Chapter 26
26
KATE
A s miserable as I was at the beginning of my pregnancy, the rest seems to fly by in a flurry of activity. I complete my CPA exams the week before the baby is due. By that time, I spend most of my time with my swollen feet propped up listening to audiobooks and trying to teach myself to crochet. I get this idea that I want to make a hat for the baby. It’s easier said than done, and after about nine attempts, I decide that a blanket will be easier.
I’m surrounded by a tangle of soft yellow yarn working at my pitifully small start on a baby blanket when my water breaks. The security team bundles me and my bag into a car and I’m at the hospital in minutes. Mickey and Rory arrive hot on my heels and I’ve never seen the cool and unbothered king that is my husband so beside himself. He keeps going to the nurse’s station asking when the doctor will check my progress and when I can get an epidural. He has a literal copy of my birth plan in his hand the whole time. I finally laugh and tell him to calm down before he gets kicked out of the maternity unit.
I’m excited and nervous, every contraction taking my breath away with its knot of shocking pain. I grip his hand and he kisses my head, breathes through it with me. I tell him I love him about a thousand times. When the doctor comes in, she tells me there’s good news and bad news. “Good news is you’re progressing naturally and the heartbeat sounds strong. Bad news is you don’t have time for an epidural. It’s time to push.” The nurses help me put my legs in the stirrups and Mickey holds me up, supports me as I bear down.
In three pushes, our baby girl is here, screaming and red-faced and beautiful. I burst into tears as I fall back against the bed. They lay her on my chest and I kiss her dark damp curls. Mickey’s big hand touches her back as lightly as a feather, so gently and wonderstruck.
“Molly Pearl O’Halloran,” I say, “we’ve been waiting for you.” I meet my husband’s eyes and see his shining with tears.
“I love you,” he says to me, and I feel the swell of love in my heart as I cherish the weight of our seven-pound baby on my chest.
“I love you both,” I say.
“She’s perfect,” he says, touching her tiny fist with one finger. She opens her hand and grips his finger. I watch his face as he plummets into helpless adoration for our daughter. “She’s got a grip.”
“She’s strong like her daddy,” I say fondly.
“Strong like both of us,” he tells me and kisses my lips. It is the most perfect moment there’s ever been and I’m the luckiest woman.
Five months later, Molly fusses in a lacy silk christening gown, trying to yank the bonnet off her head as her Uncle Rory holds her as cautiously as if she were a bomb. She’s baptized, and when the water touches her forehead, she stops crying and blinks her big blue O’Halloran eyes in curiosity.
“You like the water, don’t you, baby,” Rory croons to her.
He is doting and enraptured with his niece. Once we could have visitors in the hospital, he charged in with flowers, balloons and a stuffed bunny the size of a five-year-old child. He kept trying to get me to ‘rest’ so he could hold her. He took about a hundred pictures with his phone, all of her just sleeping in the bassinet. Then there were the selfies.
“Please stop putting Snapchat filters on my baby,” I laughed when he showed me the cartoon dog ears on her sleeping angel face.
“Send me that one,” Mickey mumbled, because he couldn’t stand for there to be a picture of his daughter that he didn’t have.
In the days and months that followed, I think we changed her outfit four times a day because of all the gifts we had gotten. Dresses, hats, sleepers, tiny Nikes and little baby Ugg boots. Her Red Sox onesie and hat. It was like a tiny fashion show with photos. When she sleeps, which was most of the time, it’s hard to make myself nap because I love to gaze her. The curve of her cheek and her perfect tiny fingernails and the whorl of dark hair on her head.
“I’m too happy to sleep,” I tell Mickey. But then he curls up behind me and spoons me, pulling me back against his chest and I nestle in as warmth and sleep drag me under. I’m pretty sure I’m the happiest anyone has ever been.