Chapter 2

Yuna Hollander had always wanted a big family. It had been a dream of hers ever since she was a little girl, and her husband, David, had been willing to give her what she wanted without a second thought.

They had talked about fielding half a hockey team at least, because that was the other thing Yuna was really into, and David didn’t mind in the least. It would have been ridiculous, given that David was playing in the beer league, and that fact was one of the reasons why he and Yuna had gotten involved in the first place.

Yuna was neck-deep in studying for her degree in finance when she fell pregnant for the first time. It was an absolute surprise because they had been using condoms and Yuna was still on the pill, but neither Yuna nor David minded it despite the rather unfortunate timing. They called it fate, and that had been that. Yuna had been happy to start their family a bit earlier than planned because she thought it would give her the chance to have more children.

She was careful with herself throughout the pregnancy, but when she was around six months along, during exam times, the stress became too much, and she started to miscarry in the middle of a verbal examination. She had been feeling uncomfortable all morning, but eventually, the pain of what was happening hit her so hard, she collapsed, and an ambulance was called.

Due to how far along she was, she was forced to give birth naturally.

David barely made it to her side before their daughter was born. The silence in the birthing suite told both her and David exactly what was going on, but they still begged the doctors and nurses to try to save their child.

No one moved.

“Please,” Yuna begged, her voice hoarse from the pain she had endured. “Please save my little girl.”

When the midwife placed the tiny body that fit in the palm of her hand onto Yuna’s chest, they both realized there was no chance for the tiny life to survive without being immensely hurt.

“I am very sorry for your loss,” the midwife said gently. “There is no way we can revive your little one without hurting her in ways she couldn’t come back from.”

Yuna closed her eyes and started to cry, cupping her hand with the IV in its back around the tiny life they had lost.

David embraced her as best as he could, his hand joining Yuna’s as they quietly said their goodbyes to the daughter they decided to name Siobhan.

Yuna barely noticed that she passed the afterbirth because she was so focused on saying goodbye to Siobhan.

—-

Yuna stayed in the hospital for two days due to heavy bleeding after passing the placenta. While she recovered, David went ahead and had Siobhan’s remains cremated, so they could scatter their little girl’s ashes on the property David had inherited from his grandparents just outside of Muskoka, Ontario. It was where they had spent their rare weekends off before, and he thought it felt right to lay their baby girl to rest in the place she was quite likely conceived.

Yuna had been quite confused when David asked her to make the drive out to Muskoka so soon after she came out of the hospital, but she agreed that a change of scenery might help because their families weren’t really supportive and barely acknowledged their loss.

Yuna had deferred her exams for a semester because she knew that while she could push through the exams, she wouldn’t do as well as she knew she could. Her professors were a lot more supportive than her family and supported her decision to withdraw after taking such a heavy, totally unexpected loss. They encouraged her to seek psychological help, and one of the female teaching assistants gave her the contact information for a grief counselling group that focused on orphaned parents as she called them.

David asked Yuna to attend meetings together with him, even though she wasn’t convinced that it would help her deal with losing Siobhan the way she did. She did it to please her husband, and eventually, they both agreed that both spreading Siobhan’s ashes at their cottage in Muskoka and attending grief counselling helped them cope with their loss, and eventually, about eighteen months after losing Siobhan, they decided they were ready to try again.

—-

Yuna lost this second pregnancy before she was even ready to tell anyone outside of David about being pregnant. One day, about two months in, she just started bleeding heavily, and she knew she had lost the baby again. She remained sitting on the toilet until she felt ready to stand, cleaned herself up, and crawled into bed with David. She buried her face against his chest and started to cry.

“I’m sorry,” David murmured, understanding without her saying the words out loud that she had lost another pregnancy.

For a couple of years, it became a pattern.

They grieved the loss of a child, worked on overcoming said grief, and they tried again. During this time, they both finished college and started to work in their respective fields. They were both successful and quickly earned promotions that allowed them to save a lot of money to ensure they could try again and again.

Yuna was too stubborn to give up, and eventually, in August 1990, she was pregnant again, and this time they managed to see the pregnancy through to the end. She was careful with herself throughout the whole pregnancy, and when she knew a situation was about to become too much, instead of knuckling down, she retreated this time around so her child would be safe.

Early in the morning of May 9th, 1991, she felt contractions that felt very similar to what she had experienced the day she lost Siobhan. It was different from the training contractions she had been feeling on and off for weeks now, and she knew it was time to head to the hospital.

With a heavy sigh, she turned in bed and shook David awake. The moment his eyes blinked open, she smiled at him and said, “It’s time to meet our son, Love.”

David jumped out of bed and hurried to get himself dressed in fresh boxers, a pair of jeans, and a t-shirt, before he assisted Yuna out of bed and into the bathroom to clean herself up. He checked the hospital bag they had prepared in advance one last time, before he carried it out to the car, checked the car seat sitting in the back, and added a bag full of snacks he knew Yuna liked to the bag already sitting in the trunk, before heading back inside and finding his wife bend over the foot of the bed, breathing heavily.

“What can I do to help you?” he asked her gently, not touching her, because she didn’t always appreciate it when she was in pain and uncomfortable.

“Get me the dress I picked out to give birth in from the closet and help me put it on,” she instructed him, waving toward the walk-in closet.

David did as she asked, and once she was wearing the dress, he asked her if she wanted any underwear or a sports bra to wear underneath.

“I can barely stand wearing the dress right now, David,” Yuna practically snarled. “I am not interested in a garment that presses my tits into any unnatural positions and I need my pussy free in case I have to push before we make it to the hospital.”

David held his hands up in supplication and just assisted her downstairs and out of the house to his SUV, and started the drive to the hospital.

—-

Twenty hours of hard labor later, at 2:48 in the morning, Yuna Hollander gave birth to a healthy baby boy who screamed his head off from the moment he was evicted from his warm, comfortable home of the last nine months.

Yuna looked at her boy in wonder as she cradled him close while still kneeling in the bathing tub she had decided to give birth in as the warm water helped ease her pain quite a lot. Being naked during the birth had felt like the most natural thing in the world, and now that he was here, she burst into tears, quietly grieving the children she lost, and at the same time crying happy tears for the one child that survived.

The midwife knelt beside David, whose hand was resting on their little boy’s back, and watched the umbilical cord attentively. When it stopped pulsing, she clamped it, and offered David a pair of scissors to cut the cord.

The cord had barely been cut when all hell broke loose in the birthing suit.

The midwife looked down at the bath water and found it way more tinted red than was healthy. She looked at the new mom in her care and found her skin turning pale, almost sickly grey.

She very calmly took the child from her, wrapped the boy in a towel and handed him to his father with the instruction to join the pediatric nurse on the other side of the room, while she and the doctor would give his wife a quick checkup.

While she spoke, Yuna Hollander collapsed and nearly brained herself on the edge of the tub.

The midwife pulled her from the tub and put her on the ground, while the doctor who was just entering the room, slapped his hand onto the red button, calling for an emergency team, before he fell on his knees between Yuna’s legs and started doing what needed to be done to save her life.

—-

David sat at Yuna’s bedside, cradling their son close as he fed him a bottle of glucose, while waiting for his wife to wake up. His little boy was still unnamed because he and Yuna had a couple of options and hadn’t made a definite choice yet, as they had wanted to wait until their little boy arrived so they could see which of their options fit him best.

Now, he feared he would need to make that choice alone, and that thought scared him more than the thought of having to raise his child on his own.

His eyes were focused on the monitors, showing Yuna’s vitals. The doctors had told him she was stable and would wake up in time, but still, the wait was making him antsy in ways he hadn’t expected.

When her eyes fluttered open, David sighed in relief.

“You’re awake,” he murmured softly, reaching out with one hand and cupping her cheek.

“What happened?” she asked, her words a bit slurred from the anesthesia and rough from having a tube shoved down her throat for the emergency surgery.

David looked down at his son and took a fortifying breath.

“When you passed the placenta you started bleeding,” he began gently, reaching out with one hand and giving it a squeeze. “The midwife and your OBGYN tried to stop the bleeding on the floor next to the tub you gave birth in, but eventually they knew they had to do something different to save your life so you could see our son grow up.”

He didn’t dare to say the words just yet. David allowed Yuna to process his words as quickly as her medication-addled brain allowed.

Tears started to roll down her cheeks when she realized what David was saying without actually saying the words.

“They took it?” she asked. “They took my uterus?”

When David just nodded, she started to sob, while she attempted to curl in on herself, which caused her to groan in pain. Her heart rate spiked, and a moment later, a nurse came running into the room, shortly followed by Yuna’s doctor. They sedated her when it became clear that there was no way to soothe her with words, and David remained sitting at her bedside calmly.

—-

Yuna Hollander woke for a second time, and this time, she didn’t ask about what happened. Instead, she reached for her baby, and David gamely rose from his seat and placed their boy in her arms.

“Did you choose a name?” she asked him.

David shook his head.

“No. Not yet. I wanted to make the choice together with you,” he told her.

Yuna stared at the little boy in her arms for a long time before she leaned down her head and pressed a gentle kiss against the crown of his dark-haired head.

“Welcome to the world, Shane Hollander,” she murmured with a tearful smile. She focused on her child. She had time to grieve the loss of her ability to have children later.