Echoes Page 0,39
and in good spirits, but she could hardly move now. She had made some clothes that accommodated her growing form, and as always Maria was astonished by her sewing talent. She made some tops and skirts and dresses from old scraps of fabric she had lying around, and even a very stylish coat from a red plaid horse blanket Walther gave her. She looked young and beautiful and healthy. And when she went to church on Sundays, Father André was delighted to see her.
More than anything, Antoine was worried about who would deliver the baby. He thought about taking her to Geneva or Lausanne to have it in a hospital there, but the reality was he couldn't afford it. There was a doctor thirty miles away, but he had no telephone, and neither did the Zubers, and when the time came, there would be no way to reach him. Driving there and back would probably take longer than delivering the baby. Beata insisted she wasn't worried about it. Maria had given birth to her own children at home, and had gone to France to be with one of her daughters when she delivered. She had sat with friends over the years, and even without any official training, she was an experienced midwife. Both women felt assured that they could handle whatever happened. Or at least that was what Beata said. She didn't want to worry Antoine, but she admitted to Maria several times that she was frightened as well. She knew virtually nothing about having a baby, and the bigger it got, the more she worried.
“It won't happen till you're ready,” Maria said confidently. “Babies know just when to come. They don't come when you're tired or sick or upset. They wait until you're feeling ready to greet them.” It sounded overly optimistic to Beata, but in the face of Maria's calm, sensible ways, she was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and believe her.
And much to her own surprise, in the last days of March, Beata found she had renewed energy. She even went to milk the cows one day, and when he found out that night, Antoine scolded her soundly.
“How can you be so foolish? What if one of them kicked you, and hurt the baby? I want you to stay home every day, and take it easy.” It worried him considerably that he could provide no comforts or safe facility for her. He could do nothing to make this easier for her, and even though she was always a good sport about it, Beata was no farm girl. She had been brought up in the lap of luxury and was a delicate city girl. From what he could gather, she had never caught a cold without seeing a doctor. And now he was expecting her to deliver a baby in a cottage in the Alps, without even the help of a nurse or a doctor.
He wrote to a friend in Geneva and asked him to send him a book on midwifery. He read it at night surreptitiously after Beata went to sleep, hoping that he could learn something that would help her. And as the final days of her pregnancy went by, he grew increasingly nervous. If nothing else, her tiny frame panicked him. What if the baby was too big to be born? There was a chapter in the book about cesarean sections, which could only be performed by a doctor. And even then both mother and infant's lives were in jeopardy, and the book admitted that often births of that nature ended in disaster. Antoine couldn't imagine anything more terrifying than losing Beata. And he didn't want to lose their baby either. It was impossible to believe that a baby of the size she was carrying could emerge successfully from such a tiny mother. Beata seemed to be growing smaller and the baby bigger by the hour.
He was sleeping fitfully the night of March 31, when he heard Beata get up and go to the bathroom.
She had grown so huge that she was wearing Maria's enormous nightgowns, which were big enough to accommodate her and the baby. She came back to bed with a yawn after a few minutes.
“Are you all right?” he whispered, looking worried. He didn't want to wake the Zubers.
“I'm fine.” She smiled sleepily at him, and settled back in bed on her side, with her back to him. She couldn't lie on her back anymore. The baby was