#funverse

It was long and terrible and Tony was mostly useless.  The pain would crawl over Pepper's tightening abdomen and she couldn't talk, couldn't do anything except writhe sometimes.

The early hours of birth, when she worried about what she would do in front of the men, faded along with her concept of time.  Tony was ordered out of the room, 20 minutes before Pepper screamed and begged for him and made animal noises with her face against his neck.  She could tell that Bruce was a little worried, a little fragile, but she finally broke and could do nothing but blindly trust.

For a few hours, the bath soothed, and she was even able to doze with her head propped on the edge and one of her boys watching her (and they did not speak of the secret-- as nerve-wracking as the process was, it continued for hours and hours and hours and boredom set in, even as their wife wept and moaned).

Any time either of them brought up drugs, she would glare or shove at the offending man.  Pepper wanted them oh god she wanted the pain to end someday, over and over it attacked like hammers on bones for hours but the memory of the Extremis treatment lingered in her hindbrain, and even as desperate as she was, she could not bring herself to have someone inject chemicals into her spine, and Bruce was not an anesthesiologist.

The water's touch changed to an annoyance, one more stimulus lapping across her skin, and she endured Bruce's touch as he helped her out and the horrible grating feel of the luxury towel that Tony dried her with.

She needed to move, she needed-- her whole body was forcing downwards and she went to her knees in the bedroom.

"Pepper, you're pushing, we should move you to the bed--" she batted away the hands and moaned.

So it was there on the rug that Pepper, her head buried in Tony's neck, her hands digging into his elbows like claws, pushed and fought and birthed their daughter.  Bruce made excited sounds that she couldn't decipher as her body burned to stretch around the baby's head.

Bruce had Pepper lean back against Tony before he placed the baby on Pepper's belly and she looked down.  It was hot and red and wet with dark whorls of hair pasted to her scalp and she was Pepper's daughter, had come out of Pepper's body, was Pepper's family.  The little baby made bleating, testing sounds, and then started to cry.  So did her new mother.

The cord was cut and Bruce instructed Tony on a few tasks, all of which Pepper ignored.  She held her baby up up against her heart-- her hands absolutely steady in supporting the infant, and leaned into Bruce's shoulder while he took care of the aftermath of the birth.  The moment he allowed her to, she curled up in the nest of blankets and towels that Tony had constructed.

With encouragement, Pepper helped her new daughter nurse for the first time, and still she wept.

Hands wrapped blankets around Pepper, around the sweet tiny body that she held, and she looked up.

Pepper rolled over.  God, she felt awful, but her cumbersome body was tugging her awake again.  She supported her belly with her arm as sat up, and since Bruce wasn't awake to see, she allowed herself a wide-stanced heave to get out of bed.

She felt better after visiting the bathroom and returned to bed, but it wasn't long before the ache returned.  Her due date had come and gone a week ago, and while the thought of labor did strike her mind, she mostly just felt tired and achy.

Half an hour later she abandoned the bed again and that was when she ran into Tony in the hallway.  Pacing.

"What?" she asked, immediately sensing his worries.  She closed the door behind her.  "What did you do?"

"I didn't do anything.  Well technically I did do--"

"What kind of damag--"

"--but I'm not calculating the likelihood of my direct resp--"

"No, how much?  Did you have Reed over?  He's smarter than--"

"Not thinking about damage, thank you, and I resent the implication that Richards--"

Pepper groaned here.  She couldn't deal with cleanup, couldn't deal, she hurt and was huge and waddling and didn't want to evacuate at this hour and at this stage of her pregnancy.  She grabbed Tony's arm.

"Breathe," said Tony, hyperventilating in her face to show her how to do it.  "Did you wake up Bruce?  Bruce!"

There was a vague sound from the bedroom.  Dr. Banner did not exit slumber gracefully, ever.

"Breathe, breathe," he continued, his hands all over Pepper's arms and shoulders as he tried to support her.  She swatted at him, which he ignored.  "I've been tracking your body and your contractions--"

"-- god that's creepy--"

"--are getting closer together with a little bit of variat-- Bruce?"

Tony and Pepper argued about whether or not Tony was allowed to watch Bruce check her cervix throughout the whole cervix-checking operation.

"Yeah, um, guys, there's some definite dilation there and with the pattern-- I think we're going to have a baby today?"  Bruce seemed to be going for optimism as he removed his gloves but fell somewhat short of the goal.  He looked a little green around the edges and Pepper was going to have to eject Tony from the room if he didn't calm down soon.  She was starting to feel a little bit of panic.

"Okay.  That's good," she said firmly, trying to reassure them both.  "Get me my phone.  I need to call Rhodey."

That's when she realized that she was seated in warm and wet sheets, and even though she knew that it was probably her water breaking, she still tried to figure out how to get her husbands out of the room so she could clean this up herself.  Oh god they were going to see her big and bloody and covered with fluids and Tony would never think of her as pretty again and this home birth thing was a terrible idea, the worst she'd ever had, why didn't she insist on a traditional hospital no-husband event?

"Rhodey?" Tony argued through this.  "I don't think he's going to be on board with this.  I don't think we've settled who is going to cut the cord but he is not on the list this time, I don't care which senator you call."

Three sentences and she hadn't interrupted him.  She couldn't.  Her body had crafted between her hips a new sort of pain, overwhelming to the senses like a full orchestra striking a chord.  She was still with her mouth open and Tony's words were so distant and unimportant that her mind didn't even bother assigning meaning to the sound.

Tony knew before anyone else

"Sir, your wife's contractions have attained a 6.43 minute spacing with an average deviation of 72 seconds."

"Yeah?  Give me a visual."

The holo illuminated his face; he continued to work with his hands on his wiring project.  Tony had instructed JARVIS to track her contractions when possible over a month ago.  Below the plot of data (marked on a system between Cartesian and Polar with an extra dimension that he had named Starkian added for pulse variation) was a live feed of Pepper: she was asleep.  In bed.  Bruce was beside her with a tablet tilted against his dreaming head.

Tony was pretty sure that Pepper wouldn't sleep through labor.  Their baby wouldn't appear until she'd gotten good and mad at him, he thought.

"Give me a heads up if anything changes."

This way I could post it when I have time along the way rather than saving it all up for weeks?

Also, out of curiosity, does anyone still read or follow that 'verse storyline?  it's so funny to me since the bruce and tony muses went inactive, like, a year ago, but the muns still give me feedback on the muses via skype and what the hell, you know?  I mean, I'll still write it regardless, but I'm curious to hear if followers have any idea what I'm talking about.

Okay in the semi-near future I may write some drabbles/things about this fictional character's experience with childbirth and the postpartum period.  It's a time of life which has so damned much political stuff around it and semi-taboo, and usually there isn't much said about it because the woman going through it has just been hit by a train and her sass is not up to the level of shouting WHAT THE FUCK, HUMANITY? on tumblr or anything.

We write about sex on here.  We write about injury.  We write about injustice and drama and happiness.  New parents are just too fucking tired to write about much at all.  We've all read a billion coming of age stories, or war stories, but for every one of us on this planet, somebody with a uterus literally had to face death for us to exist.  Where are those war stories?  Yes, this even happens in Western countries, some more than others-- I, personally, saw a woman patient in the intensive care unit who had given birth two days before and had an infection throughout her entire body and they were struggling to help her heal.

So.

Since this isn't a life event that's very often written about in detail and accurately in fiction, I want to say that it will be handled from the perspective of one woman.  She's not a healthcare provider.  You may or may not want to emulate her, ever.

But speaking as someone involved in healthcare, and as a person with 13 years of parenting behind me, I can say that it's hard sometimes to have someone in a hospital to tell you, the person who has had a human being emerge from a hole in your body (whether vaginally or surgically) how to take care of your healing wounds.  The focus is suddenly entirely on the baby.  I gave birth in the south and even the nurses said "down there" and waved vaguely and left a spray can of medicine on a counter without telling me what was going on.

Write this down if you might want to give birth someday or think that someone else might.  Bare minimum, ask your doctor about:

a stool softener such as Colace

an aerosol numbing spray (that was my can!  Figured it out two months later).  This is for your poor vagina.  Everyone say it with me: vagina.

drink waaaay way way way more water than you'll ever think you need to drink, or else even #1 won't save you.

there is actual data on what kind of medicine will show up in breast milk (if you choose to breastfeed).  The hospital people may know, but the pharmacists have all of the data and you can call them any time day or night!  So you can take some tylenol (or something much stronger) without guilt! Amazeballs!

I'm just so mad that some women aren't told these things.  

Oh and one more thing: everyone stop being dicks to women who choose to have babies or who choose not to have babies.  Actual adult women, who started out as babies and have lived decades already, are fully sentient people who can deal with their own lives.  If they have a kid, it does not scoop out their brains and make them (FOR EXAMPLE) suddenly unable to be a scientist or a firefighter or a ballerina or a pole dancer.

Malibu.  The house hadn't been entirely rebuilt yet, but was close enough that it was selected as the site for the interview with Bloomberg.  It fit with the message Pepper was hoping to send-- one of stability and regrowth, one that would reassure the market about SI during her maternity leave-- but she worried now, just a little, about whether or not it made her look too domestic, or bring the focus in too tightly on her unusual marriage.