Chapitre 135: Chapter 135: Count Faster

Ellie

The warm water of the birthing pool helped.

It helped the same way that an aspirin helped when a person had their arm chopped off.

Not that Ellie had ever had her arm chopped off, but she could imagine it was similar. Still, she was committed now, and she was going through with this despite the fact that she was seriously regretting her decision to have this baby this way. When the midwife had offered her drugs early on in the process, when they’d originally discussed the options and then again this afternoon when the question of “are you sure” had been posed to her, she should’ve been allowed a few moments to confer with a jury of her peers–other mothers who had gone through this before and knew better than she did. Practical women. Women with good memories. Women with low pain tolerances. Ellie had never thought of herself as having a low tolerance for pain, but then, she’d also never tried to drag a watermelon through her nostril.