Winter had grown old, its frosty grips even in the far north surrounding the Crystal Empire relented as spring approached. A hushed exuberance permeated the castle maidservants: a happy rumor was passed to every hoof in the spire, courtesy of particularly gossipy quartet who pinned their ears to the royal bedchamber door. The guards there allowed their presence after receiving...certain promises from those four. Earlier that morning Her Excellency squeed in the master bathroom, beckoning the servants to fetch her husband...an order that, of course, instantly reached those four gossips in the larder, laundry, gardens, and archives within seconds, who bailed from their assigned duties shortly after the prince came to his lady’s side with a gasp of delighted shock.
“Wow,” breathed Shining Armor, quickly becoming misty-eyed. “This...I’m speechless. This is amazing. I love you, honey.”
“I love you too,” replied Cadence with a few happy tears of her own. Suspended in her cyan magic aura floated a fairly new invention. It was a fairly small wand with some kind of receptacle at one end, and at the other was an indentation, where there was a plus sign. Tears started falling from her eyes as she set it down. The princess leapt into her husband’s awaiting embrace, and the two started to laugh. The guardponies outside the lavatory struggled to maintain their stone-faced exterior, smiles cracking through. Shining Armor hoisted up his bride, spinning her about as the two continued their joy-filled laughter.
“We’re gonna have a foal!” celebrated Shining Armor. “Twili’s gonna be so surprised! My parents too! We should send them a scroll right away!”
Cadence answered, “Not yet, dear. Not yet. We want to make absolute certain our little one is developing well before that. I mean, six weeks along is hardly enough time to know.”
Shining Armor shifted nervously as he set her back to her feet, feigning, “Oh, of course! Silly me, I forgot with all the emotion. I’m just so excited!”
Cadence smirked knowingly. After a short pause, she resumed, “Our lives will never be the same in about six months....”
“Oh, I know, but...I don’t really know...I just know, what I’ve been told, like no sleep, you know?” the young prince stammered, fidgeting and trying to hide it.
His wife sighed through her nose, shaking her head slowly. She mocked his tone, “No, I don’t know, what you know, if you know anything at all, you know? No idea what you know.”
“Hey, I’m listening, you don’t need to be mean,” Shining Armor protested. “That was uncalled-for.”
Princess Cadence chastised, “You’re...clueless on this subject, aren’t you?”
The alabaster prince stood taken aback. He opened his mouth to reply, sans words. A moment later he raised a hoof and inhaled, to the same silence. Shining Armor returned to all-fours, pursing his lips. Finally he could get the syllables out in the correct order, “I’m not clueless, dear.” His voice shifted into the tones of an aroused husband, “I think I have a handle on how we make a foal.”
Swatting away the playful hoof heading toward that spot on the back of her neck, she curtly said, “Shiny, gestation is ten and a half to eleven months, not seven and a half. Don’t you remember health class from high school at all?”
“Um...,” started Shiny Armor, “Give me a moment; that was years ago.”
Princess Cadence smiled and shook her head, “Yes, I believe you, 8-Bit, and Poindexter spent most of that class talking about your character, the Level 12 Paladin as I recall.”
Both his ears and shoulders drooped some under his wife’s disappointed gaze. Sheepishly he shifted with his hooves stuck to the floor, muttering, “Sorry.”
She walked over and lightly kissed the end of his nose. She teased, “Well, you may have botched the vow of chastity, but you can still get this right. When the day comes, I’ll need your support.”
“Yes dear.”
Weeks went by. The gossips’ rumormongering led to paparazzi running a tabloid article about the secret pregnancy of the Empress, insinuating Shiny Armor might not be the stud. The prince let it roll off his back no problem, but Princess Cadence’s rising hormones made the same task for her far more difficult. Shining Armor quickly looked into the matter after his sweet bride turned from raging mamma bear to a blubbering mess and back in less than ten minutes. Interrogations of the castle staff led to nearly a total turnover in personnel, with more than one instance of a hormone-laden Mi Amora Cadenza chasing out a newly-fired employee while shrieking at them for their failures. Shining Armor himself had to hold her back from swinging an axe at the gossips. He was grateful he decided to wear the armor that day.
After dismissing the last to be fired, Princess Cadence looked for her husband. She found Shining Armor as he posted his last new guard along a wall looking out over the north part of town. Cadence walked up to him and said, “Honey, are you busy? No? Good. I have something for us to do.”
After returning the recruit’s salute, he turned to her and asked, “Um, can I get a chance to answer?”
“Nah,” the princess answered with a cheeky grin. She led her husband away from the overlook and towards the stairs.
Shaking his head with an amused smile, he whined, “Come on, dear….”
“You know I’m teasing.”
“Yeah. But yes, I’ve got a few minutes,” said Shining Armor, nuzzling his wife.
“Actually,” started Cadence, looking him in the eye, “...you have the whole afternoon. I reassigned Flash Sentry to lead that weekly meeting you gripe about so much.”
The prince closed his eyes as a foal-like smile broke over his face, with a slow hoof pump in the air and a barely-audible squee. He pulled her into a tight embrace, cooing, “Did I ever tell you how much I love you?”
“Several times a day. But I still like hearing it,” purred the princess, kissing him on the nose.
“And I still like telling you that you mean the world to me,” he said, looking her in the eyes and lightly brushing the side of her face.
“I love you too,” she smiled, kissing him unabashedly.
They continued on their way, toward ground level. As they stepped outside, Shining Armor looked at Cadence and asked, “So...what’s the new plan for this afternoon?”
“You’ll see. You might just like it,” she answered with a pat on the withers.
“The hospital?” asked the befuddled prince when he realized to what building she led him.
“Yep.”
The princess pushed open the large double doors. They entered an ornate lobby. Three corridors came out of the large room. Cadence started toward the one on the left. As they passed under the archway, Shining Armor asked, “Why would I like going to the hospital? The place makes me sad, that some of our little ponies aren’t healthy.”
“Come the big day, we’ll have to come here,” replied Cadence slowly, her eyes reading the numbers beside the doors.
“Yeah, but that’s then, not now,” pouted the prince. She nudged him toward a door. They entered and found a small conference room, with five other couples of crystal ponies, each mare at differing stages of showing pregnancy. These mares tried to bow, but resigned to simply lowering their heads when the two entered. The stallions, though, knelt as per usual. Cadence motioned them to their feet. A certain sappiness hung in the air as they resumed talking to each other, or hugging, or some of the stallions holding their mares’ baby bumps. The room was filled with smiles, though a certain prince voiced the question that came to mind, “It’s an adorable sight, but what is it?”
“It’s a class for couples expecting their first foal,” said Cadence with a contented sigh, basking in the love her subjects in the room felt and showed.
“Okay…?”
She snickered at his confusion, elaborating, “It covers fundamental basics of giving birth and some things we’ll need to know during the first week.”
“Oh! Good thinking; the more I thought about it, the more I realized I don’t know what I’m doing,” Shining Armor conceded.
“From what everypony’s said, nopony knows what they’re doing, no matter how much they prepare,” said Cadence, leaning back into her husband’s embrace.
Chuckling, he joked, “Guess this is better than being clueless.”
“Well, totally clueless, at least.”
They laughed together a moment with a light kiss. The door opened, and in walked a white earth pony mare with pink mane and tail, blue eyes, a nurse’s cap, and a red cross for a cutie mark. She smiled broadly and genuinely as she took the podium, saying, “Welcome, Your Excellencies, everypony, to Parenthood 101. I’m Nurse Redheart, and I’ll be your instructor today. I have been a Nurse Practitioner OB and Midwife for 15 years. The miracle of life never gets old to me. It’s beautiful every time, and I’m thrilled that each of you get to experience it.
“The first thing we’ll talk about is pain management. While birth is a beautiful thing, I can tell you plainly you’ve never known pain like this,” the nurse continued sweetly, still with a smile on her face. Shining Armor stared blankly at her, and the discontinuity between what she said and how she said it. Nurse Redheart either didn’t notice or didn’t mind; either way, she carried on without a break, “There are medicines we can administer to reduce the pain you feel, but there’s a serious drawback: it slows down labor immensely, which increases risk to your foal. Because of that, we encourage mothers-to-be to avoid them. Dads, this is where you come in.”
Shining Armor’s ears perked up in surprise. Looking around the room, he saw the same from the other stallions in the room. Nurse Redheart continued by describing a series of small massages and places to apply pressure, having each couple practice. Shining Armor found what worked best for Cadence among these was him placing his forehooves on top of her hips and pressing straight down as hard as he could.
Nurse Redheart called them to their seats. She began, “Moving around both helps to alleviate some of the pain and speed things up, but that’s only viable during phase one labor. Once in transition, that’s out.”
“Phase one?” Shining Armor blurted.
Nurse Redheart grimaced, then explained, “Shoot, I forgot that part, Your Excellency. Foalbirth is divided into three phases: labor, birth, and afterbirth. Phase one is when dilation and contractions begin, which once it has really begun, will become stronger, more intense, and closer together. Once you’re fully dilated and contractions last a minute, you’re in transition to phase two. Well, not you, Your Excellency, but your wife.”
Cadence whispered, “Which are things you should have known, if you had paid attention in class.”
“I’m sorry already!”
Princess Cadence snickered, “I’m just teasing, honey. Take it easy.”
“I’m trying.”
Nurse Redheart continued on about the coming gut-wrenching pain with a little too much detail as Cadence tapped her chin, airily saying to him, “Think back to when you guys were talking about going for that Holy Avenger sword or some such. I think that’s what you guys were gabbing about in the back.”
“How did you remember that? I don’t remember what all the fellas and I talked about then!” the prince whispered, forehead scrunched.
The princess shot him a small smile, and answered, “When it comes to you, I remember. Always.”
“I love you too,” he replied, putting a forehoof around her. Pursing his lips, he slowly continued, “Hmm...now that you mentioned that, I’m starting recall some of this stuff….”
“Told you,” snickered Cadence quietly. Her ears pricked up, and she tapped him, pointing toward the podium.
“We offer laughing gas as an option,” carried on Nurse Redheart, still with a genuine smile on her face. “You’ll still feel all the pain, but from we’ve seen, you won’t care. If all else fails, there is an epidural. If you choose this option, you won’t be able to move around, and your feeling of where to push is muffled. There are risks, most of them almost zero, of serious complications from an epidural. We don’t like using them, but still make them available.”
Nurse Redheart pulled out something from under the podium. Her smile faded as she spoke in slightly more serious tones, “An epidural goes alongside the spinal cord, delivered through a tiny tube. Before we can set that in place, we have to numb the injection site. And this is why.”
The nurse held up a thick, long needle, one with several dark-colored bands a good inch wide apiece. But Shining Armor did not perceive medical equipment. No sirree, Shining Armor found himself face-to-face with a vile instrument of torment and death: a sophisticated soul-sucking dagger constructed specifically to gouge his sweet, darling wife in the spine in dark rooms filled with chains and shackles, the shrieks of the damned, and shredded carnage...chambers where the embodiments of evil planned to end Cadence, the very personification beauty in the mortal realm. Suffice it to say, the young prince passed out. His bride revived him immediately. She hissed, “Oh my goodness, Shiny, keep it together…!”
“B-b-but...that thing…,” the prince whimpered on the edge of tears.
“...is an epidural needle. Yes, it’s big, and intimidating, but if I need it, I’ll ask for it,” grumbled Cadence.
“Are you sure? I don’t want to see you paralyzed.”
Princess Cadence glared at her husband, hissing, “Stop being such a worrywart, you silly colt!”
The room darkened. An old projector played a video on a screen. Nurse Redheart smiled broadly, saying, “And now, we’ll show you the miracle itself. It’s beautiful, seeing a new life enter the world.”
Shining Armor’s eyes widened while the pupils shrank to pinpricks. The nurse wasn’t kidding. There on the screen was that part of a mare, zoomed in. He couldn’t believe they were unabashedly showing such a thing, or that any mare with self-respect would allow such a recording. His left lower eyelid twitched involuntarily as his upper lip curled. The whole thing was swollen up, and began to split, as a tiny muzzle emerged. The nurses continued, “For earth ponies, this is pretty straight-forward. Once the head is through, the rest will come quickly.”
The image on the screen showed just that. The foal practically leapt out of the birth canal once its head cleared. A midwife caught the infant. The foal took a deep breath and started crying. Most of the mares welled up tears. Shining Armor felt a smile crossing his face, thinking ahead. They didn’t know yet if they were having a filly or a colt, since their foal was obstinate and kept turning during the anatomy scan. Just the same, he gave his wife a small hug. Nurse Redheart chuckled with a satisfied grin, then turn to the couples, saying, “I never tire of seeing this,” but as she spoke, on the screen, the mare’s bits spewed a bunch of blood and some bloody bag-shaped mass.
Shining Armor’s hearty lunch attempted to make a repeat appearance, but was quelled. Other stallions in the room showed similar reactions as the nurse in the projection began cleaning the blood off of the mare’s bits. Nurse Redheart openly laughed. The prince stared at this with a twitching eyelid. Wiping her eyes, the nurse declared, “That was the afterbirth, or the placenta. For most mares it doesn’t follow that quickly. Almost always, the stallions are more repulsed when they see it for the first time. And this, ladies, is how we know we’re the tougher sex.”
The other mares in the room chuckled. Shining Armor frowned, but eased up when Cadence rubbed him on the shoulders. Nurse Redheart resumed her lecture as the screen showed a different mare’s nethers in a similar state as the first, “Pegasi wings are rarely well-developed at birth. Unless they are, birthing a little pegasus should be no more difficult than an earth pony foal. If the wings are in a more advanced stage of development, they will require an extra push or two, but still nothing like clearing the head, as we’ll see here.”
The foal’s nose came first here, too. After the head cleared, the baby came out quickly, but caught for a moment just past the shoulders. A second later, a little pegasus colt popped into the awaiting nurse’s forelimbs.
The screen switched again, showing a third mare down below. The nurse resumed, “And now for the tricky one: unicorns. Given the magical nature of unicorn horns, they begin growing during late embryonic development, and grow to about half their proportionate size by the time the fetus is ready for the outside world. However, since unicorn horns point forward, it is very easy for the horn to catch on parts of the birth canal, especially after the nosing. Sometimes the nurse has to manually or telekinetically manipulate the foal’s head to allow the horn to pass. Let’s show you what that looks like.”
Shining Armor involuntarily reached for his wife as the nose came out. The mare was obviously pushing hard, and the nose turned upward, but otherwise did not advance. Some gasps sounded in the room, mainly from the other unicorns. As the mother on the screen relaxed, the nose lowered. Some hooves reached in, pushing themselves into the birth canal, with a trickle of blood flowing out the bottom. Cadence clenched and shuddered as the other’s forelimbs moved around. The prince and princess joined hooves watching the struggle; the anatomy scan showed them they were expecting an alicorn. Shining Armor could feel his wife’s worry, and he shared it: alicorn horns always have been proportionately larger. He began to wonder if they should skip the natural birth and go straight for a Lunarian. On the screen was a bloody mess, but the foal’s head was righted, and it was born quickly after that.
A fourth mare’s bits came on the screen. Nurse Redheart began sadly, “This one breaks my heart, but we have to show you. No, it’s not a stillbirth, but that in some ways may be easier.”
An earth pony filly was born without any complication, but the newborn stood up and was able to walk around. Shining Armor cocked his head to one side, and asked, “I don’t get it. It looks to me like this little filly is ahead of the curve.”
“I know it looks like that, but this is a sad case,” replied the nurse solemnly. “You see, Your Excellency, what you’re looking at is a little filly that has no magic in her at all. None. She will never speak, she will never become fully conscious and aware of herself, she will forever have no higher intelligence than that of a common animal. It happens in one out of about every twenty-eight thousand pregnancies, and is further declining, but unfortunately is still possible.”
His ears slumped, as did most of everypony else’s at that most. He muttered, “Oh. That is sad….”
“Yeah. Rather than dwell on that, let me ask, are all of you planning a natural birth?” asked Nurse Redheart. All the mares raised their hooves, including Cadence. Shining Armor grimaced, still concerned on what might happen. The nurse smiled broadly and continued, “Good! It’s better for your foal, and you’ll have a much faster recovery. If something goes wrong, we’ll try everything we can to see to it a natural birth happens, if I’m the midwife on duty that day. If not, depending on which OB or midwife you have, they may prefer an emergency L-section. If we have to, we’ll even get these out. These are delivery room forceps.”
Shining Armor sat slack-jawed, unable to breathe. Forceps are supposed to be small, for reaching into small devices a telekinetic aura would disrupt. These...weren’t small. These were huge. They looked more like salad spoons than tweezers. And to Shining Armor, they looked like instruments for an interrogation in a torture chamber than salad spoons. Something that size had to be used to grip an organ, internal or in a tender location, and give it a twist to extract information. Something like that had to be for the painful execution of a horrific murderer. And they made this device to clamp down on the side of a foal’s head in case they couldn’t get it out. His foal would be next. The very thought sent Shining Armour under a second time….
“On your feet, mister!”
The bucket of ice water splashed on Shining Armor’s face. He jolted to his feet, blurting, “Huwa…! Wha-a…?? Bah! What happened? Why am I drenched?”
Princess Cadence stood there with a grimace. She set down the galvanized pail and released her telekinetic hold as she said, “You passed out, just looking at the forceps.”
“Oh. Eugh...those aren’t forceps. They’re fit for a torture chamber, not a delivery room,” the prince shuddered. Whether it was the memory, the ice water, or both, he shivered uncontrollably.
“I think reminding you of your old paladin took you too much to back then, but yes,” grumped the princess. He looked down. Sighing, she continued more gently, “I’d sooner our foal be cut from my belly like Auntie Luna was, than be pulled out those...things.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page, but where are we?” asked Shining Armor, looking around. They were in a small chamber with unused dividers neatly stored in the corner.
Cadence said, “In a side room. The class is mostly done. About all you missed was diaper-changing and other duties the servants will take care of.”
Shining Armor sighed. With contained frustration, he started, “I don’t want to be like the snooty aristocrats who have next to no contact with their kids, and leave everything to the help. Maybe I should learn how to change a diaper.”
“I’m sure they’ll be perfectly content to show you, but it may be better to learn from them and not this class,” urged Cadence warily. “I saw the other dolls would become fussier when the dads tried changing the diapers, and would relieve themselves then and not for the moms.”
The prince blinked a few times with a blank face. Equally vacant, he answered, “Oh. I believe you. Nurse Redheart seemed to get her jollies from watching us squirm, especially the stallions.” Cadence tried not to snicker at that last point. He paused, looking around and unable to find a window. “Wait, what time is it?”
“Nearly sundown.”
Cocking his head to the side, he sheepishly yelped, “Holy crap, I was out that long!?”
“You weren’t alone,” said Cadence with a smirk.
Shining Armor looked around. Of the six couples in the class, three of them were here. One of the stallions was fanning his passed-out wife, and the other stallion was coming around. The prince blinked rapidly, and blurted, “Ah. So I wasn’t. Um...whadiya’ say we just head home?”
“Sounds lovely, dear.”
The two decided on a whim to have dinner out while they were at it, much to the surprise and delight of the head chef, in spite of his highly flustered maître d. Cadence gave her prince the short and easy version of the class and what he missed while in his stunned stupor.
Later they were back in the palace, heading toward their room. Shining Armor asked, “What do you think of the name ‘Skyla’ for a girl?”
Sticking her tongue out, she coughed, “Yuck, no!”
Taken aback, he asked, “That bad?”
“That name sounds like you’re trying to sell toys to little fillies,” she grumbled, still disgusted.
He shot her a disapproving look, then asked, “What would you name a filly, then?”
“Hmm…‘Flurry Heart’ sounds great,” she answered. He snorted with a chuckle. “What?”
Shaking his head, he said, “Now it sounds like you’re the one trying to sell toys.”
Cadence pouted, “Oh come on, dear! Who would want to buy toys of our family?” She looked at you, then gave you a knowing smile and a couple of nods.
The prince shrugged, and suggested, “Well, what about ‘White Knight’ if we have a colt?”
She mulled it over a moment, and answered, “I think that’ll do okay. I hadn’t thought about colt names at all.”
“I think we’re gonna have the time of our lives,” Shining Armor said with a contented smile, stopping his wife to give her a warm hug.
“Me too,” she murmured, melting into his arms.
They stood there a moment before continuing down the hall. He continued, “So...what are the signs you’re going into labor, apart from your water breaking?”
Through a pained expression she answered, “Well, if you paid attention, most mares’ waters don’t break labor’s been going on for awhile.”
“Oh. Right,” he muttered.
“What am I gonna do with you?”
He gave her his best colt-like smile and spoke with child-like hope, “Uh, love me and keep me?”
“Of course. I love you too,” chuckled the princess, shoving her husband. With some light laughs they entered the royal bedchamber. She continued, “Let’s see, there’s increased back pain, contractions themselves, I might feel a need to clean everything in sight—”
Shining Armor perked up as one does one has something pertinent to say, “Here’s a more interesting question: is there anything we can do to encourage labor to begin?”
The maid servants pulled the sheets down, gathered their things and made their way toward the door as Cadence pursed her lips in thought. Her eyes twinkled a moment, and she started, “Well, I can have extra spicy food, walk around a bunch, and there is one thing you can do….”
The prince raised an eyebrow as servants exited. As the bedchamber door closed behind them, he asked, “Oh? That’s good to know. What can I do to help?”
Princess Cadence stopped when she stood by the bed. She looked back at Shining Armor with a mischievous smile. As his eyes met hers, she lifted her tail.
And around the Crystal Empire, ponies milling about saw, in the high spire, the royal bedchamber’s light go out at 9:03pm. They smiled, knowing they were all in for a good night tonight.
Fin