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Tom: Fiona gave us a bit of a fright, she did. Luckily I was in London, filming the Thor sequel, with only a fortnight away in Iceland at the beginning of December.
Abby: My due date was the 23rd of December, but by the looks of me, I looked several months overdue.
Tom: Abby, bless her, grew more and more uncomfortable. As soon as December hit, she was anxious to get our daughter out. She had trouble sleeping, sitting, standing… being.
Abby: I loved being pregnant after the morning sickness left me alone right up until those last weeks. It was torture, and I couldn’t wait another moment to hold my daughter in my arms. I carried her in me, but I wanted to be able to hold and touch her.
Tom: The Dark World shoot was due to wrap on the fourteenth, and I was worried that Abby might go into labor before her due date, because she was so out of sorts. Every morning I would sit in the makeup chair at five anticipating that call from Abby that her water broke or her labor had started. I didn’t want to miss a moment of it, and I still remember nearly every minute of that December, stressing the baby’s arrival. The looming ticking of the clock and the fear that I wouldn’t be there for Abby or for my daughter, that I’d miss the biggest event of my adult life while I was playing another character. That worry was there - every morning I left Abby, I questioned whether I’d miss this.
Abby: The day he wrapped, I think he came storming through our flat before the director finished saying, ‘Cut! And that’s a wrap!’ In his haste, he was still wearing Loki’s boots. Wardrobe had to track him down to get them back.
Tom: The first full day that I was home with Abby, waiting for Fiona to arrive, the fifteenth, a Saturday… I spent following her from room to room around the flat until I was positive she wouldn’t give birth without me by her side. We’d had a couple of Braxton Hicks con–
Abby: We did, did we?
Tom: Abby experienced a few Braxton Hick contractions and I experienced the pain of my hand through a grinder. During that last month, we waited with baited breath for our lives to change. The midwife said that the contractions were perfectly normal, and Abby’s body was preparing for the birth.
Abby: On the seventeenth, I woke with pain in my lower back, just here. It was different than any of the uncomfortable pinches and jabs that I’d felt up until that point. With my due date in a week, I felt what was going on. The baby had been shifting and moving a lot for some time, I couldn’t pinpoint when, but she was getting read to make her debut. When Tom helped me up from bed that morning - the pain was terrible back there.
Tom and I - he helped me up from bed that morning. I was bigger than a house and couldn’t do it without his help. But he helped me up out of bed that morning, and we looked at each other and we just knew. It’s one of those bizarre significant moments that happen in your life, and you never quite know why you remember that moment. We looked at each other and knew that Fiona was coming. It was scary, but Tom wrapped me up in his arms and we held each other for a long time, there in our bedroom by my side of the bed. We held each other, and it calmed me.
Tom: Labor didn’t begin for a few hours after that. Abby stayed by me. I called my mum first and told her that the baby was coming that day… or that we suspected the baby was coming. Mum called everyone else for us. I called the midwife, and she told us to stay calm and enjoy the quiet. Take a walk. Watch a movie. Nap. Read. Check the nursery, make sure everything was in the right place.
Abby: We did all that, but I was mostly antsy to get going. The nine months waiting to touch and hold my baby was really difficult to endure. I just wanted her in my arms. But contractions didn’t start until that afternoon.
Tom: Abby handled the first three hours of contractions really well. When her water broke, it wasn’t huge.
Abby: No gush of fluid, it just seeped out, and that’s when we called the midwife again. Tom was so supportive and rubbed my back, timed my contractions and the time between. He’d taken antenatal classes with me, and remembered all the tips and techniques to keep me breathing.
Tom: The private clinic took us in late that night and everything progressed normally with the midwife checking on us. It was surreal, wonderful but absolutely normal and routine for these professionals. They were stars! They did so much of the work to make it look routine, but treated us as vips because this was our first baby.
Abby: When heavy labor started… well, I didn’t handle that bit well.
“Tom,” she croaked with effort, her breath rushing from her. “Tom, please…” Her tear-stained, sweat-shined, red flushed face turned up to plead with me. “Please… don’t make me do this.” Another searing pang tore through her abdomen, she winced from the pain.
I gripped her around her shoulders, feeling her strain and stress with the exertion of bringing a child into the world. I kissed her fevered brow with an intense tenderness. Humility and awe radiated from my heart out.
This woman, this amazing woman was giving me the greatest gift, birthing our child, my child.
“My precious Abby, you’re doing so well.”
Pain and heat pulsed off of her from her skin, her pores, and knowing that this happened and followed what millions of women before had done, didn’t ease my concern for my woman.
The midwife spoke from between Abby’s legs, her eyes trained on the source of all my girl’s pain. “Abigail, dear, I’m going to need you to push.”
An anguished sob escaped Abby in her heightened state. “I can’t… can’t– Tom, it hurts! Please don’t make me.”
Reasoning with a woman in labor, I’d quickly learned in the hours before this was impossible. The tension, stress and sheer amount of endurance she experienced was far too much for her to think and act logically. Abby’s brain was entirely engaged in the birth. That fact didn’t keep me from trying to console and support her. “Abby, my beautiful Abby, our Fiona is coming. Our daughter. A little bit longer.”
She shook her head in her mania of pain and exhaustion. She’d been at this for a full day, her body put through the trials and tribulations of delivering a baby. “I can’t… Tom, I can’t…”
“My beautiful love, you can. You’re doing it.”
The midwife repeated, “We need you to push, Abby. Your baby needs your help now.”
My girl pleaded with me as her ally, her beautiful man who always sided with her. “I can’t… Tom, please… it hurts so much… please don’t make me.”
I’d give her anything she asked or demanded of me, but I couldn’t grant her this request. Helplessness weighed heavily on my heart. I hated putting her through more temporary agony, but the result of seeing, holding and loving our baby would be worth the effort in the end. I had to convince her to go through with this last part.
“I know it’s painful, love, but you’re so strong. You’ve done everything to take care of our baby, you’ve cared for her this far. A little bit longer, and we can both care for her. She wants to be with us now.”
Abby continued to shake her head, crying harder when I told her no. “I can’t,” her pitiful utterance cut through me.
I lowered myself down to her eye level as she reclined along the clinic’s bed. I could see in her eyes the desire to give up. I talked over the midwife’s telling Abby to push again. “Abby, a little bit longer. Bring Fiona into the world so we can hold her. She can hold your finger in her tiny hand if you just work a bit longer.”
That was one of her late night wishes. We used to share our hopes for the baby in the dark before we went to sleep.
“Please take me home. I don’t want to do it anymore.”
“Fiona isn’t going to wait, baby. She wants to come now.”
“Tom, it hurts,” she dissolved into fresh tears. “Don’t make me. Please take me home.”
“Abigail, this is up to you to bring our daughter into the world. Only a few more pushes and she’ll be here.”
She shook her head again, this time more vehemently and more tears poured down her face in rivers. “Please don’t… I can’t… my mum and dad- they can’t meet her. Not without them here.”
Through her pain-addled, broken speech, I understood. It wasn’t about the physical pain alone that Abby had to endure, but the emotional pain of her family missing a major event in her life. I brought our clasped hands up to her cheek and gently wiped her tears away with the back of my forefinger.
“Abigail, I know you miss your family everyday.”
“I need my mum.”
“She’s here, with you always, in your heart and your memories. But your family needs you now. I need you. Your daughter needs you. It’s time for you to be mummy. Fiona wants to meet her mum. Please push for me, just a little longer.”
Abby’s face changed from the tortured orphan to the fierce force of nature, a mother. I saw it in her eyes, the way she rallied the last of her strength and stamina, ready to endure more pain. My Abigail became a mother before my eyes, and she braved the next 40 minutes with the determination of a lion, graceful and powerful.
After 29 hours of active labor and twenty hours after her water broke, Abby delievered our perfect child, pink, plump and beautiful Fiona Jane Hiddleston. That gorgeous creature gave a healthy wail when she came into the world, but quickly hushed when she heard Abby’s voice, “There she is. That’s my baby!”
The miracle of birth brought us both to tears, all those months of waiting and worrying melted at the sight. Our baby had arrived.
The connection between mother and daughter was instananeous when the midwife placed the 7lb, 2oz bundle of joy into Abby’s arms.