she felt and happily consumed more of the pain relief.

Charlotte was worried, Katherine was crying out louder than she remembered and there was simply no midwife with them. A midwife appeared the moment Charlotte opened the Delivery Suite door and Charlotte nodded towards her as she checked Katherine and then left.

"Aren't you staying?" Charlotte asked in an accusatory tone and the midwife shook her head.

"No need. Call us if you need us Katherine."

Charlotte grumbled about the hospital but Katherine was crying too much to listen. Her contraceptions had got stronger and closer together, she had felt the baby move a lot the previous few days and thought nothing of it, but the pain she was experiencing was simply overwhelming.

"It's coming, Mum," Katherine called, gripping the side of the bed, and screamed in pain as the baby started pressing down on her cervix.

Charlotte called the midwives back and they returned, helping Katherine into a more relaxed and comfortable position and then checking for any sign of the baby. Although Katherine was fully dilated, the baby wasn't coming through yet and they calmed her down, reassured her and got Charlotte to hold onto Katherine's hand.

Katherine's torment was just beginning, her body convulsing and contracting forcefully and painfully for the next hour and a half, before the baby started to appear. The midwives who kept leaving and checking on her, moved into "Delivery Suite 4," now completely ready to assist in the birth of Katherine's baby.

A student midwife was admitted, a girl who looked not much older than Katherine, and she watched and spoke to the mother-to-be. Katherine warmed to Trudi, she was calm and got her mind off of the pain between her legs and got her to tell her what the names she had chosen.

Charlotte watched and gripped hold of Katherine's hands as she pushed and the midwife at the end of the bed, squealed excitedly. "It's coming," she told the tearful teenager. "I can see it's head."

It took another twenty minutes for the baby to be born, tearing Katherine in two places, before the bloody mess was put on the mother's stomach.

Charlotte smiled and glowed, taking a picture on her phone of the tiny infant. "She looks wonderful."

Katherine sniffed and looked at the tiny doll-like creature on her. Blood and mucus covered the baby and a purple cord, twisting like a pigs tail adjoined it to her.

Trudi offered congratulations and cooed over the little baby coiled onto Katherine's skin. Katherine didn't answer, she felt overwhelmed. Suddenly she was a mother, and everyone in her family shifted up a line. Her grandparents were great-grandparents. Her mother and father were grandparents. Her brother was an uncle, but she was a mother.

Katherine wiped her eyes, the little bundle of trouble was her responsibility now and she sniffed. For the next couple of decades, the little bundle of life in front of her, would need her, in the same she needed her mother. She looked at her mother, she had not heard a word she had said for the last few minutes and shook herself out of her stupor.

"She's lovely."

Katherine looked down, she had forgotten about looking for the gender of her baby, she had a baby girl! The midwives allowed Charlotte to cut the cord and Katherine's baby, her "little bundle of joy," was taken from her to be weighed and checked.

"Well done," Charlotte said patting her on the head and wiping her face. "She is absolutely wonderful."

Katherine sighed, she knew her father wouldn't quite agree! Joseph, who had been receiving texts through the morning from his wife, arrived with Lewis shortly after midday to see the baby. Lewis crowed when he glanced down at the tiny infant asleep in the cot and sat down passing his sister some grapes.

"I'm not ill," she moaned and then thanked him. "She is seven pounds exactly."

"Not a bad weight," Joseph replied and then cocked his head to one side smiling at the new addition. "So what are you calling her?"

Katherine sighed. "I was thinking Evie. Evie Rachel Wilson. What do you think?"

Joseph nodded. "It's a nice name."

"You do know that I am the only one in the family now who isn't a parent," Lewis told her and she smiled.

"That's just the way we want it," Charlotte told him and Lewis smiled at his niece.

"Yeah," he muttered. "But she is beautiful. So peaceful."