Unexpecting (Unexpecting #1)

41. Chapter Forty-One

Chapter Forty-One

“Feeling the babies move is one of the most magical moments of a pregnancy.”

A Young Woman’s Guide to the Joy of Impending Motherhood

Dr. Francine Pascal Reid (1941)

I liked being pregnant. Actually, I loved it, as you may have expected. I was born to have babies—maybe not three at once, but this is what I was made for. I mean, look at the size of my hips, small pelvis or no small pelvis.

It was fun being pregnant. Every day I seemed to get bigger and noticed new strange and wonderful things happening to my body. And some not so wonderful, like the constant flatulence, but we don’t need to get into that. Despite the nausea and urge to throw up all the time, I loved being pregnant and everything about it. Well, maybe not the heartburn I’d been getting at night. That was another new and not so wonderful thing. Or the leg twitches that kept me awake, or the continually full bladder and the constant need to empty it. But I loved it. I was looking forward to when the babies are born, but I really liked being pregnant. Even the maternity clothes weren’t all that bad. Except the underwear, which I did draw the line at. My bikini panties worked just as well.

It turned out I’m one of those women who loved people touching their bellies, talking about them, and just giving me loads of attention for being pregnant. Plus, when I told people I was having triplets—which I did a lot, especially on the subway—I got tons of sympathy .

I finally had to tell the kids at school after one of them rudely informed me that my belly was getting really big and maybe I needed to go on a diet. Some of them thought the idea of me being pregnant was pretty cool, but most of them ignored the belly unless I couldn’t manage to fit at one of the tables. Except for the one little darling who seemed to come in every single day with a new and horrifying tale of his little baby sister, usually regarding how often and loudly she cried or how often and messy her bowel explosions were. I have no idea what his parents were feeding the kid, but remind me not to get feeding tips from them.

I was lying quietly in bed one Sunday night after spending the day with Libby and the kids. Normally a day spent with the kids tires me out, but I was surprised just how exhausted I was. I could have slept for hours.

I felt something strange in my belly. At first I thought it might be some new form of gas, since it felt like bubbles popping in my stomach. I didn’t give it much thought other than letting out a huge burp, but then it hit me. It was a baby moving. Somewhere down in the bowels—well, not the bowels, obviously—one of the babies was getting busy. Someone was awake.

″Hey, there,” I said gently. “You awake down there? Which one are you?”

I lay there with both hands on my belly and started to laugh. They were moving! My babies were moving.

″I can’t wait to meet you,” I said aloud in the dark room. “I can’t wait to be your mom. Not that I’m not your mom already, but I don’t really have much to do right now. I’m looking forward to you coming out. It’ll be a lot of work, and maybe I shouldn’t tell you this, but I have no idea what I’m supposed to do with you. It’s not like you come with a manual, you know. That might be a good idea. Plus, there are three of you in there, in case you didn’t notice. That was a bit of a surprise—a nice surprise—” I assure my belly, quickly glossing over my first freak-out session, “but I wasn’t really planning on so many at once. But I guess I shouldn’t tell you that in case you get a complex or something.”

I suppose this seems strange, me lying in the dark talking to my babies. I wondered if they could hear me. I wondered what they thought of me. Did they know I’m their mother and that I already love them so much? “You’re going to be so loved,” I told them, giving my belly a rub. One of them kicked in response, and I let out a delighted laugh through my tears. I was crying with happiness and joy and love for my babies. I was going to be a mother, and it doesn’t matter if I don’t know what to do in every circumstance. I’ll figure it out.

″I’ll have lots of help,” I promised. “It’ll be okay. Aunt Libby will know what to do. And I guess your grandmother—we don’t have to talk about her right now. I think I’ll need to explain a few things about her. But Aunt Libby will be great, and Max and Maddy will be your cousins and they’re so excited to meet you, too! And Cooper and Emma—what should we call them? Should they be Uncle Cooper and Aunt Emma? I’ll see what they want to be called. And Aunt Morgan and Brit—you might not see Brit too much, but I’m sure she’ll love you in her own way. And your father… your father. Daddy. J.B.’s excited to be your daddy.”

I really believed that. It took awhile and it was hard at first, but I really thought J.B. was there. This wasn’t the way it was planned, but this was how it turned out, and I thought J.B. was making the best of it. He was ready to be a father to my—our—children.

But what was he to me? That was something I didn’t know yet, and I didn’t know if he did either. It was true that we had grown closer, closer than we ever were before, but it was the platonic kind of friendship I always tried in insist on but had trouble sticking with. Now—anything more than friendship wasn’t an issue. He treated me like—like a friend. All the fun little flirtation we so enjoyed for years was gone. And so was the teasing. True, we had had the little moment at Brit’s wedding, but that was it. I knew me being pregnant frightened him a little—and the idea of labour totally freaked him out—but it was like he had forgotten about the woman part of me.

Which was a problem since these days I felt like all woman, all the time. Like a very ripe, needing to be plucked, woman. But I couldn’t talk about that in front of the babies.

″Let’s go show Daddy what you can do,” I suggested to my stomach and heaved myself off the bed.

″Where’s J.B.?” I panted as I came across Cooper and Emma cuddling on the couch. There seemed to be a lot more stairs these days.

″Upstairs, I guess. Are you okay?” Cooper asked anxiously.

″I felt the babies move,” I called, already halfway up the stairs.

I stopped just short of rushing into J.B.’s room, remembering what had happened the last time I did that. I knocked politely, and immediately the door was pulled open by J.B. A freshly showered J.B., wearing only a towel .

″Um, hi.” I had to literally tear my eyes away from his chest to make sure he was alone. Such a broad chest, with a fine coating of reddish brown hair. The books I’d been reading said your energy returns in the second trimester, which wasn’t exactly true for me yet, but they were dead-on about the increased sexual arousal. I couldn’t stop thinking about sex. This wonderful glimpse of an almost buck-naked J.B. would keep me going for a while.

I gave a little sigh and managed to look J.B. in his blue eyes.

″What’s wrong?” he asked.

″I felt the babies move,” I told him proudly. “At least one of them. It’s hard to tell because—”

″Really?” he asked, amazement written all over his face. “Can I feel?”

″If they do it again.” He led me into the room, and we stood there for at least five minutes with his hands on my belly. His hands are so big they almost covered the whole of my stomach. I had a sudden image of those hands tenderly holding one of our babies. “Sorry,” I said apologetically when he finally dropped his hands. “Maybe next time.”

″Yeah.” He seemed sincerely disappointed. “What did it feel like?”

″Like bubbles. Or butterflies.”

″You make it sound so pretty. Being pregnant suits you. Hang on a sec.” He grabbed a pair of boxers and disappeared into the bathroom.

″Maybe I can spend some more time upstairs so when they do it again, you can be close by,” I offered loudly so he could hear me. “Once I get further along, they’ll be moving all the time, I think. I read that—”

″Can I see your belly?” J.B. interrupted, reappearing in front of me in his red boxers. “Your bare belly, I mean. I never have before. Only during the ultrasound, but…” He was silenced as I obligingly raised my shirt.

I caught my breath as J.B. ran his hands across my swollen stomach. It looked huge, but Dr. Morrissey assured me it was the right size for someone almost seven months along with three babies inside. “You didn’t have this before,” he commented, fingering the dark line of hair on my abdomen that had appeared. “It’s so cool,” he mumbled, his eyes never leaving my belly.

″It’s just a belly.” I was embarrassed, not because of his interest, but by how turned on I was getting! I hadn’t been touched in, well, a long time. And this was just my stomach!

″It’s not,” J.B. murmured. “It’s our babies.” He finally looked up and took my flushed cheeks for embarrassment. “Sorry.” He immediately dropped his hands .

″Don’t be.” I grabbed one of his hands and put it back. “You can scratch it a bit—that feels good,” I told him.

J.B. ran his nails over the expanse. “What was that?” he asked suddenly. “Did they move?”

″That was me. I’m hungry,” I confessed.

He laughed, and now both of his hands were running over my belly again. “It’s so amazing. Big.” Our eyes met, and I couldn’t help but think again how glad I was that he was here to go through this with me. It wouldn’t be the same if I had gone with the anonymous donor. I couldn’t wait until my babies could know their father, and I was happy their father is J.B.

And right now I’d be happy to know J.B., if you know what I mean. I took a deep breath and boldly took J.B.’s hands and moved them onto my breasts.

There was a sudden silence in the room. J.B. just stared at my chest. “These have changed too,” he finally commented.

″Apparently they do,” I joked. I joked because I was practically orgasmic just from J.B.’s hands on my breasts, and if I didn’t make a joke about it, I was afraid I might just eat him alive right then. “I didn’t know if you wanted to check them out too.”

″Mm hmm,” was all he said. One of his thumbs brushed against my nipple, and I closed my eyes and tried not to groan aloud.

But then, just as I was leaning closer, with my eyes half-closed, readying my lips for what I was sure would be a gentle, yet hungry, kiss, J.B. did the unthinkable.

He moved his hands.

Moved them right off my breasts, right off my body, and held them nervously at his sides.

″It’s probably not a good idea,” he told me.

″Why not?” I demanded. Do not beg, Casey, I ordered myself. Do not beg.

″Well, because, you know… that’s what got us in this mess in the first place.” I knew he was trying to joke, but at the moment, I didn’t think it was at all funny. J.B. took a step back from me as if just having a penis in the vicinity of my uterus would crowd the babies or something.

″You don’t want to. I get it.” I stiffly pulled my shirt down to cover everything. “That’s fine.”

″Casey, it’s not that I don’t want to.” J.B. grabbed my arm as I turned to leave .

″I get it. I’m the size of a baby humpback whale, and it would disgust you to see any more of my nakedness. I get it.”

″That’s not it. I think you’re beautiful when you’re pregnant. It’s just…”

″Whatever.” I snatched my arm out of his grasp because the heat from his hand was making me feel like I was about to explode. It was like I was back in high school and had a severe crush on my science lab partner, and I’d just told him how I felt and he didn’t return the emotion. I was humiliated and embarrassed—and my feelings were hurt. Not good emotions when you’re almost seven months pregnant.

Without another word, I stormed out of J.B.’s room and down the stairs.

″What did he do now?” Cooper called from the kitchen.

″Should have got a sperm donor,” I muttered mutinously on my way downstairs to pull out Morgan’s gift that she gave me for my birthday a few years ago. I hoped I had enough batteries.