Women Giving Birth |top| [ Full HD ]

But Elara wasn’t listening. She was counting ten tiny toes, ten perfect fingers. She was breathing in the new, milky scent of her daughter. Outside the window, the sun crested the horizon, painting the room in shades of rose and gold.

Leo squeezed her hand. Priya leaned close. “You already are,” she said. “Fear is just a wave, too. Let it pass.”

The baby’s cries quieted at the sound of Elara’s heartbeat—the only rhythm she had ever known. women giving birth

Leo kissed her sweaty temple, tears running down his face. “You’re a mountain,” he whispered.

They placed the baby on Elara’s bare chest. She was the color of a stormy sky, her face scrunched in protest, her tiny fists opening and closing like sea anemones. Elara looked down at the dark, wet hair, the cord still pulsing between them, and felt a love so fierce and so simple it erased every other thought. But Elara wasn’t listening

One push. Two. The burning, the stretching, the impossible moment where she thought she would split in two.

The clock on the nightstand blinked 2:17 AM when Elara felt the first real wave—not the teasing, Braxton-Hickory warm-ups of the past week, but a deep, oceanic pull that started at her spine and wrapped around to her belly like a slow, insistent tide. Outside the window, the sun crested the horizon,

She didn’t wake Leo. Not yet. Instead, she placed a hand on her stomach and breathed. In through the nose, out through the mouth. The baby, her daughter, shifted in response, a small foot pressing against her ribs. Soon, Elara thought. You’ll have all the room in the world.