Eli
I realize I am not built for pediatricians about three minutes after we walk through the doors.
Up until then, I was still under the delusion that I was handling this fine.
Not well, exactly, because “well” would suggest I’m calm and competent and functioning like a grown man who definitely didn’t spend ten full minutes in the Sin Bin kitchen this morning asking Mrs. Alvarez whether Mila’s poop looked “normal two-month-old yellow” or “hospital-needs-to-be-called yellow.”
But I’m upright. I’m dressed. Mila is in her car seat in a duck onesie because the entire house has entered some unconscious duck cult, and nobody can stop buying her yellow things with beaks on them.
She’s two and a half months old now, which means she feels bigger in my arms than she did in those first wrecked days, but not big enough for any of this to feel less terrifying.
I remembered the diaper bag, the extra bottle, the wipes, the spare onesie, the blanket, and the little folder Killian made for “medical essentials” in a terrifyingly neat plastic sleeve.
I even remembered her insurance paperwork, which Mara said would help speed up some of the intake process while the rest of the legal stuff keeps moving.
That felt like winning three minutes ago, right up until the receptionist smiled and asked, “Mila’s two-month checkup?” and my mind immediately went, absolutely not.
The pediatrician’s office is too cheerful. That’s my first issue. The walls are painted in soft blues and greens with little animals stenciled along the trim, and there’s a bead maze in the corner next to a low bookshelf full of board books with titles that sound aggressively wholesome.
The chairs in the waiting room are arranged in one of those friendly little semicircles that make it impossible to avoid eye contact with other adults.
A toddler in tiny sneakers is trying to feed crushed crackers to a stuffed giraffe while his mother looks like she hasn’t slept in six months.
Somewhere behind the desk, a printer keeps spitting out forms.
Julian reaches over and takes the clipboard from my hand before I can crush it.
“You’re holding that like it’ll bite you,” he says, settling into the seat beside me.
I glare at him. “Why are there so many questions? She’s small. She eats, sleeps, poops, and screams. Isn’t that enough medical data for one day?”
Julian’s mouth twitches. He’s got Mila’s car seat parked between our knees, one hand resting lightly on the handle, casual and automatic.
He looks so at ease here, and it annoys me on principle.
Not because I want him to be stressed. I don’t.
I just wish I wasn’t the only one internally preparing for spiritual collapse over a baby appointment.
“You say that now,” he murmurs, reading the form. “Give it ten minutes, and you’ll be asking what consistency her spit-up should have on a numerical scale.”
“I already asked Mrs. Alvarez about poop this morning.”
That gets a full grin out of him. “I know. I heard you from the hall.”
He fills in a few lines I missed because apparently my brain stopped working after date of birth and legal guardian, then hands the clipboard back for my signature.
My eyes catch on the section marked Parents/Guardians Present, and the weirdness in my chest starts immediately.
There’s only enough room for two names, and I’ve already written mine.
The second line sits blank for a second longer than it should.
“Write mine,” Julian says quietly.
I look up at him. “As what?”
He shrugs one shoulder easily, and my pulse jumps for no good reason. “As the other adult here who knows how to burp her without looking terrified.”
I drop my gaze before it shows on my face and write his name with fingers that suddenly don’t feel steady enough. Julian West. Then I sign at the bottom and hand the clipboard back before I can think too hard about why writing his name there felt so weirdly intimate.
The receptionist takes it without comment.
Mila sleeps through the whole exchange with the sort of stubborn, dead-to-the-world commitment I’m starting to understand she inherited neither from her mother nor me.
I sit there with my knee bouncing, and my hands clasped too tightly between them, while Julian scrolls through something on his phone, and every adult around us somehow manages to look tired but not actively deranged.
“How are you not panicking?” I ask under my breath.
He pockets his phone and leans back in the chair. “Because it’s a routine checkup.”
“That means nothing to me.”
“It means they’re going to weigh her, measure her, ask about feeding, ask about diapers, check reflexes, and probably tell you you’re doing fine.”
I stare at him. “You said that way too calmly.”
“Yeah,” he says. “Because I’m calm.”
“That makes one of us.”
His hand lands briefly on my knee, warm and grounding, and so casually familiar that it almost derails me more than the doctor’s office does. “Breathe, Liefling.”
I do. Mostly because when he calls me that, my body listens before my mind can argue. I should really ask him what Liefling means.
The nurse calls us back ten minutes later, and that’s where things really go to hell.
First of all, nobody prepares you for the indignity of baby weight checks. Mila gets stripped down to just her diaper and laid on the little scale while I stand there feeling personally attacked by how small she looks against the cold white plastic.
The nurse, who is far too cheerful for somebody holding all the power in the room, tells me Mila’s weight is good for her age and asks how many ounces she’s taking per feed.
I answer too fast, then second-guess myself halfway through, then look at Julian because maybe he remembers the exact number better, and maybe he doesn’t judge me for the fact that I absolutely rehearsed this on the drive here.
Julian answers smoothly, “Usually three to four, depending on the feed. More at night if she hasn’t yelled herself tired first.”
The nurse smiles like this is adorable.
I, meanwhile, am trying not to lose my mind because she’s also measuring Mila’s head and saying things like “perfectly within range,” which implies there are ranges for baby heads and somehow nobody warned me that parenting was this math-heavy.
Then she asks how many wet diapers Mila has in a day, and for one horrifying second, my mind goes completely blank.
I know this.
I absolutely know this.
I live with this child. I have counted her pee diapers like a deranged little accountant. And yet when the question arrives in this clean, clinical room, all I can think is duck sleeper, formula on the second shelf, don’t let her head wobble weird, don’t say something stupid.
“Plenty,” Julian says. “Usually six or more. Stool’s normal too.”
The nurse nods and writes that down while I die a little. When she finally leaves us in the exam room to wait for the pediatrician, I turn to Julian and hiss, “You absolutely cannot keep making me look like I don’t know basic shit about my own daughter.”
He’s standing by the exam table with Mila against his shoulder, patting her back in that absent, competent way that makes everything in me feel complicated. He glances over with one brow up. “You did know it.”
“I froze.”
“Yeah,” he says mildly. “I noticed.”
“That was not supportive.”
He grins. “You want supportive or honest? Because those are different services with different rates.”
Before I can answer, Mila makes a small, offended sound and squirms against him.
He adjusts her automatically, one hand cradling the back of her head, and I have the extremely inconvenient thought that he looks too right doing this.
Warm. Solid. Built for it in some way that hits me straight in the chest every time.
I look away fast enough that my neck twinges.
The pediatrician knocks once and comes in with the kind of brisk, practiced energy I usually find reassuring in adults.
Today, it just makes me sit straighter. She’s probably in her forties, maybe a little older, with laugh lines around her eyes and a stethoscope draped around her neck.
She introduces herself as Dr. Peters, smiles at Mila, and then smiles at us in a way that instantly tells me she’s seen every possible version of new-parent panic and nothing I do today will even crack her top ten.
“Let’s see this girl,” she says, washing her hands. “How have things been going at home?”
This feels like a trick. Everything feels like a trick.
“She’s good,” I say too quickly. “I mean, I think she’s good. She eats. Sleeps. Cries normal amounts, I guess? Unless there’s a number where it becomes abnormal, and then maybe I need that number because sometimes she seems very committed to the bit.”
Dr. Peters glances at Julian, and Julian, the bastard, actually bites the inside of his cheek to hide a smile.
“She sounds like a two-month-old,” she says kindly. “That’s usually a good sign.”
Then she starts the exam, and I discover I am much worse at this than previously advertised.
I can handle the stethoscope part. Barely.
Mila flinches at the cold metal, but the doctor murmurs to her and checks her heart, lungs, and belly with calm efficiency.
Then she checks Mila’s hips and eyes and little reflexes, and every tiny reaction makes me feel like I’m holding my own breath waiting for approval.
“What does that mean?” I ask the first time she frowns slightly in concentration.
“It means I’m checking her range of motion.”
“No, I know, but what does the face mean?”
Dr. Peters blinks once and then smiles. “The face means I’m thinking while I do my job. Mila looks healthy, her weight is solid, her tone is good, and her reflexes are appropriate. She’s doing exactly what she should be doing at this age.”
Relief hits me so hard I have to brace one hand on the exam table.
Then she says, “Since she’s a little over two months old, she’ll get her first round of shots today—”
“What?”
The word flies out of me before I can stop it.