After Freya was born, I spent almost the whole day lying in my hospital bed. I was elated, but I was still kind of in shock. I waited for the feeling to return to my legs. They strapped some compressors to them to keep the blood flowing. My baby was brought to me and I fed her.

All night long as I labored, for sixteen hours, I was hooked up to a fetal monitor, which tracked Freya’s heart tones, and measured my contractions. After the first deceleration, we lived to hear that heartbeat. It was steady and sure, usually at 135bpm, sometimes up to 160 when she was moving or kicking inside me. The times it dropped to 90bpm were some of the scariest of my life.

Anyway, the next day, all day, as I lay in my room with my healthy perfect daughter, I could still hear that monitor. It sounded so real to me, just floating in the background, thumpthump thumpthump.

Brian heard it, too.

But it wasn’t there, there was no fetal monitor in our room, or even in our side of the maternity wing. It was a phantom.

Here we are in the hospital after feeding. It was the first time she fell asleep on my body. It felt incredible.