I had eighty thousand dollars, so I paid my sister to give me a baby.

Finally, an opening line of manuscript that caught Naomi’s interest. She’d tossed aside so many submissions even during the last thirty minutes: illness memoirs, high school nostalgia, lovers torn asunder, even a piece involving vampires, which at least was easy to decline. We are a monthly women’s magazine. Please submit this work to a speculative fiction magazine instead.

There were phrases and words so recurrent, they felt like kernels stuck in her teeth.

Characters stood transfixed, with translucent skin or throaty chuckles or improbable emerald or violet eyes. And the flowers! Always honeysuckle, hydrangeas, bougainvillea. She’d once appreciated the sibilance of hibiscus, of narcissus, but now yearned for a fictional field of vetch, a patch of mugwort, a bouquet of birds-foot-trefoil, anything different enough to keep her awake, rather than drifting off with her head on the desk. Was it a lie, in that case, to tell the author it wasn’t quite what we were looking for?

Colleagues said that pregnancy would be like this: waves of nausea, overwhelming fatigue, mood swings. But even before the pregnancy, she’d felt near-suffocation: the similarity of the submissions, the grammatical errors, the authors’ palpable desperation pulsing off the pages. Also, the eye rolls and sighs of the other editors when she presented a piece for consideration that veered from their “usual.” They were nice people, her colleagues; they were supposed to be her friends, but she found the discussions about prepared-meal services, Pinterest ideas, beach holidays, and online clothing sales as soporific as the manuscripts. People asked about her work, and she used words like fine and stable and wondered what had happened to the words of her employment interview: motivating, challenging, stimulating. Did anyone’s job live up to the interview? Had she simply made a poor choice?

This piece of writing about the woman and her sister would have to wait, or she’d be late for class. She put a pink post-it on the title page as a reminder and gathered her things.

 

Pre-birth class in an elementary school gymnasium seemed like the last place to find inspiration for a life change. Voices echoed in the too-large space, the chairs were much too small for pregnant women and their partners, and the water fountains in the hallway were at knee height, requiring a near-squat to rehydrate.

Tyne, another first-time mother, consistently challenged and contradicted the soft-spoken nurse who led the classes.

“Why should we be delivered by a doctor? Why not a midwife?”

“Why would I get an epidural? I want them to hear my screams, know my pain!”

“Don’t let anyone induce you with medications. Labour should start when your body says.”

As she spoke, Tyne massaged her pregnant belly, defiantly exposed beneath her crop top, the sun tattoo around her umbilicus expanding weekly. She had rings on both her thumbs and wore her blue-streaked hair in two ponytails. She chewed gum constantly and smelled like Juicy Fruit.

Meanwhile, Naomi sat awkwardly on her blue gym mat. She, with her college education, her diamond ring, her husband (who, due to shift work at the mine, could not attend the classes), her meagre benefits and maternity leave, her stretchy pants with a tasteful loose shirt, watched Tyne’s passion and felt suddenly that she’d done it all wrong. She had an urge to take Tyne’s hand, to say teach me how to be. Mentally, she folded her tidy beige life into a beige vinyl case, then opened another: red, sequined, irregular; filled with words like vibrancy and risk.

Tyne ranted about men and obstetrics, waving her Dixie cup of apple juice: “Ever since the Pill was invented, men have wanted to take back control for themselves. Look at the obstetricians–all men–who started the whole idea, back in the day, of sedating women, dragging babies out with forceps, cutting episiotomies, whisking babies to the nursery right after birth! All to control women and make childbirth their own.”

The soft-spoken nurse tried her best. Naomi had forgotten her name, but the nurse’s style evoked fresh muffins, adopted kittens, knitted dishcloths for an elderly neighbour. Still, she faced the steam roller that was Tyne without raising her voice. Things had changed, she said sweetly. There were many options. Mothers had choices. Many obstetricians were now women, many birth positions were possible. Tyne snorted, rolled her eyes, sighed loudly, while Naomi’s head swiveled back and forth like a tennis match.

Naomi did hear a lot from other women–not just Tyne– about drugs, stitches, bright lights, stirrups. Women seemed to revel in retelling painful birth stories. Why had she never thought about these things? After class one week, she bought a bottle of black nail polish, smoothed it onto her thumb with the little brush, just the one nail. During the day, she glanced at its inky surface and felt something long dormant come to life within her.

 

Naomi read the manuscript about the surrogate baby, and it was well done, avoiding both maudlin imagery and the words that drove into her skin like spikes. She promoted the piece in team meeting.

“Hmm. Not really our kind of article.” Marte’s smile felt like a pat on the head. The women asked about Naomi’s pregnancy, clearly linking her fecundity to her story choice. Naomi, normally not an outspoken contributor, pushed back her chair and stood.

“This is a good, timely topic. Well-written. Interesting.” Thumping the manuscript with her palm. “It’s something different, yes. Do we really want to publish the same themes, the same styles, over and over and over? Are we nothing but fashion, recipes, and romance fiction? Do we really think that’s what older women want?”

“Ah, Naomi,” said Gwen, who was chief editor. She sat back in her chair, flipped her reading glasses up onto her head. “Our readers want to know they can count on us. They want to know when they open a copy of Yes, Ma’am they’ll get the same magazine they’re used to. Nothing sad or cutting edge. Nothing political. I feel like we’ve spoken of this before. We can’t afford to lose any subscriptions.” Down went the glasses onto her nose, where she peered over them at Naomi. The other women around the table exchanged nods, glances, whispers. Naomi suddenly felt ridiculous standing. What is this, third grade?

 

On a bench in the park, once she finished frustration-crying, she watched people pass with strollers, roller blades, dogs–sometimes all three, impressive– and thought about work. Words that came to mind: rigidity, obstinacy, ennui. The urge was strong to do something, to make a statement, to be unexpected, but Naomi couldn’t think of anything worth commitment. Shout “I quit!” Colour my hair? Get a tattoo? She went home and clawed through her closet, pulling out a tightly fitted shirt that clung to her swollen belly, that barely met up with the waistband of her pants. She turned, admired her newly exposed cleavage, the tiny bulge of her navel.

 

“What we should be doing,” said Tyne in her loud voice during the next class, “is delivering unassisted. On our own, at home. Or helping each other and skipping the medicalization of a natural process.”

Soft-spoken nurse appeared a bit panicked. No, no, no, that was much too dangerous. She cited complications, hemorrhaging, babies needing resuscitation, maintaining a beatific smile that belied the subject matter.

“Rare,” scoffed Tyne. “That’s what they want us to think, so we’ll give in to their control.”

Naomi felt a surge of energy. Unassisted birth: the ultimate feminist statement, perhaps her ticket to the red sequined life. Reclamation, renunciation, thought Naomi, also empowerment. A collective shout that this body, this process, is mine. It belongs to me. I will do it myself. Ignoring the couples who shook their heads and moved away from Tyne, Naomi wedged beside her, offered to be partners since Tyne, like Naomi, was unaccompanied.

“This is such bullshit,” Tyne said, even as she did the breathing patterns under Naomi’s coaching.

“Why come to the classes, if you don’t like any of the information?” Naomi asked between breaths: hee hee hoo. Hee hee hoo.

“Someone has to challenge them.”

“Who?”

“The health care workers. They’ve brainwashed an entire population to think hospitals are indispensable.”

“So, what will you do?”

“I’ll do what I want. I’ll do it myself.”

Naomi impulsively grasped Tyne’s hand.

“Me too. I’m going to do that too.” Saying the words out loud made them real: she felt goosebumps rise on her arms. Tyne shook their joined fist in the air.

“Yeah, you are. Ha!” She snapped her Juicy Fruit and threw her head back. “Whooooo!”

 

Naomi, when she got home, painted another fingernail black. She pulled her hair into two ponytails.

“Why are you wearing your hair like an eight-year-old?” asked her husband, Will. He was in the kitchen downing a glass of water, sweaty from lawnmowing, one of his favourite activities. He alternated lengthwise mowing with crosswise and diagonal, always in the same order, week after week.

“Why should you get to choose how I wear my hair?” said Naomi. “I happen to like it like this.” He blinked at her tone.

“Well, I like the new tight top,” he admitted, polishing his eyeglasses on his shirt. “What did you do to your thumb?”

 

Once she heard about unassisted birth, Naomi could hardly wait to tell her midwife Sunny. She’d selected Sunny due to her name, imagining a wise woman–sage-femme­–with flowing clothes and no makeup. She’d pictured crystals, and hands massaging her pregnant belly, perhaps some incense. Authentic, natural, beneficent.

Instead, Sunny had freckled skin and bright lipstick, her red hair twisted up expertly in a clip. She wore stylish earrings and enviable spike-heeled shoes. She even wore a blazer for some appointments. Naomi liked Sunny, but part of her clung to the midwife tropes and wished for Birkenstock sandals and dreadlocks and a sense that modern medicine was being challenged more than just giving birth in a tub (which was offered at the clinic). Part of her wanted the notes written in a leather-bound notebook, and more talk about essential oils and cabbage leaves and shea butter, whether efficacious or not.

When Naomi presented her plan to Sunny, she thought she’d hear words like bravery or adventurous, maybe even pioneering.

“Sorry, Naomi, this is not a good idea,” said Sunny. She talked about lack of support, lack of pain management, lack of emergency equipment.

“Childbirth is natural,” Sunny said. “But it has risks. Big ones.”

“But they’re rare,” said Naomi. “People emphasize them to make us deliver in hospital.”

 “Who told you that?”

“I thought you’d be on my side.”

“Naomi,” –was that pity Sunny wore on her face?– “It’s not a matter of sides. It’s a matter of safety. I get that you want this to be natural, but my job is to help reduce risk. That’s why you’re here.”

 

Will just stared at her when she told him.

“Are you crazy?”

“Of course I’m not crazy! I just want our baby to be born in a peaceful, healthy way. Not some sterile, stirrup-filled hospital room.”

“Mimi, we can’t do this on our own. We need doctors and nurses. I’m not even thrilled about the midwife. And you want me to do this myself?”

“No, I want to do this myself. You don’t even need to be involved.”

“It’s my baby, too!”

“Listen,” said Naomi, switching to a gentler tone, cupping her hand on Will’s cheek. “Don’t you ever want to do something truly interesting? Something epic? I mean, what can I say if someone asks about the excitement in my life? I help people avoid dangling participles?”

Will’s eyebrows wrinkled towards each other, and she realized she was speaking to someone for whom epic meant going to Mexicana restaurant instead of Steve’s Steakhouse. Will removed her hand from his face, held it, turned it over.

“Isn’t becoming parents epic enough?” he asked. “What did you do to your thumb?”

 

Tyne, during class, described friends who delivered in hospital, with early epidurals, prolonged labours, augmentation with hormones, caesarian sections. One baby was left with a forceps mark over his eye that remained for weeks. Tyne spoke of umbilical cords cut while they still pulsed with life, placentas scraped out by hand to speed things up.

“No wonder so many children have anxiety and inattention. How can you be poised and focused with such a violent start?” The soft-spoken nurse listened with her head cocked to one side, her smile and shoulders stiff. Elora, that was her name. Naomi’s mind paused on augmentation, epidural, caesarian.

 

Even before pregnancy, Naomi walked regularly in the woods. There were nature trails an easy five-minute drive from her home, and she knew which branches of the trail took her furthest from bicycles, families, and unleashed dogs, to enjoy the serenity of the forest.

Ultimately, Naomi and Sunny reached a compromise: Naomi could hike in the woods as much as she liked, including during her early labour. Once she was uncomfortable, she would return home and Sunny would meet her there. If she had too much pain to drive, she could call, and Sunny or Will would pick her up. She’d deliver at the midwifery clinic.

“You’ll need to bring your cell phone, every time you go,” said Sunny, as Will nodded so hard his glasses dislodged.

“I always have my cell phone.”

“It’s not always charged,” Will pointed out.

“So I’ll also make sure it’s charged.” Naomi glared at Will and noted the glance he exchanged with Sunny.

 

“Well, best of luck, Naomi. We’ll look forward to your return.” Gwen shook her hand. The group never held baby showers until the infant arrived, due to someone’s superstition. “Any plans for mat leave?”

Naomi had avoided Gwen for weeks. Now, she smoothed her hands over the tight-fitting, diamond-patterned dress she’d found at the thrift store.

“I’ll be writing, I hope,” said Naomi, surprising them both. “About this natural birth, about surrogacy, about all kinds of female topics.” She waved with her black-lacquered hand. Reclamation. Renunciation. Empowerment.

 

The day the cramps began, she considered skipping her walk, then decided it was the perfect way to either move the labour along or get her mind off it, since Will had another twelve- hour shift. She enjoyed the rhythm of her stride, the wind-rustled leaves, textured mosses, scattered pinecones and fern fronds, the smells of earth and animal and rot. She heard the tok-tok-tok of a woodpecker and searched for it in the treetops, then startled as a grouse raced across her path.

She thought of words like purity and kinship. Part of this wild place; a wild creature doing the most natural thing that wild creatures could do. She embraced the periodic waves of pain, massaged her hard rounded belly, allowed herself the pleasure of shouts into the mix of forest echoes. The contractions became stronger, her massaging harder, her cries more like rhythmic moans, and she thought about driving home, or calling Sunny. It was so beautiful there in the trees, so perfect in its isolation, that she decided to wait. The waves of pain continued, and she imagined water washing over her and then receding, as the soft fingers of endorphins skimmed her gently, making her eyelids droop as she moved, only to awaken fully for the next wave, stronger, and longer. She sat on a stump and wrote in her journal, adding symbiosis to the list of words about the experience, adding metamorphosis.

Finally, she knew it was time to go. She reached for her cell phone in her pocket, then in her cross-body purse, but it wasn’t there.

She shook out her clothes, removed every item from the purse, checked her pockets again. She suddenly remembered deciding she didn’t want her sweater, tossing it back in the car. Her cell was in the pocket, where she had specifically put it in case she decided to leave her purse behind.

I’ll walk back. I’ll start heading back. She continued moving, massaging, sometimes staggering or holding onto a tree until the pain passed. Another wave gripped her and she fell to her knees, whimpering. She pulled herself up and kept going, no longer noticing the trail. When her water broke and flooded her feet and the leaves and branches, she felt a moment of awe, a true connection with the woods, but the next contraction caused her to roll into a ball, and she retched into the ferns. She looked around, completely off the path now, and thought, I don’t know I don’t know if I can do this. I don’t know if I should do this.

I have no choice I have no choice.

The contractions came closer together, every couple of minutes, and she could no longer stay on her feet at all, but sat and rocked and cried until they passed, willing herself to relax, telling herself, women have done this since the beginning of time. Someone will hear me. Someone will see me. She tried to think of peaceful words–embrace, perseverance, solitude– but instead she heard Sunny saying Naomi, this is not something you want to do alone. She heard Will saying, it’s my baby, too. As the contractions progressed, she felt the tension—knowing, anticipating—so that when the next pain hit it seemed even bigger, even worse, because of that knowing.

Peripherally, she noticed the shadows lengthening before the pressure in her pelvis intensified and she knew she had to push. She had imagined pushing while leaning on a tree or squatting but found her legs would not hold her. Tyne had spoken disdainfully about women lying on their backs in hospitals, but now Naomi lay half sitting half lying, with her hands pulling back her knees, screaming, grunting, arching, pushing out her baby alone in the woods. Between contractions she lay back, parched but unable to get to her water bottle resting nearby before the next contraction hit. She lost track of time, could only focus on the unbearable pressure between her legs, the exhaustion, the pleasant drowsiness that took over after each set of pushing. Finally, finally, she felt the baby’s head emerging, after the most intense pain she could imagine, after feeling that she would split in half with the effort. The baby’s head came out, she could feel it, she could see it, and she cried with relief and breathed for a few seconds before yet another contraction hit and she screamed NOW. NOW!

Once the head was out, she’d heard the rest of the baby delivered quickly, but after two more sets of pushing with more force than ever before, the baby was not coming out.

“Come out,” she coaxed, gasping. “Come out! Come out!” This encouragement was followed by a string of curses, and she screamed through four more pushes.

Nothing.

Naomi’s vision narrowed. She wanted someone to cut her open with an axe. She knew she might pass out and knew she could not pass out. She forced herself to focus on Sunny’s midwifery book, which she had diligently studied. The baby is stuck. Something about only having a certain amount of time. Something about getting onto hands and knees. She began to flip over but a wave of pain prevented her. She pushed so hard she felt she was turning inside out, she saw stars, the woods tilted.

She realized she could die. Her entire renunciation had minimized a key component: nature is brutal. Things die in nature; creatures kill each other to survive. Parents eat their young, steal from others, do what they must to survive.

She heaved herself onto all fours, pushed against the next wave, felt something give within her, and the baby came out with a gush of blood. She lost consciousness and they both lay still among the leaves.

 

 Waking: a sense of urgency. Feeling for, finding the baby. Crawling, staggering tree to tree with the baby, the cord still attached, what is that noise, what is that terrible noise? The world moving, wobbling, she fell, her vision closed in like a tiny black hole, she pulled herself up.

A voice: are you all right miss? Oh my God, is that–? Are you –?

She realized, as the man stumbled, holding her up, that the noise was a raw, animal keening coming from her own throat. The hiker had a car, a phone, the trek out seemed endless. They drove to the hospital, no time for an ambulance. She climbed out of the car when he had barely pulled to a stop, zigzagging toward the entrance, feeling that the world had frozen in place and only she was moving, not even seeing. Understanding, in the core of herself, that something had been torn away that would never be replaced.

 

Elora, on a maternity shift, was going down to retrieve medication from the hospital pharmacy when she heard a strange noise at the front entrance to the hospital, so loud and ominous that it pulled her immediately. People in the entry were staring as one, no one moving, no one helping, only a wave of murmuring, and the half scream, half moan, cycling from Naomi. She had staggered in the front entrance, with her hair in disarray, her face streaked with tears, covered in impossible amounts of blood, holding a baby that was deep purple in colour, the umbilical cord still attached, dangling from beneath her stained dress, blood running down her legs and pooling on the floor as she staggered unseeing.

It was Elora who shouted for people to get out of the way, grabbing a wheelchair from the line of them along the wall. It was Elora who approached, who touched Naomi despite her unseeing eyes, who recognized Naomi and said let’s get you some help.

It was Elora who lowered Naomi into the chair, then ran to the emergency room, shouting the second she burst through the doors.

“Help! We need help! We need help!”

 That, and Naomi’s ungodly noises brought people from every corridor. An emergency physician, an obstetrician, a respiratory therapist, a pediatrician, and multiple nurses converged in a trauma room, but it was Elora who motioned for the sedative, who lowered Naomi to the bed, who finally clamped the cord and took the baby to the waiting team, stopping with a look anyone who tried to shout, or demand, or step in.

Intravenous lines, transfusions, blood pressure support, oxygen, removal of a stuck placenta, and Naomi’s condition was stable. Elora was on the Naomi side of the room, and talked to her continually, told her everything that was happening even once she was sedated into sleep. Elora talked and talked in her gentle voice, trying not to think about what was happening on the baby’s side of the room—where they had turned off the machines, where people were dispersing, shoulders shaking. Trying not to think about what would happen when Naomi woke up and together, they faced the inadequacy of words.