Married To The Mad Vampire Lord-Chapter 265: Preparation For Labor_Part 3

His eyes scanned ahead, then retreated to an essay titled Choosing a Husband. As he began reading, he slumped lower and lower in his chair until his spine was bowed, the book resting against the edge of the table, and an index finger covered the grin of amusement tugging at his lips at the silly things these humans were teaching their young women. His curiosity made him read on, even though he knew that wasn’t the reason he had picked up the book in the first place.

You now need the advice of your parents more than ever before, the essay advised, for the young man will be attracted by you and you will be attracted by him. This is natural. If you make a mistake it may wreck your whole life. Take your mother into your confidence. There are some rules that are safe to follow in this matter. Never have anything to do with a young man who has lived recklessly or cares little to nothing about the conquests of life.

Rohan absently rubbed his lip and peeked at his wife, but she was busy with the nutcracker on the table.

Never marry a man to reform him. Leave those who need reforming severely alone. There are men who never touch alcohol and yet are more dangerous than drunkards. A man who has lived carelessly or lacks moral restraint may carry hidden diseases, ones he could pass on to an innocent and virtuous wife, condemning her to a lifetime of suffering.

Marriage is a lottery. You may draw a prize, or your life may be made miserable. Tell your parents if you are attracted toward a young man so that they may find out if he is a man of good character and pure in heart and life. It is so much better to remain a spinster than to make an unfortunate marriage. Be a wise woman.

Rohan wondered how many ignorant women had read this stuff and ended up more confused than ever about the facts of life.

His speculative gaze wandered to his own wife. She dropped a nut into the bowl, and his eyes followed. Her stomach had grown so full it barely left room for the bowl on her knees. Her breasts seemed to have doubled in size in the last months.

She picked another nut clean and raised the last morsel to her mouth. Rohan’s eyes again followed, and he absently stroked his lips. One thing about his wife, she sure hadn’t tried to reform him. If he had reformed, it was because of her acceptance, rather than the lack of it.

He turned to a page titled, "How to Conceive and Bear Healthy Children."

All right, he thought with secret amusement, tell me how, human.

The one main reason for the establishment of marriage was for the bearing and rearing of children. Nature has provided man and woman with the organs for this purpose, and they are wonderfully constructed.

End of enlightenment. Rohan swallowed another chortle, his finger still covering the grin tugging at his lips. He couldn’t help but picture his wife reading this, imagining her innocent reaction with quiet amusement.

From his delight over the construction of human organs, the author had skipped directly to a passage of idiotic advice on conception:

If the parents are drunk at the time the child is conceived they cannot expect a healthy offspring, either physically or mentally. If the parents dislike each other they will transmit something of that disposition to their offspring. If either one or both of the parents are much worried at the time of conception the child will be the sufferer.

Without warning, Rohan burst out laughing.

Belle looked up, startled. "Are you all right? What’s so funny?"

"Let me read it out for you to hear..." He straightened in his chair, laid the book flat on the table and read the last passage aloud.

Belle gazed at him smiling, her hands poised around a nut in the jaws of the nutcracker. "I thought you were reading about making a swing on the porch?"

He sobered instantly, realizing that was what he had told her as she was unaware of his intentions of learning about delivering babies.

"Oh, I am. I mean, I... I was."

She reached across the table and, with the nose of the nutcracker, tipped the book up.

"The Housewife’s Handbook of Common Sense?" She looked at him with pursed lips. "Why are you reading a book meant for women?

"Well, I... it..." He felt his cheeks warming and randomly flipped the pages. They fell open to a diagram of the swings-making and cradle.

"I was thinking about making one of these for the baby." He turned the book and showed her.

She glanced at the diagram, then skeptically at him before the walnut shell cracked and fell into her palm.

"It looks complicated. Can you make a cradle like that?"

"Of course. I am a fast learner."

He hid his discomposure at being caught reading such a silly book by delving back into it.

After you become pregnant, you owe it to yourself, your husband, and especially your unborn child to ensure that it comes into the world with every advantage a true, good, and devoted mother can possibly provide, both physically and mentally. To that end, keep yourself healthy and happy. Eat only foods that are easy to digest and that promote regular bowel movements. Read only books that uplift your spirits and improve your mind. Surround yourself with people who inspire and support you. Avoid gossips, and do not listen to pessimists who are always eager to burden you with complaints during this delicate time.

Such fanciful advice went on and on, but Rohan’s amusement faded when he finally found what he had been searching for: "Preparations for Labor."

It began with a list of recommended things to have on hand before the time, and the more Rohan read the items the more confused he was getting.

5 clean wooden or ceramic basins

1 small enema syringe or hollow animal horn with leather bladder

15 yards of clean linen strips or muslin

6 thick folded cloth pads; or, 2 pounds of clean wool or soft rag stuffing

1 waxed linen sheet or oiled cloth, size 1 by 2 yards

1 bowl of lemon water or cider vinegar

2 doses powdered ergot (if available)...the list went on until he couldn’t read more.

Hell be damned, they’d need all that?

Rohan began to panic.

The opening instructions read: The midwife should prepare enough cloth rags and linen pads, boiling them a week before, along with towels, swaddling bands, half a pound of wool or flax stuffing, and some small wads of soft linen.

Midwife? Where would he find one?

And all those things listed?

And what was perineum?

He couldn’t even understand this—much less get them!

Pale now, he turned the page, only to have his disillusionment doubled. Phrases jumped out and grabbed him by the nerve-endings.

Cramp-like pains in the lower abdomen... rupturing membranes... watery discharge... a marked desire to go to stool... bulging of the pelvic floor... tearing of the perineal flesh... temple bones engaged in the vulva... proper manipulation to expel the afterbirth... strong clean thread... sever immediately... exception being when child is nearly dead or does not breathe properly...

He slammed the book shut and leapt to his feet, pale as seafoam.

"Rohan?" Belle, who had been enjoying the silence in each other’s company, looked up in alarm at Rohan’s sudden behavior.

He stared out the window, knees locked, cracking his knuckles, feeling his pulse thud hard in his gut.

"I don’t think I can do this."

"Do what?" she frowned.

Unfamiliar fear of unknowingly killing his wife in the process lodged in his throat like a hunk of dry bread. He gulped, but it stayed.

"I wasn’t reading about making swings. I was reading about delivering babies," he confessed.

"Oh... that." Belle flushed. "What did you read about it?"

He showed her the book, ashamed to find his hands trembling as he opened to the page that had terrified him about the task he knew he ought to do when it was time.

As she read the page, he opened more as he told her, "And there’s more, all this stuff we’re supposed to have on hand. Hell, some of it I don’t even know! And it talks about you tearing, and maybe hemorrhaging. Isa... I... I am sorry, had I known all this was possible, I wouldn’t have gotten you pregnant. I should have avoided this, and—"

"Rohan," she pulled at his hand to make him calm down and stop panicking. He stopped, swallowed hard and then took a deep breath and looked down at her smiling face as she reached to cup his face.

"I think the book is exaggerated. Books are always like that, I don’t believe delivering a child is that complicated. My mama gave birth to Eve, my sister, in the middle of the night alone in her bed." She assured.

"You’re not your mother. It’s your first time; it was her second." He argued.

Belle sighed, "If you can’t do it, and since we can’t have a doctor here, I... I can try to manage through it. I’ve seen once where a baby was being delivered in Aragonia, I can do it."

"Not with me alive. You won’t do it alone. I will do it. Fuck, I can do it. I like challenges." He told her, nodding his head as if to convince himself that he could do it. And by hell, he wouldn’t let her do it alone.

Rohan was not terrified of seeing blood, he had killed many and skinned people alive more than he could count, only he did not believe for a second he could watch his own wife go through any pain and stay still. He did not want to see her hurt, it would hurt him more than it would her, but he knew it was something he would have to do.

After everything he had seen in his life, he never thought childbirth would be the one to give him fear and panic attack and make him doubt his own ability to do something.