****
"Yah!"  Willow screamed.

"Breathe, darling, breathe.  You've peaked.  Ride it down."  Giles' calming words
from the bedside finally sank in as the contraction deposited her back on the bed
wrung out and terrified of the next.

He leaned over to wipe her forehead and she grabbed the front of his shirt.  "I hate
you!  You did this to me.  I'll get you, you tea buggering, scone fucker."  She lapsed
out of the English vulgarity to rave at him in German, the gutterals of the language well
suited for it.  He quit listening.  She would have regrets enough from the name-calling,
without him being able to actually tell her what she said.  At least she was in too much
pain to actually curse him.  The magical energies crackled in the room. And the French
and Yiddish crudities rolled out of her mouth until the next contraction began.

The nurse came in as the next contraction peaked.  She watched the monitor until it
was over, and checked the baby's heart rate.  "You're doing fine Mrs. Rosenburg-
Giles. Nine and a half cm." she commented finishing the dilation check.  "It won't
be long now.  Let me put up the bracing handles."

"I want MORPHINE!  Take your bracing handles and shove them up your white
polyester arse!"

The nurse, used to transition, put up the handles and said, "Mr. Giles, if she says
she has to push, call us at once."

"I did take birthing classes with her, my good woman." He was stiffer than he
meant to be, but his Willow was in pain, even though they'd done everything right.

When the first few contractions had come, mildly, taking her by surprise, Willow
had timed them to make sure they were the real thing, not the Braxton-Hicks that
had already sent them to the hospital once in a false alarm.

Convinced she was indeed in labor, she had stripped down, drawn sacred diagrams
on the floor and meditated skyclad among the aromatherapy candles and incense.
Giles had come to her and painted the runes for fertility and safety on her
burgeoning belly.  She had chanted the names of the Goddess as a mantra, and he
packed the birthing bag to steady refrain of "Diana, Astarte, Isis, Epona."

Then her waters broke.  She stood up carefully and he helped her shower off the
body paint.  She dressed while he put the bag and suitcase in the car.  Now, she lay
on the hospital bed, all meditation and soothing forgotten, writhing in agony at two
minute intervals.

The first part had been easy.  He'd fed her ice chips, brushed her hair, talked her
through the breathing, and watched the baby monitor.  All the good coach things to
do.  The relaxation tape droned endlessly through the birthing room speakers.  He'd
abandoned the counter pressure on her back when it made the baby's heart rate fall
off.

Suddenly Willow sat up, her eyes clear of the pain.  "It's time.  Now."

She grabbed the handles as Giles stabbed the call button. "Pant darling.  Pant
through the urge to push," he ordered.  "Wait until the doctor gets here."

"Bugger your panting and bugger the doctor!  The baby is coming now!"  She
braced her feet on the mattress and bore down.  A gush of blood heralded the
arrival.

"He's crowning, my love.  Please wait for the doctor."

The doctor burst in, her gown half on, but gloves in place.  "Pant, Willow, pant, we
have to change the bed."

"Yeeargh!!"  Willow yelled, and suddenly the head emerged.  She fell back, caught
her breath and started again.

"YAAAHHH!"  Slick with blood and amnion, the baby lay on the mattress between
her legs.  Gently, ignoring the doctor's protest, she picked him up and laid him on
her stomach.  Ungloved, she stroked his back gently with warm hands.

Slowly, he unfurled and took a gasping breath.  A small cry protested the burn of
the oxygen in new lungs.  He woke up, coming to life in the new too-bright world.
He looked up at her face.

Giles moved slowly to stand beside her and slipped one arm around her shoulders.
She smiled at him and kissed his inner forearm.

"Ah, a Le Boyer fan," the doctor commented.  "May I take him?"

Willow nodded as she felt the afterbirth pangs start.  The nurses fussed over the
baby, bathing, diapering and swaddling as she delivered the placenta.  Giles took
the boy as the doctor began stitching the tear.

She looked at her husband, their son in his arms.  "I'm sorry, Rupert,' she said
softly.  "I didn't mean any of what I said."  She looked almost ready to cry at the
hard words she had flung at him a bare hour before.

"I know.  He's finally here.  What were we going to call him again? Tea Bugger?
Or was it to do with scones?"

Willow laughed, secure in her husband's love, and the doctor scolded her.  "No.
Jonathan William Rosenburg-Giles.  Here, let me have him."

Jonathan lay in her arms and looked at her, opening and shutting his mouth like a
fish.  Experimentally, Willow dropped one shoulder of the hospital gown and held
him to her breast.  He latched on quickly and guzzled greedily, with loud swallows.

"I didn't think there was supposed to be that much colostrum," she said.  "You'd
think I hadn't eaten in a week.  Come to think of it, I don't feel like I have."

Giles opened the birthing bag and took out a thermos of tea, bagels, small tubs of
butter and cream cheese, a tin of deviled chicken, a bag of Kraft cheese kisses, a small
basket of strawberries and a lunch box size bag of cheese curls.

Willow looked at the last item.  "You always call me a heathen for eating those."

"Well, yes, but I believe you are entitled to one indulgence after such an ordeal."
He poured the tea into the hospital cups, sliced the bagel and spread her half with
cream cheese.  He opened the cheese curls for her.

Willow broke the baby's suction and changed sides.  "I can't eat with my left."  She
fished out a cheese curl and crunched it ecstatically.

"Ok, Willow, you're all set."  Dr Griffen patted her thigh.  "Jonathan will have to
go to the nursery for observation in about 20 minutes.  Then we'll move you into
the sitz bath which will help your discomfort and clean up the bed so you can get
some rest.  He's an apgar 9.  Still a little blue around the edges, but he'll be fine."

Jonathan was half-dozing and had let go.  As Willow sipped the tea, he opened his
eyes.  She smiled at him, and he smiled back.  She handed him to Giles who
repeated the procedure, testing the newborn imitation reflex.  He unswaddled one
tiny, bluish foot and stroked it.  The toes flared out as the books had said they
would.

When the nurse came, they kissed him gently and handed him over.  A second
nurse helped her into the bathroom and demonstrated the sitz bath.  Giles packed
the remains of the tea things back into the bag and shut off the annoying tape
player.

In half an hour, Willow was back in bed, exhausted.  He kissed her softly and left
her to sleep.  He'd be back in the morning.  Stake in hand, he left the hospital into
cool February darkness.

"How is she?" asked a familiar voice from nowhere.

"She's fine.  The baby is fine.  Thank you, Angel."  He
climbed in the car and headed for home.

"A baby Watcher.  Imagine that."  Angel stared at the light in the hospital nursery
until dawn tinted the sky.  He saw Willow come to the window of her room,
carrying the baby to let him see his first sunrise.

He raised one hand and vanished into the darkness before the sun rose.

slayerettes passed out from the blood in the delivery room.