Patrice Gopo is a writer living in North Carolina.

Patrice Gopo

Moments ago I’d been crouching on my bed, but now I lay wrapped in a thick duvet. My panting began to slow to a normal cadence. Then a sharp rush. My midsection hardened, followed by intense cramping. With a swift motion, I moved from lying on the bed back to all fours.

“Find your point and focus.”

I heard my mother’s words through the speakers of the computer. My eyes locked on where the edge of the metal curtain rod met the white wall.

Around me, voices and images drifted away.

Before I gave birth to my first child, I didn’t know that between a tightening abdomen and waves of pain, Skype conversations were possible.

While I appreciated that technology could bring someone distant close, my mother wasn’t supposed to be a face on the computer. She was meant to be by my side and not in a living room 10,000 miles away. But my daughter had decided to slide down the birth canal 12 days before expected.

My mother describes herself as a practical person. “I’m a nurse. It’s in the job description,” she often says. When pregnant with her own firstborn—my older sister—her contractions began in the midst of an overnight shift in the labor and delivery unit. She completed the […]