And then a contraction came and she squeezed the arm of the nurse so tight she left fingernail prints.

“I’m so sorry,” Melissa said, catching her breath.

“You’re fine. Just breathe. Do you want me to call somebody to be with you?”

She shook her head. “Here comes another one.”

The pain. She’d never felt anything like it. She’d seen births in movies and TV shows, she’d read articles about what to expect, but nothing prepared her for the disorienting, overwhelming pain. Between contractions there were nurses, and a machine kept track of the baby’s heart rate. At one point she asked for medicine to relieve the pain and the doctor shook her head.

“It’s too close, Melissa.”

Melissa screamed at the woman and then quickly apologized.

Finally the doctor sat on a stool in front of Melissa. “You’re ready to push.”

“Okay,” Melissa whispered.

The doctor gave instructions on where to put her hands and how to bear down and focus her strength, but Melissa couldn’t hear any of it because of the excruciating pain.

She wanted out of the room. She wanted the baby out. She wanted the pain to stop, but it wouldn’t. It rolled on and on like waves against the seashore, but not just waves—a tsunami.

A few minutes later, her face drenched with sweat and holding her breath, she pushed and felt something give way inside. She lay back, her eyes closed, waiting for another contraction, and then she heard the sound that changed everything.

Her son gave a gurgling cry. A nurse suctioned out his mouth and nose and then the doctor cut the umbilical cord and in one motion placed the baby on her chest.

Melissa’s eyes blurred. She didn’t know what to say. She looked at the doctor, who smiled behind her mask.

“That’s a healthy little boy you have there,” the doctor said.

“Hey, little guy,” Melissa whispered.

The child squirmed and then a nurse took him and wrapped him and weighed him. Melissa couldn’t take her eyes off of him. The doctor was tending to the afterbirth, something else Melissa hadn’t known about, and there were stitches and monitors beeping, but she focused on the little boy across the room. Her son. What would his new parents call him? She had wanted to name him, but she knew she couldn’t. It would be too hard to let go if she did.

Melissa put a hand on her stomach. What had been an inflated basketball was now soft and empty. And the sight of the child being cleaned and weighed on the other side of the room brought an ache inside.

“Seven pounds, thirteen ounces,” the nurse said. She put him in a plastic bassinet on a cart and wheeled him out of the room.