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Drama Creative Nonfiction

The parking lot was empty. Blessedly empty. I’m not too keen on having an audience for the birth of my second child. Yes, you read that right. I gave birth to my second child in the parking lot. In the front seat of a car in a parking lot, to be more precise. 

It started something like this. The year was 2022. The baby, a girl, was due to be born January 1st (and I was really hoping she would be, what a cool birthday!) The day, December 19th. Two weeks early, if you didn’t catch that. TWO WEEKS EARLY. 

That evening my husband and I had gone to a gender reveal party for a friend of ours (it turns out they’re also having a girl). I started feeling a little funny. Not pain. Not really pressure. Just a bit different. But the different sort of feeling came about once every hour. But I’m two weeks early so it’s probably nothing. I didn’t even mention it to my husband. 

After we got home that evening, the strange feelings continue and seem to grow closer together. I call my doula. A doula may be different for different people, but my doula was a lady from my church who had been a practicing doctor from India. A wonderful woman who had also been at my first daughter’s birth. Anyway, she decided to come over because I had only asked if she’d be my doula a day or two previously and she wanted to talk about what I hoped the birth would look like and everything. 

She did some wonderful aroma therapy which could help spur labor on, if it was truly time, and stayed until about 3 in the morning. (She came around midnight and my husband was already passed out. He knew none of this so far.) My contractions, for that’s what they must have been, remained about seven minutes apart and even seemed to be abating. They were never intense or painful. So, my doula decided to go home and recommended I get some rest too. I figured that since the baby was TWO WEEKS early and these contractions weren’t much of anything, they’d fade out and the baby would show up as a nice New Years present.

But the moment my head hit the pillow my contractions started for real. Long painful tugging as my uterus opened wider and wider. I won’t go into the details, but it soon became evident that this was the real deal. I should have called my doula right away. But since my first labor lasted fifteen hours, why shouldn’t this one? 

Around four in the morning, my husband woke up to me packing the hospital bag and asked if everything was okay. 

I casually tell him I’m in labor. (Remember, this is the first he’s hearing of it.)

At some point I finally do remember to call my doula, and she arrives around 4:30am. 

I distinctly remember being in the kitchen, trying to leave the house when I have a whopper of a contraction. It has me bent over, moaning and groaning, light-headed, nauseous, sweating—the whole deal. 

When it’s over, my kindly husband and doula usher me to our garage and waiting car where I proceed to lean against the door while another tsunami of a contraction washes over me.

“Please, let me have the baby at home,” I begged them.

“No, no. Twenty minutes. That’s all. You can do it. Just focus on your breathing.”

Somehow, I manage to climb into the front seat, and we take off for the hospital.

In that twenty-minute drive I have about three contractions. I don’t know how much you know about labor, but these are the pushing kind. That is, my body was instinctively and powerfully pushing that baby closer and closer to the exit with every contraction.

In an attempt to be delicate, let me just say, about the middle of our drive, I feel very much like I’m sitting on the top of my baby’s head.

Another contraction or two later and she slides out. 

“She’s here,” I manage to say. 

My husband veers into a parking lot—the empty one previously mentioned—as I scoop an infant out of the cocoon of my oversized pajama pants. To our great relief she begins to cry, our cue that all was well. 

My husband is in complete shock. It’s 5:09am. One hour since he found out I was in labor…TWO WEEKS EARLY. And we’re about two minutes away from the hospital.

With nothing else to do in a parking lot, my husband jumps back in the driver's seat and brings us the rest of the way to the emergency room. All the while we are in exultant shock at the joy and surprise of the moment. “I wasn’t expecting that.” And “I can’t believe that just happened.” And “She’s here, she’s really here.” And “Good job, Natalie,” filled the car as I snuggled that little bundle close.

I will never forget the first time we locked eyes, that baby and me. It’s as if she knew what she’d just done, and she wanted her birth to be memorable, such a knowing look in those tiny dark eyes.

Anyway, we pull up at the emergency room entrance, and I’m in the car wondering in my elated state how on earth they’re going to get me into the hospital. 

Soon enough some nurses show up with a cart and my husband lifts me onto it (backwards, as it turned out), and we all dash up to the maternity suite.

It takes a while for the baby to warm up properly (she was born in a car in Colorado in December, after all), but the story has a happy ending. 

My Mother-in-law even gifted us with a car detailing. And it turns out that having a baby in the car saved us a pretty penny in hospital fees.

And that’s how sweet little Honda Dokter was born. 

Just kidding. 

Her name is Jemma.

December 28, 2024 16:15

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2 comments

Natalie Dokter
21:52 Jan 14, 2025

Aw thank you. I'm so glad you enjoyed it!

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Katherine Memoli
15:15 Jan 13, 2025

This story needs a tissue warning but in the best way, It caught me off guard but when I read "She's here!", my eyes filled with tears and before I could knock it off, a few escaped. I also laughed out loud a few times. Great story! Glad it all ended well.

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