I know Beh is too. I can see it in her eyes.
Her breathing becomes more rapid, and her fingers clench my hand as she cries out again. I wrap my arm around her to steady her. Her current hands-and-knees position seems to be as good as any of the others she has tried, but the baby still doesn’t come. Beh’s fingers grip around my hand and into the old, worn fur on the ground below her. I tried to put the softer ones below her at the beginning of the day, but Beh moved all of them to the little divot she carved out for the baby.
After the pain seems to have passed, Beh drops to her side on the floor. I reach out and stroke her face, but she doesn’t look to me.
“Beh?”
I see her eyes tighten a little and her chest rise and fall with a deep sigh, but she still won’t look at me. I touch her cheek and then her shoulder. Beh just closes her eyes. She holds her breath and doesn’t make a sound, but I can tell by the tension in her body that another pain has hit her. After a while, she lets out a gasp and starts breathing again.
“Luffs,” I whisper as I touch her cheek again.
Another sigh, but now she looks at me. Her lips twitch into the slightest of smiles before another pain hits her, and she cries out again. Her mouth makes a multitude of strange sounds as she reaches out, pulls me to her, and then pushes me away again.
Then she cries out and pulls me back. I can’t keep up with where she wants me to be, and my own lack of knowledge makes me angry at myself. I don’t know enough about how to help a woman deliver a baby, and Beh needs more help than I can provide for her.
Beh brings her knees up a little, but the way she is lying on her side doesn’t work very well. She’s so tired though; I don’t know how she can keep going. I wonder if she could take a little nap for a while and then try again. Several more pains hit her, but Beh doesn’t get up from her side. It seems the pains are worse when she lies that way, but she is hardly able to move any longer.
I don’t know what to do.
Abruptly, Beh’s eyes go wide as she tries to roll over but can’t. I rise quickly to help her, and a moment later she is back on her hands and knees again, rocking slowly back and forth as she moans.
Beh grabs my arm and uses it for leverage as she gets up on her feet and bends her knees, balancing on the balls of her feet. I move to kneel in front of her, and she wraps her arms around my neck and holds tightly to my shoulders. She cries out again and again as tears pour from her eyes. I want to push the wetness away, but I’m afraid she’ll fall if I let go of her.
As Beh strains with clenched teeth, I glance down and see the crown of a little head with dark hair peeking out from between her legs.
“Hoh!” I reach down with my hand, and I can feel the baby’s hair, wet and warm.
Beh grunts and grips me, then seems to relax for a moment, and the baby’s head disappears back inside of her again. A moment later, Beh leans her head against my shoulder and pushes. Again, a little head can be seen when she does.
Over and over again—each time I reach down, thinking this will be when the baby comes out, but it doesn’t. Finally, as the light from the morning sun begins to trickle into the cave and Beh is nearly unable to keep her footing any longer, it happens.
With a final wail, Beh digs her fingernails into my shoulders and pushes. A wet, slopping sound accompanies a tiny, wriggling figure as it drops from between my mate’s legs and into my hands. I gather it in one arm, and with the other, I slowly helps Beh to lie on her side. She’s still panting, crying, and laughing all at the same time. Beh reaches out toward my hands as a delicate cry escapes the lips of our new child.
I look down into my arms at the tiny little girl that lies in them.
I am a father.
With the only possible exception being her mother, I have never seen anything so beautiful as our daughter. She’s so small lying in my hands that I’m afraid I will break her. Her tiny fingers grasp at nothing, and her little legs kick at my wrists as she cries.