Chapter 18
Patrice
Brooklyn gains two ounces overnight.
I know this because I'm the kind of person who now celebrates weight gain in measurements smaller than a stick of butter. Two ounces. That's it. That's the threshold between "holy crap, my baby might die" and "she's doing great!"
Parenthood is weird.
"She's up to four pounds, ten ounces," Jennifer announces during morning rounds, checking Brooklyn's chart with the kind of cheerfulness that should be illegal before coffee. "That's excellent progress. At this rate, she'll be ready to go home in about a week."
A week.
Seven days.
One hundred and sixty-eight hours until we take this tiny human home with us. Alone. Without nurses. Without monitors. Without anyone who actually knows what they're doing.
I must make some kind of strangled sound because Trace's hand finds mine and squeezes.
"That's good news, right?" he asks Jennifer, though his voice suggests he's equally terrified.
"Very good news," Jennifer confirms. She adjusts Brooklyn's feeding tube with practiced efficiency. "She's breathing well, eating well, maintaining her temperature. All the signs we look for."
"And then we just... take her home?" I hear myself ask. "Like, you hand her to us and wave goodbye?"
Jennifer laughs. "We'll make sure you're both comfortable with feeding, diaper changes, and basic care first. Plus we do a car seat test before discharge."
"A car seat test?"
"We put her in the car seat for ninety minutes to make sure she can maintain her oxygen levels and doesn't have any breathing issues." Jennifer makes a note on her tablet. "Standard protocol for preemies."
Trace and I exchange a look. Our daughter has to pass tests and we don't?
"Speaking of diaper changes," Jennifer continues, completely oblivious to our mounting panic, "have either of you done one yet?"
"I've watched," I offer weakly. "From a distance. While someone who knew what they were doing handled the actual changing part."
"Well, today's your lucky day." Jennifer gestures to the incubator where Brooklyn is currently awake and staring at nothing in particular. "She needs a change now. Who wants to volunteer?"
Trace straightens in his chair. "I'll do it."
Of course he will. Former Army Ranger, survived combat deployments, built a cabin with his bare hands. Surely he can handle a diaper.
"Excellent." Jennifer starts setting up the changing station inside the incubator—which is apparently a thing, because of course you can't just take a four-pound baby out and plop her on a regular changing table.
"Patrice, you should watch. And actually—" She glances at the clock.
"Visiting hours just started. Are Tessa and Gage coming today? "
"They should be here any minute," I say.
"Perfect. They can watch too. It takes a village, right?"
That's when I know we're doomed.
Ten minutes later, we're all crowded around Brooklyn's incubator like we're about to witness either a miracle or a disaster. Possibly both.
Tessa has her phone out. "This is going in the baby book."
"There is no baby book," I point out.
"There will be. I'm making one. It'll be seventy percent photos of Trace looking terrified."
"I'm not terrified," Trace says, sounding terrified.
Gage claps him on the shoulder. "You're about to handle human feces that somehow weighs more than the human producing it. You should be terrified."
"Gage," Tessa admonishes.
"What? I'm being supportive."
Jennifer has Brooklyn positioned on a small pad outside the incubator on a changing table, ready for battle. "Okay, Trace. First, you'll want to open the new diaper and have it ready to go. These preemie diapers are tiny, so they're a little finicky."
Trace opens the fresh diaper with the intense concentration of a man defusing a bomb.
"Good. Now, gently undo the tabs on the current diaper. Support her legs with one hand—that's it—and fold the front down."
He does all this with his face almost level with the diaper. Brooklyn immediately pees and it splashes him directly in the face.
Gage loses it. Full-body laughing, doubled over, gasping for air.
Tessa's phone is absolutely getting all of this.
I'm trying very hard not to laugh because I'm supposed to be supportive, but my face is doing that thing where I'm biting my lip so hard I might draw blood.
"That's—" Trace sputters, wiping his face with the cloth Jennifer hands him. "That happens?"
"All the time," Jennifer says calmly. "It's actually a good sign. Means her kidneys are working well."
"Fantastic," Trace mutters. "My daughter's kidneys work great. So glad we confirmed that with my face."
"Keep going," Jennifer encourages. "You're doing fine."
He takes a breath, steadies himself, and reaches for the clean diaper he'd carefully positioned. His hand knocks it and it falls through the incubator portal onto the floor.
"I'll get another one," Jennifer says, trying not to smile.
While she's getting a fresh diaper, Brooklyn apparently decides this is the perfect moment for a bowel movement. And not just any bowel movement. A biblical event.
"Oh my god," Trace breathes. "How is there this much? She's four pounds!"
"Physics don't apply to baby poop," Gage says, still laughing. "I tried to warn you."
"You really didn't."
Jennifer returns with a new diaper and somehow maintains her professional composure. "Let's get her cleaned up. Use the wipes—yes, that's it. Support her bottom, wipe front to back—"
"There's so much," Trace says again, like he's processing a traumatic event. "It's everywhere. How is it on her neck?"
"Babies are talented," I manage to say, my voice shaking with suppressed laughter.
It takes four more wipes, another near-miss when Brooklyn decides to pee again, and Trace's intense focus that I've only seen when he's chopping wood. Finally—finally—he gets the new diaper secured.
"Done," he announces, straightening up with visible relief. "We did it. Crisis averted."
"You did great," Jennifer says warmly. "All new parents struggle with the first few diaper changes."
"When does it get easier?" Trace asks.
"About eighteen years."
His face falls. "You're kidding."
"Only a little." She pats his shoulder. "But seriously, you'll get faster at it. And she'll probably only pee on you a few more times."
"Probably?"
"No guarantees with babies."
Tessa's still filming. "This is definitely going in the baby book. Actually, I'm making it your contact photo."
"You're the worst best friend Patrice has ever had," Trace informs her.
"I'm the only best friend she's ever had," Tessa counters. "And that was beautiful. You handled baby excrement like a champ. I'm so proud."
Gage wipes his eyes, still grinning. "You survived your first combat diaper. There's hope for you yet."
"I hate all of you," Trace says, but he's smiling. He looks down at Brooklyn, who's now clean and dry and looking vaguely smug about the whole thing. "You're lucky you're cute, raspberry."
The nickname hits me right in the chest. He's been calling her that since yesterday—using my nickname for her, the one I used when she was still just a flutter in my belly. The one that meant she was mine.
Now she's ours.
"Next time I'm supervising from a safe distance," I announce.
"Coward," Trace says.
"Strategist," I correct. "I learn from other people's mistakes."
"Your turn tomorrow," Jennifer says cheerfully. "Both of you need to be comfortable with diaper changes before discharge."
Tomorrow. Right. Because in one week, this will be our life. Diapers and pee and mysterious amounts of poop and the overwhelming terror that we'll break something.
I reach through the incubator portal to touch Brooklyn's tiny hand. Her fingers curl around my pinky, and that familiar wave of fierce love and absolute panic washes over me.
One week.
We can do this.
Probably.
That afternoon, after Tessa and Gage leave and we've both recovered from the Great Diaper Disaster, we feed Brooklyn together.
Well, technically the nurses do most of the work since she still has a feeding tube. But we get to hold her bottle—actually a tiny syringe attached to her tube—and watch as she slowly takes in the breast milk I've been frantically pumping around the clock.
"Two ounces," I murmur, watching the measurement marks on the syringe. "That's all she needs right now. Two ounces every three hours."
"We can handle two ounces," Trace says.
We're both sitting in the cramped NICU chairs, positioned so we can both see Brooklyn's incubator clearly. His knee presses against mine. It's the closest thing to intimacy we've had in days that didn't involve breast pumps or sleep deprivation.
"Can we, though?" I voice the fear that's been building since Jennifer said one week. "Can we really handle this? Alone?"
Trace looks at me, and his expression is so earnest it makes my throat tight. "We're not alone. We have Tessa and Gage. We have Marnie and Dr. Martinez and half the town who keep bringing casseroles to the cabin."
"They're bringing casseroles?"
"So many casseroles. I think we have seven in the freezer. Marnie labeled them all with reheating instructions." He shakes his head. "The point is, we have help. We have people."
"But at three AM when she's screaming and we don't know why—"
"Then we'll figure it out. Together." His hand finds mine in the space between our chairs. "I'm scared too. But we're both smart, capable people who've handled worse things than a four-pound human."
"Have we, though?"
"I survived Ranger training. You survived corporate finance. Surely parenting can't be harder than quarterly earnings reports."
That startles a laugh out of me. "You have no idea what you're talking about."
"None whatsoever," he agrees cheerfully. "But we'll figure it out."
Brooklyn finishes her feeding, and the nurse comes to disconnect the syringe and check her vitals. We watch in silence as she notes the measurements, adjusts the monitor, and makes soft cooing sounds at our daughter.