I am sitting on the floor of the Lindville Medical Center’s Lamaze Lounge. I am the only female in the room with a flat stomach. My mother is fifteen minutes late for our first childbirth class. The other people sitting in our circle are mothers, and fathers, and unborn babies. People are looking at me and wondering why I’m not “showing” yet, why I don’t have a partner, why I’m in this class when I am so obviously not pregnant. “People!” I want to say. “It’s not me!” I cannot believe Mom isn’t here yet. I can’t believe she’s doing this to me. This is so embarrassing.
I’m only here because Mom wants us to “bond” by having me there for her next—and she claims her last—baby delivery. I don’t know how I feel about it. Most of the time I’m either scared or disgusted, but every now and then I’m sort of flattered. Only . . . what if the next baby comes out kicking like Dean?
The Lamaze Lounge is on the fifth floor of the hospital, just past the nursery. I’d think just being here for the first time could make you need some deep-breathing techniques. Just to walk past the maternity ward and hear some of the screams coming out of those rooms. What really gets to me about being in hospitals is the smell, a disgusting mixture of chemical cleansers, disinfectants, hot cafeteria food . . . and things you don’t want to think about.
If Mom doesn’t show up, maybe I’ll check into the ear, nose, and throat ward, see what they can do about my heightened sense of smell. Maybe they could use plastic surgery to rebuild my nose, take out all the sensors while simultaneously making it perfect and cute, like plastic hostess-girl Jacqui’s.
I’ve never been to the hospital for myself, but I’ve been here on the fifth floor twice before. Torvill and Dean took a while to arrive, so Dad and I camped out here together in uncomfortable orange chairs. Dorothy was born more quickly, and I stayed home with the twins and my grandparents.
We’re in this class basically for me. Mom knows everything already. She knows the doctors, the nurses, the procedures, the gift-shop hours, and even the best vending machines.
“Peggy! I thought we were meeting at home,” Mom says as she rushes into the lounge. She looks like she just got off a bike. She’s wearing black Lycra shorts, a yellow jersey, and her hair is wet with sweat. She looks like she is fresh off the Tour de Lindville.
“Mom, you left me a note telling me to meet you here,” I say. I look around at everyone in the room. See? I want to say to the rest of the class. It’s her we’re here for. Not me. You can save your lectures on teen sex. Believe me. I have nothing going on, so they’d be wasted on me.
“I did? Really? Wow. Is it me, or am I going straight from having babies to having memory loss? It’s like one minute you’re having maternity moments . . . you know, where you can’t get out of a chair . . . to senior moments, where you can’t remember where the chair is.” She sits down carefully on the carpeted floor, her round belly stretching the yellow nylon top, her belly button showing through the fabric.
She’s just so clueless when it comes to maternity clothes that it’s almost cute. Almost. She just starts wearing Dad’s clothes and lots of XLs. When she was pregnant with Torvill and Dean, she bought some XXLs. Friends always try to give her their old maternity clothes, but she won’t take them, unless they’re maternity sportswear.
My mother is a very good athlete, which is probably why she can handle her pregnancies so well. She’s really into cycling, but she kind of takes the bike shorts a little too far, in my opinion. Early in your ninth month, maybe you shouldn’t be wearing maternity bike shorts, even if they make them.
“Welcome, class, welcome!” The teacher, Monica, is bright and sparkly and also pregnant, but not nearly as far along. “I’m so glad you’re all here to begin this wonderful journey with me.” She looks at me and smiles, with a semiconfused look on her face.
I want to tell her: Nobody could feel more confused about me being here than I am.
“As you probably know, this class will teach you various methods of preparing for the joyful experience of giving birth to your child,” Monica continues. “You’ll learn valuable relaxation and visualization techniques, do breathing exercises—and of course we’ll practice some ways to make you more comfortable during your labor.”
“Like anyone can be comfortable during labor,” Mom says under her breath to me.
I start to giggle, and Monica suddenly fixes her gaze on us, like we’re the problem students that need to be reined in early to set an example for the rest of the class. “So, why don’t we start by introducing ourselves?” she says, her smile a little less wide. “Perhaps you could start.” She gestures to Mom.
“I’d be glad to,” Mom says in her super-cool radio voice. “I’m Christie Farrell, and—”
“Christie Farrell—from KLDV?” a woman across the room asks eagerly. My mother nods. “Oh, my gosh, I listen to your forecasts every morning.”
“Well, thank you very much,” my mother says with a polite smile.
“You’re usually right. Except about that snowstorm back in March,” the woman says.
“Yes. Well, the moisture indicators simply weren’t there, what can I tell you?” Mom’s smile fades as the woman describes how she was stranded without a coat or a windbreaker and how awful it was. Mom hates having her forecasts criticized. She’s a perfectionist, like Dad—she’d do her forecasts over if she could. She has this framed Mark Twain quote over her desk: “Everybody talks about the weather, but nobody does anything about it.” Then she has a neon-pink Post-It stuck onto the glass that says, “But I’ll keep trying.”
Monica clears her throat and says, “I’m sorry, could we get back to the introductions? Please?” She holds out her hand toward my mother. “Christie, if you could continue?”
“Yes. Well, this is Peggy,” my mother says, still disregarding that I’d rather be called Fleming. “She’s going to be my birth coach this time. I thought it would be fun for us to do this together. I’ve been here before, of course, but this is all new to Peggy.”
Monica studies us for a second. “You know, I’m so glad you’re here. This can be a very bonding experience for a stepmother and daughter.”
“Yes, well, I’m her mother. Not her stepmother.” Mom smiles awkwardly. “Just to sort of clarify. I know we don’t look much alike right now, but that’s because I’ve got this baby here and I haven’t been able to get my hair highlighted. But you can see she got my height, and we’ve both got lots of freckles. You see, what happened was, my husband and I had Peggy when we were quite young, and so then we decided to wait a while before we had more children. So we waited, and now we have three little ones at home, and we’ve definitely got our work cut out for us with another baby coming, don’t we, Peggy?”
Work cut out for me, you mean, I’m thinking. They love Mom at KLDV, because she can talk and talk and talk and easily fill dead air and easily fill in for sick DJs and easily do a remote from a car dealer or a new store or even the rodeo. But when I’m with her? I wish she wouldn’t.
“Before we start today, can I ask anyone else if they get really bothered by all this high pressure?” Mom goes on. “I feel like it’s so dry that my body on purpose starts retaining more water than it needs to. I mean, I could just use a nice, heavy rain for a couple of days.”
Oh, my God. I’m dying here. Why does she have to do this? Why does she have to talk about water retention and weather? I ignore her voice and count to ten. When I stop counting, she’s still talking.
“Excuse me, Christie? We’d better get going with the rest of our introductions,” Monica says, still smiling. She moves on to the next couple, who can barely talk. They’re just staring at us like we rolled in from a traveling carnival, like we’re in the Rodeo Roundup Days Stranger than Fiction stage show.
Mom reaches over and squeezes my knee. “You look sick. Are you feeling all right?” she asks softly. “It’s so hot in here, isn’t it? I feel a little faint myself.” She leans back against me and stretches out her legs.
Deep breathing techniques can’t come soon enough for both of us.