Baby's First Christmas. Cathy Thacker Gillen

and gripped his forearm, hard. “I feel the baby coming.”

      “That’s natural.”

      Kate shook her head vigorously. She was trembling. “No. You don’t understand. The baby’s starting to come out of me, Michael. I can feel it. I can feel the—baby’s head!”

      Michael guided the Gourmet Gifts To Go van into the first safe place he saw, the dirt road entrance to a farmer’s field. He put the van in park, switched on the hazard lights and set the emergency brake but kept the motor running, the air on. “I’m coming around,” he said.

      He got out of the van, circled the front and opened her door. “I’m going to hit the recline button on your seat, take your seat belt off and lay you back.” He put his hands beneath her shoulders and hips, leaned in and scooted her back and up. “I’m going to have to take a look.”

      She turned her head from him as he eased the hem of her jumper up and did what was necessary with clinical care.

      “Well?” Kate asked when he’d assessed the situation.

      “You’re right,” Michael said grimly. “There’s no time to spare. We’ve got to get you to the back of the van. Put your arm around my neck. That’s it.” He slid one arm beneath her knees, the other beneath her shoulders, then swept her effortlessly into his strong arms and carried her to the back. He opened the door and laid Kate gently on the carpeted floor of the van, pushing aside the gift baskets.

      Perspiration streamed down her face. He went to get her Lamaze gear and shut the door. Kate struggled against the pain that was gripping her nonstop. “I’m going to have the baby here and now, in the back of my delivery van, aren’t I?” she panted as one contraction slipped into another.

      Michael climbed in beside her and shut the rear door so there’d be no draft on her or the baby. “Looks like it, yes.” His expression all business, he lifted her hips and slid the blanket from her Lamaze bag beneath her.

      “I can’t believe this,” she moaned. “First the mix-up at the sperm bank and now this!”

      Michael knelt beside her and quickly divested her of her shoes, stockings and panties. “Maybe it’s just a Murphy’s law kind of year for us.” Swiftly, he checked on the position of the baby.

      “Not for me.” Kate shook her head as he pushed the hem of her jumper high enough to allow him to work yet left it low enough to afford her some modesty. “I plan things out meticulously. Always have, always will, only to have everything suddenly go awry now in such a big way.” Kate groaned helplessly and tightened her hands into fists.

      “If there’s one thing you can count on in this life, it’s that nothing ever goes according to plan anyway.” Working rapidly, Michael ripped into one of the undelivered gift baskets and extracted a bottle of wine. “Besides,” he continued, working to give her as much confidence as possible as he splashed his hands and then the birth area with germ-killing alcohol, “it’s been my experience that the best things in life are unplanned.”

      “Well, you being the father of my baby and my going into labor now are the two absolute exceptions to the rule,” Kate muttered cantankerously. “As far as I’m concerned, the screw-ups stop here,” she said, looking panic-stricken as another contraction gripped her. She grabbed his arm. “I have to push.”

      “Not yet, Kate.” Knowing he had to have something to cut the cord with, Michael plucked a silver-plated serving knife from the gift basket and sterilized that, too. “We don’t want the baby’s head to pop out too suddenly.”

      “But you can see it?” Still holding tightly to his arm, Kate struggled against another gripping contraction.

      “The very top of it, yes.” He put a hand on her abdomen, another on her thinning perineum. “I want you to pant or blow while I apply a counter pressure here to help the baby’s head come out gently and gradually.” Working with her to guide the baby into the world, he said gently, “That’s it, Kate, nice and slow. You’re doing great. Keep panting,” Michael said as the baby’s head began to emerge. Just a little at first, and then, several contractions later, all the way.

      “There. Okay,” he said victoriously, glad all was okay so far. “The head’s out, and as soon as I get the baby’s mouth and nose clear—” Michael stroked downward on the baby’s nose, cheeks and throat “—he’s going to test his lungs for us.” Michael and Kate both grinned as the baby let out a choking, startled cry.

      Knowing there was no time to lose, Michael continued to kneel between her thighs, both hands supporting the baby’s head, one above, one beneath. “Okay, Kate, I want you to push now.” Again, he supported and guided the slippery, squirming infant. “We’ve got one shoulder out,” Michael said, using gentle continued traction. “Now two. And here he comes.” Laughing exultantly, Michael lifted the kicking, screaming, healthy pink baby and placed him where she could hold onto him.

      “We’ve got a boy, Kate. A beautiful baby boy. And he’s not too pleased about this,” Michael continued as he swiftly clamped the cord three inches from the baby’s abdomen. He cut the cord and carefully wrapped their squirming baby boy in Kate’s soft cotton workout pants.

      “We’ll make it up to him,” Kate promised thickly as tears of joy streamed down her face. Laughing and crying simultaneously, Kate held their baby close to her heart. “Oh, Michael, he’s just perfect, isn’t he?” Kate whispered, looking as overwhelmed with the joy of the experience as he was.

      Michael nodded. “He sure is,” he said thickly, aware of the love and pride welling inside him even as he checked their newborn son’s heart rate and respiration and did a routine medical assessment of the infant’s condition. “And he looks as healthy and strong as they come,” Michael said, as he touched the baby’s face, then Kate’s.

      Kate caught Michael’s hand and kissed the back of it. “Thank you,” she said gratefully. “Thank you for being here.”

      Michael swallowed around the rising lump of emotion in his throat. “My pleasure.” Heaven knew there was no other place he would have wanted to be at this moment than with Kate and their baby.

      She grimaced as another pain hit her.

      Michael coaxed her through the spasms until the after-birth appeared. “Okay, we’ve got the placenta out.” Michael wrapped the placenta up, too, made both Kate and the baby as comfortable as he could, then retrieved the cell phone. “I think it’s time we called Dr. Gantor and the hospital, too.”

      AS IT TURNED OUT, there was a fire station with an ambulance some fifteen minutes away from them. Deciding the sooner they got the two of them to the hospital the better, Michael drove Kate and the baby to a midpoint, then helped the EMS personnel transfer Kate and the baby to the stretcher and the waiting ambulance.

      Realizing he was planning to follow them in the van, Kate reached out to grab him. “Stay with us,” she urged quietly. Incredible as it was under the circumstances, the two of them had bonded during the birth, and she didn’t want to lose that bond any more than she wanted to ride the rest of the way to the hospital alone.

      Michael nodded. “Just let me close up the van,” he told her huskily.

      By the time he got back, the EMS workers had started an IV in Kate’s arm. “So what are you going to name the baby?” the EMS worker asked.

      Good question, Kate thought, looking at Michael, knowing this involved him, too. So much had changed in such a short time. “I was thinking about Timothy for a first name,” she told Michael quietly as he sat on the bench beside her.

      “That’s nice.”

      “And for a middle name?” the EMS worker prodded as he filled out the paperwork on Kate, and Michael continued to watch Kate and the baby.

      “Initially, I was thinking about naming him after my grandfather,” Kate said softly, “but now I don’t know. I think maybe his middle name should be Michael.