CHAPTER TWO
We only had to stay in the hospital for two nights.
I was relieved to get home and start putting things in context.
Normalizing the situation. There was a lot of talk from medical professionals about how fortunate we were that despite no neonatal care, the baby was healthy and the birth had gone relatively smoothly.
I also had a long discussion with a therapist. Which might need to happen again, depending on how I handled the trauma of the birth long-term. How I actually felt about all of it remained a mystery. But at least I’d stopped bursting into tears every hour or so.
Everyone visited to say hi to the new arrival. The hospital suite quickly filled up with flowers. And while I’d done my best to stay off social media and stay away from the crazy, I couldn’t help but hear about some of the things being said. And many of them were unkind and unnecessary.
“I don’t want him thinking he wasn’t wanted just because he wasn’t planned,” I said, fussing with the baby blanket.
“He’s not going to think that.” David pushed my wheelchair while I carefully cradled our swaddled son as the elevator descended, delivering us to our doom.
Maybe going home wasn’t the answer. Hiding out in the hospital for another day or two might work well.
But no, that was quitter’s talk. I knew things would be better in our own space.
David gave me a grim smile. “Try and relax, baby.”
“There’s how many paparazzi and fans waiting outside?”
“Everything’s going to be okay.”
“That’s not an answer,” I mumbled with a pained laugh. My body felt bloated and leaking, but everything would be okay. It would be.
The two big buff bodyguards, Ziggy and Bon, stood ready and waiting. And there’d be more waiting to see us safely through to the vehicle. Sam had run through everything with us earlier.
While I’d gotten used to handling the spotlight over the last seven years, letting any of that near our child did not appeal to me.
Despite starting rumors about our exit happening via a back door and stationing a bodyguard and decoy vehicle there, some people were still loitering near our true exit point.
Dammit. We moved out of the elevator, and I put on my big dark sunglasses.
A trick my best friend Lauren taught me early on.
Ziggy took point walking in front of us while Bon watched our backs.
The flashes were blinding, and the questions being shouted at us were overwhelming.
“Evelyn, did you really not know you were pregnant?”
“Is it true you were in denial about the baby?”
“How does it feel to be the cause of canceling the tour?”
Anything that might cause a reaction, that’s what they yelled. Assholes.
When someone got too close, I all but growled at them. A tiny wail came from the baby, and I wanted to bitch slap all of them. So this is what it felt like to get my mama bear on. Because how dare they upset my child. Regardless, we all kept moving briskly toward our waiting SUV.
We climbed into the vehicle quickly. The car door slammed shut, and thank God that was done with. For the time being, at least.
David placed the baby in the infant car seat thingy and had him secured in no time. Which was impressive. “Jimmy gave me lessons. I buckled in one of the twins’ teddy bears about a hundred times before the girls okayed me to do it on a real baby. They’re pretty hardcore taskmasters.”
“Nice. Love me some strong women,” I said, relaxing back against the seat. With the windows tinted, we had a modicum of privacy, at least. “I’m so ready to go home.”
“Me too. If I had to sleep on that chair one more night…”
The car started moving, and apparently our little one liked the motion.
Any and all crying stopped, and he stared wide-eyed at the ceiling.
Though it’s not like babies can see much at his age.
I’d managed some Internet research over the past day.
Not enough to make up for nine or so months’ worth of preparation and study, but it was a start.
“Can you believe they just let you walk out with a baby?” I smiled. “We only have a vague notion of what we’re doing. We could spiral at any moment.”
“Speak for yourself. My diaper changing skills are perfection.”
“You’ve come a long way in two days. I’m impressed.”
“Thank you.” He gave me a tired smile. Truth be known, David seemed to be handling this sudden parenting challenge better than me. He even managed to give our still unnamed son a bath this morning. “You worried about not having a doctor or nurse nearby?”
I sighed. “Logically, I know we’re going to be fine. I’ve just never been in charge of a little human before. What if something happens…like if he gets some tiny sore or something and we don’t notice and then it gets infected and—”
“Ev,” he said, voice firm.
“I’m borrowing trouble, aren’t I?”
“Just a little,” he said. “You’re going to drive yourself crazy if you start imagining that bad things are waiting around every corner.”
“You have a point.”
“We’re two reasonably capable and intelligent adults. Things are going to be okay.”
“Yes,” I agreed, shoving aside my mountain of doubts. I took a deep breath and let it out slowly as Portland slipped by outside. “Everything’s going to be okay.”
“The thing about babies is, they’re either hungry, tired, bored, need a diaper change, or have gas.” Lena shrugged. “You’ve just got to correctly guess which one, or which combination, is currently ruining their entire existence.”
“You make it sound so easy,” I mumbled around a yawn.
Four and a half hours of interrupted sleep a night will do that to you.
It was amazing we hadn’t worn a path up and down the hallway during the many hours a night we walked back and forth, rubbing the baby’s back.
I now understood why sleep deprivation is a form of torture.
I also had a greater empathy for cows. Just call me the Dairy Queen.
Making milk was now my life’s work. But how amazing was it that I’d made a baby too?
Life could sure come at you fast.
“I have no idea how you managed two at the same time, Lena.” Anne relaxed on the couch with a bottle of water in her hand.
“The girls ran Jimmy and me ragged for the first year,” said Lena, rubbing my still unnamed son’s back.
He lay on his stomach across one of her thighs.
The child was outraged. Again. Little fists waved, and even his tuft of dark hair seemed to be standing to attention.
For someone so small, he sure did give being cranky his everything.
“He’s tearing my heart apart,” I said.
“Yeah. They’re manipulative little suckers,” said Lena. “But he’ll wear himself out eventually.”
Anne just smiled. “They learn how to go to sleep in the womb with all of the movement and the sound of your heart beating. Then they get out, and it’s all different, and they don’t know how to chill.
There wasn’t much room in there by the end, so he’s used to being contained.
All of a sudden he can fling a limb around and startle himself awake. ”
David and the rest of the band were at a business meeting at Ben and Lizzy’s place, a sprawling mansion just outside of the city.
They’d even built a recording studio on the property.
And their son, Gibson, loved to play in the pool during the summer.
Maybe one day we’d move into a house to give us more room.
To give our child a backyard to play in and so on.
Though I’d miss being in the heart of the Pearl District and so close to work.
Not that I’d even managed to get back to the coffee shop since giving birth.
Another thing to feel guilty about. Ugh.
Women really tended to heap expectations on themselves.
Trying to be everything for everyone, all of the time. It was crazy.
On the other hand, I’d never felt such love. I loved my husband. David was the love of my life. But my heart seemed to have doubled to make room for our son. My sweet precious boy. It was nothing short of amazing how much I felt for him. The lengths I would go to for him. Being a mother was wild.
Lena rubbed the palm of her hand in round motions against his tiny back, and ever so slowly, the caterwauling eased and then gradually stopped. The quiet was nothing less than magical. For a moment, all I could hear was our breathing. And all I could feel was a sense of relief.
“He’s asleep?” I whispered.
“For now.” Lena nodded. “Try not to lower the volume around him too much or he’ll never go to sleep unless everything is perfectly silent. And you don’t want that. He needs to adapt to your lifestyle a little. Learn to handle the outside world.”
“That’s true,” said Anne. “I hope you don’t mind us shoving advice at you.”
“Have at it. I need all the help I can get.” I rested my head on the back of the sofa. Because the nursery was now the place in the apartment to be.
It had a three-seater sofa in a charcoal material along with a super comfortable rocking chair.
The walls were decorated with a vintage-style pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds.
And the white antique-looking metal crib was just dreamy.
If only my boy would sleep for longer than an hour and a half at a time.
That would be amazing. We’d been home for a week now, and life with our pride and joy was not getting any easier.
We sort of had a routine, but not really.
Not that we didn’t have it better than some people.
Not that we weren’t blessed just by us all being healthy. It was, however, still damn hard.
You’d think that the difficulty of it all would have been less of a surprise to me since I’d watched so many of our friends go through it. But no. Guess it was one of those things I had to experience to understand. Parenthood was no joke.
“You guys did such an amazing job with this room,” I said, for not the first time.