Chapter 25 And Then There Were Four
And Then There Were Four
DARCY
Ithought there could be nothing scarier than a group of medical staff who really ought to know better discharging you from their lovely, serene, staff-heavy private hospital with a real live baby and just expecting you to waltz off into the centre of London with no instruction manual.
I was wrong.
It’s even scarier when your husbands drive you home, and you walk through the front door of a house that was your sanctuary when you left it but now feels like a foreign land, and one husband ushers you gently into the living room and plumps up some cushions before you gingerly ease your banged-up vagina down on the sofa while the other places the car seat carrying said baby on the floor in front of you.
Because then what the ever-loving fuck are you supposed to do?
And this is coming from someone who has not only staff on hand but two actual husbands. How the hell are you supposed to cope if there are only two of you?
And how do single mothers survive even a single day? Dear Lord, it doesn’t bear thinking about.
I stare down at Baby Charlie, fast asleep and so tiny and perfect and astonishing that it hurts my heart.
He had very mild jaundice when he was born, an ailment that the hospital managed with light treatment, but he still looks slightly suntanned.
His hair is dark. It may be sparse, but it’s the silkiest thing I’ve ever felt.
He smells like vanilla, he’s hungry a lot, and I wouldn’t have needed a paternity test to establish which of my husbands was his father, because the moment he fixed those huge, dark-blue eyes on me, I knew.
Biologically speaking, this is Dex’s son.
Dex settles next to me now, wrapping his arm firmly around my shoulders and tugging me towards him as he gazes down at our son. Max, meanwhile, squats next to the car seat.
‘Do you want to hold him?’
‘Please, honey.’
I don’t want to hold him. I need to hold him like I need my next breath.
Max unbuckles the harness and lifts Charlie out by the armpits, his fingers long enough to support his head.
He hands him to me, and Charlie instinctively snuggles inwards with a farmyard snuffle, a soft little comma with his tiny nappy-clad bum under my palm and his breaths feather-light against my neck.
I’m not sure people would describe me as a peaceful person. I tend to be on a lot of the time. But here, in this quiet living room, with the three men I love more than I would ever have thought possible, I may as well be floating in a Caribbean lagoon for the serenity I feel.
Dex has his head on my shoulder. Charlie is snuggled right where he should be, on my breast. I glance up to find Max staring down at the three of us, the love in his blue eyes fierce.
‘Photo?’
I smile. ’Go for it.’
He pulls his phone out of his pocket and aims it at the three of us.
I look like shit. The skin on my face is still so red and blotchy.
I have burst blood vessels on my eyelids from when I threw up after Charlie came out, and my lips are all chapped.
But clearly beauty is in the eye of the beholder, because Max says in a choked voice, ‘I’ve never seen a more beautiful sight in my life than the three of you.
’ He puts his phone away. ‘I’ll go put the kettle on. ’
‘Stop.’ I hold out my free hand and clasp his. ‘It can wait five minutes. Come and sit with us for a sec.’
I already know Max will be the person who tethers the four of us together, who keeps our heads above water when we’re so sleep-deprived and hormonal and terrified that we don’t know which way is up.
His love language is serving, but I don’t want him serving us so hard that he loses a single chance to just be with us.
He hesitates, then sits down on my other side, so gently that the sofa cushions barely shift under him, turning his entire torso towards me.
His arm snakes over the sofa back, over Dex’s, their bodies cradling me and Charlie.
I let my head drop back against their arms and shift my poor, sore undercarriage further forward so I’m reclining, our baby still curled up against me.
Only then do I let out a sigh. A long, exhausted, contented sigh. I glance at Max to my right, then Dex to my left, and I chuckle. ‘Holy crap. We’ve survived the first five minutes.’
‘You’re doing great, angel,’ Dex says before leaning in to kiss me on the lips.
‘Thanks.’ My voice is shaky. I let my hand do a lap of Charlie’s back. His pale blue and white striped onesie is made from the softest bamboo. His tiny lungs rise and fall under my palm. The speed of his breathing is astounding, as is the fact that he can keep himself alive like this.
Max ducks his head so he can peer at our son’s face, currently nestled into my neck. ‘He has three adults shitting bricks here, and he’s totally oblivious.’
‘Sounds about right,’ Dex says, his voice sounding as shaky as mine did. ‘God, he’s so perfect.’
‘He has your eyes,’ Max tells Dex over me.
Dex instantly starts demurring. ‘No, no—it’s impossible to tell at this stage. He—’
‘I dreamed of that,’ Max insists. ‘If I was a praying man, I’d have prayed for it. All I’ve ever wanted was a child who had Darcy’s smile and your eyes.’
* * *
MAX
In the nine months that we had to prepare for Charlie’s arrival, we settled on the following plan, or mission statement, most accurately.
It was this:
That the three of us would embrace this life-changing gift wholeheartedly.
That we’d deprioritise the daily bullshit that life and jobs throw at us and focus on immersing ourselves in the miracle of our son’s early days.
That we’d use our cunning advantage of having one extra adult in the relationship to establish an equilibrium that meant no one person, including Darcy—especially Darcy—would be too overwhelmed and exhausted to enjoy this most special, fleeting time.
That we’d get help, as much as possible, so that our only duties were to revel in our baby and rest (probably in that order, to be realistic).
I wasn’t up for any sort of night nanny or maternity nurse for a good while. There are three of us, for fuck’s sake! I was confident that between us we could manage, until I had an eye-opening conversation with Rafe at a Berry Bros champagne tasting one night.
‘Your child is the most important investment you’ll ever make,’ he told me.
‘You wouldn’t buy a new Porsche and get behind the wheel if you’d never had a driving lesson, would you?
You wouldn’t dream of trying to “work it out as you go along”.
So why the fuck would you leave it to chance with your baby?
Honestly, you should book up Josie, our maternity nurse. ’
I grimaced. ‘It just seems—I don’t know—like an obnoxious thing to do.’
‘Since when have you not been obnoxious? But seriously, okay, imagine you’re at home that first night, and the baby’s been feeding off Darcy for like, an hour, but you have no idea whether they’ve had enough milk.
Or you’ve burped them for ten minutes but nothing’s come up.
Should you put them down? Or do you keep trying to burp them?
‘What if they’re throwing up too much, or you don’t understand why they won’t stop crying, or—and this is a common one—you guys have fed them and burped them and changed them and it feels like you’ve just got them down and then the whole fucking cycle just starts all over again.
It’s bloody relentless. I’m telling you.
Having the right expert on hand can mean the difference between days and nights of pulling your hair out versus an experience where you all get to fully participate in the good bits but you spare yourself the heartache.
‘Rosalie used to scream every time we put her down after a feed. Like agonised screaming. It was awful. Belle cried every time. Josie diagnosed silent reflux and we took her to the paediatrician—bingo. She was spot-on. God knows how long we would have all soldiered on in total fucking bewilderment. I dread to think.’
I held up a hand. ‘Okay, okay. You’ve made your point. I’ll give her a call tomorrow.’
We all loved Josie when we interviewed her. She was competent and organised enough to please me, and caring and effusive enough for Darce and Dex.
With her due to start this evening, our schedule looks like this:
Dex and I alternate nights while we’re both on paternity leave. This gives us equal time with Darcy and Charlie, and equal exposure to what Josie can teach us.
Whoever’s not on duty sleeps alone in our room—depressing, but necessary for a sound night’s sleep.
Darcy and the husband on duty sleep in the spare room with Charlie, next to the nursery, where Josie is sleeping now and where Charlie will eventually sleep.
We’ve all agreed that Darcy’s only job right now is to feed him.
She needs as much sleep as possible. From what Rafe said, I realise the feed-burp-change cycle can be both time-consuming and far too regular.
We need to eliminate as much of that as possible so our wife can get the rest she needs between feeds.
With three other adults on hand and the terrifying but efficient technology of breast pumps available, we’re determined that Darce will not shoulder this burden alone.
I feel quietly confident that we have a decent structure in place.
Inevitably, parts of it will go to shit now that the little man is here, but that’s okay.
The funny thing is that it all looked great on paper, but now that he’s arrived safely, and we’ve brought him home, and I’m sitting here with my wife and my husband and our child in what I suspect is a rare moment of calm, all the planning feels immaterial.