It had been a long birth. Uncomplicated, straightforward, happy ending, but long. It was early on a Thursday morning, just after seven, when I finally left my client tucked up in bed. She had a plate of scrambled eggs, her newborn babe latched happily to her breast, and her placenta in the cooler in the back of my car, ready to be encapsulated. Now, after having no sleep in more than thirty hours, I was ready to drive home. Such is the life of a doula.

I was only about fifteen minutes away from home when I felt my eyelids droop and I decided to pull over. I’d tried all the tricks for staying alert – the air conditioner was running on high, windows down, music loud, I’d even been snacking on almonds to try to stay awake, but unfortunately it was just one of those days. Pulling off into a side street, I pulled my chestnut hair back into a messy ponytail and screwed my nose up at my reflection in the mirror. My blue eyes certainly looked tired, judging by the bags upon bags upon bags resting underneath them.

“Geez Poppy, pull yourself together,” I muttered under my breath.

Stepping out of my car, I walked into the local coffee shop and ordered a large mocha, extra shot. The barista smiled at me sympathetically as he made my coffee.

“Long night?” he asked. “The longest I’ve had in quite a while.”

The coffee shop was empty so when he walked over with my coffee, he asked if he could take a seat. I smiled tiredly and welcomed him to it.

“So can I ask what it is that kept you up so late?”

As I explained my job as a doula, his eyes brightened.

“That’s a noble profession,” he exclaimed. “When I’m up late it’s usually only because I’ve got characters stuck in my mind and they won’t shut up.”

His name was Ezra, and he was a cliché. PHD student, aspiring writer, part-time barista. We talked for well over an hour as my mocha cooled , and finally my eyes drooped and I knew it was time to leave. I realized just before I left that I hadn’t even introduced myself – my name, or any other identifiers other than that I was a doula.

“My name’s Poppy,” I smiled, as I tossed my empty coffee cup in the bin. “Penelope Ruth Fitzgerald technically, but that’s such a mouthful. My parents apparently decided they needed to honour both my grandmothers in my name, so I’m stuck with the longest first and last name in the history of names. But uh, you can call me Poppy.”

I took a deep breath, and internally admonished myself. I was a chatterbox at the best of times, but when I was tired or attempting to flirt, that turned into rambling and way too much information.

“Sorry,” I apologized, heading out onto the street. “Tired.” “Get home safe Poppy,” Ezra said with a smile.

I drove home, buzzed up on the caffeine and the flirting, and dropped into bed with Ezra’s bright green eyes playing in my mind. I fell asleep quickly, and dreamt of babies with chocolate curls, and green eyes.

Three days later, in the hopes of running into him again, I return to the coffee shop. Ezra is behind the counter, and as I open the door he looks up at me and grins.

“Poppy,” he says, his dimples flashing. “Large mocha? Extra shot?” “I’m not sleep deprived today, so I can probably do without the extra shot actually,” I laughed.

He makes my coffee, and announces to his coworker that he’s taking his ten – and we sit out back on the milk crates, talking once more. His ten turns into his lunch break, and then he finally has to go back inside.

“Can I get your number?” he asks. “I meant to ask last time but you were so sleepy I didn’t want to hold you back.”

I give him my number, flash him a smile and leave. As I turn on the ignition in my tiny car, my phone rings.

“Just wanted to make sure you didn’t give me a fake number,” Ezra’s voice says, a laugh bubbling from his lips.

We meet up for dinner a week later, and then twice the week after that, and soon enough we were spending almost every free moment together. We move in together eight months later, in a tiny house with a verandah out front and wild hydrangeas covering the garden. The house is just big enough for the two of us.

The next two months pass by in a blur – my work continues to keep me sleep deprived but oxytocin-filled, and Ezra manages to find a small publishing house willing to work with his first novel. It is published in the spring of 2017, and he manages to get quite a wide audience by sending ARCs to well known youtubers, or “booktubers” as they’re apparently known in the literary circle.

He starts his next novel with a renewed sense of zeal, and offers me chapters every week. One Saturday morning, he wakes me up with a skinny mocha and the next few chapters.

“I’m really excited about these ones,” he smiles.

As I read through groggy eyes, my eyes don’t retain much information. Or at least, they don’t retain much information until it gets up to a page that is complete blank except for five words.

“Penelope, will you marry me?”

I cry, and say yes, and he produces a diamond ring he’d somehow stashed in his pocketless pyjama pants.

We marry the next year in a tiny, but very luxe wedding. The theme is black and gold deco, and as the afternoon fades into the night, all that fills my mind are gold shimmers, and sparkles from every corner of the room.

We honeymoon in the Napa valley – not too far from home, but enough of an escape that we feel as though we’ve been hidden from the world for a week. We return home with a finished manuscript on Ezra’s part, and a growing baby on mine.

The novel publishes just four months later, at which point we surprise our family and friends with the news that we are expecting di-chorionic, di-amniotic twins, better known as fraternal. Despite my wishes for a homebirth and my doula background, I feel that as this is my first pregnancy and being twins, I’d feel safer in a medical setting. We end up hiring a private midwife who books us into the local birth centre, and it’s during an intense storm three months later that we welcome our babies – Sebastian Connor and Clementine Sophia – into the world. Both babies have dark hair, and dark eyes, and claim spots in our hearts instantly.

We return home as a family of four to our tiny house and attempt to fit our expanding lives inside of it for the next three months. Finally we give up, and decide to relocate. Ezra’s publishing house has just opened a new office in New York, and so we move to Brooklyn. Our apartment is a little grungy, but the open-plan living style is heavenly. The twins grow up with a love of colour, and their dark hair falls out and turns blonde as they grow.

The year they turn four, Ezra and I consider buying a puppy – going as far as visiting a few shelters – before I pee on another stick and produce a pink line. Once again, we are blessed with twins, but this time I have enough faith in my body to attempt a home birth.

Our apartment is soon filled with my new mantras and birth positivity posters. Fairy lights adorn living room ceiling, and the birth pool is sitting in the corner, just waiting for the night when we need it. That night comes soon enough, just after thirty-six weeks, and starts with my waters breaking while walking upstairs after a particularly long play at the park. I hustle the twin’s next door to our neighbor, and Ezra calls our midwife. The pool inflated and my contractions hitting me like a freight train, I sink into the warm water and melt a little.

This time, we are blessed with identical twins – two girls – and we name them Arabella Phoebe and Charlotte Lydia. Fair of skin and hair, their blue eyes search the space around them before settling onto each other. Content while they are together, the twins scream blue murder when separated – so I’ve taken to babywearing both of them while chasing Bash and Emme around.

After birthing my four babes, my passion for being a doula only increases, and I take on more clients a year than ever before, spreading my love of birth and confident in women’s bodies to apartments all over Brooklyn. Ezra’s writing continues to flourish and astounds me each time he publishes a new novel – the words haunting and familiar.

The older twins have just turned thirteen, and the littles are just shy of their ninth birthday when Ezra begs for just one more baby. Knowing our luck, we’ll get another two and so I take my time agreeing. Finally, I say yes, warning him that if I end up having a set of triplets, I will march him down to get a vasectomy myself. Luckily the universe is kind, and we are blessed with just one baby. This pregnancy was the easiest by far, however despite only being a singleton, this baby threw us for a loop during her birth. She was born an undiagnosed breech, greeting the world feet first and sending my doula heart into a panic. Luckily her butt followed, and then her tiny head. We name her Eloise Wren, and she fills the spot I hadn’t really realized was left in our family.

As the winters pass, and our family grows, the kids evolve and change. Sebastian chooses to go to university, studying law and eventually working in a solely pro-bono firm. Clementine follows in her father’s footsteps, but instead of novels she’s marketed as the new Lena Dunham – her books of personal essays sell like hotcakes. Arabella and Charlotte are inseparable, and together open an interior decorating business – sourcing and selling furniture, and starting a popular reality TV show based on their antics. Eloise, our little firecracker, surprises us the most. After one gap year turns into three, she returns from South America with a ring on her finger, and a baby in her belly. Motherhood suits her, and she chooses to go into midwifery soon after her daughter is born.

Life is sweet, and we are full to the brim with happiness.