Bonus Chapter #6
Her guttural scream rips a piece of my soul away. I’m never letting her go through all this again, so we’ll have to make three kids work for us.
The scream dies down, and her hold on my hand relaxes. When I look at her, the expression on her overheated face has changed to blissful contentment. A luminous smile appears on her lips as she lets out an ecstatic sob, her eyes fixed ahead.
I follow the direction of her gaze, and air is knocked out of my lungs.
Shivers, thousands of them, spread through my entire body.
Right here in Dr. Okonkwo’s gloved hands is our baby girl.
She’s wet, covered in what I know is vernix caseosa, her puffy eyes are two slits, and her scalp is covered in dense and dark hair.
This tiny human, with her perfect little legs, and feet, and hands, and arms, is my daughter.
Maya Camila Walker.
The doctor holds her up so we can admire her perfection. When her limbs start to move and wriggle, my eyes water with tears, and when she lets out a high-pitched cry, one spills over to my cheek.
A nurse comes to the aid of the obstetrician, and while she prepares the umbilical cord, I turn to Andrea, crushed under the weight of my love for her.
“You did it! Oh my God, you did it.” Grabbing her face between my hands, I cover it in pecks.
“We did it. Look at how perfect she is,” she sobs.
I look again at our newborn child, ignoring the tears I can feel streaming down my cheeks. I have a fucking daughter. And she’s perfect.
As soon as they’re ready, I abandon Andrea to go cut the cord. The nurse then takes her away for a rapid cleanup, some measuring, and in no time, she’s back to hand our daughter to Andrea.
“She’s just under nine pounds. And a little above twenty-one inches,” she explains with a reassuring smile.
Holding her against her chest, Andrea admires the tiny human we made together, her eyes filled with awe.
As if she knows she’s in the safest place in the world, in the best embrace that exists, Maya’s wailing stops.
Standing next to them, to my girls, I let the moment wreck me.
She looks so fragile, so small … an urge to protect them, both of them, floods me.
“Hi, Maya Camila,” Andrea murmurs, her voice trembling with emotion. “It’s so nice to finally meet you. I’m your mom. Soy tu mamá, carino. And this is your dad,” she continues, turning her toward me.
Maya opens her unfocused eyes as if she wants to meet us, to see us. “Look, she has your eyes,” Andrea says with excitement, looking up at me.
I don’t remind her it was the same for the boys, but that they turned out to be more brown than gray.
“Can you hold her for a second?” she asks, carefully maneuvering the precious bundle away from her chest.
I take my daughter, shocked by how light she is. We make beautiful babies, don’t we? I vaguely notice that Andrea is struggling with the ties of her gown, but before I can help, a nurse comes to assist her.
“Hello, Maya,” I greet my daughter, looking into her hazy gaze. “I’m your daddy. I’m Alexander. You are half me, half the best woman in the world.”
Andrea is done freeing her chest from the fabric, so she turns to me, extending her arms, ready to take her again.
With the utmost care, I give my daughter back to her mom for some skin-to-skin contact.
“If you’re ready, we can start delivering the placenta,” Dr. Okonkwo says, still in position.
Looking up from Maya Camila for a second, Andrea gives the man a nod before returning her eyes to our baby.
Unable to resist, I kneel by her side, resting my temple on her shoulder, my gaze locked on the little wonder.
We did this. We created another life together.
Our love materialized into this perfect little being.
Curious to admire more details of Maya Camila, I slip a knuckle under her hand, fascinated by the tiny fingers and fingernails on it.
When they wrap around my index, too small to even cover half of its circumference, my heart painfully clenches in my chest. This is the flesh of my flesh. I have a daughter.
Andrea speaks, but I’m too taken by the sight to process her words. “Hmm?” I hum, moving my head up but never ripping my eyes from the miniature hand holding my finger.
“Did I poop this time?” she whispers again.
It rips a genuine, throaty laugh out of me, and I look up to meet her eyes. “No, you didn’t.”
“Are you lying to protect my feelings?”
“No, you genuinely didn’t. But it wouldn’t have mattered.”
“It matters a little.”
“Not at all. I’ve never loved you as much as I love you now. You’ve given me so much more than I ever expected to have, Andrea. You can soil yourself while delivering the placenta if you want. I truly don’t care.”
“Don’t say that, you’ll jinx it,” she protests with an exhausted giggle.
We lose ourselves in our newborn girl again, completely and utterly fascinated by her.
“It wasn’t that bad,” Andrea murmurs eventually. “I could do four.”
“I can’t. I don’t have those hormones that mess with your head and make you think it was fine. And I’m not putting you through that again.”
She giggles, then rests her temple on my forehead. “I love you, baby,” she whispers.
“I love you, freckles.”
“Thank you for the slightly late birthday gift.”
“You’re very welcome. All this one took was a lot of planning ahead.”
“There they are!” my mom exclaims as she, my dad, and my sons all enter the hospital room.
Gabriel and Isaac rush to the bed, and Lex stops them by a shoulder each. He squats down to their level and explains, “Mommy is very tired, and the baby is very fragile and small. You have to be gentle, alright?”
“Yes, Daddy!”
He grabs the hand sanitizer on the bedside table and squeezes some of it into their awaiting hands. “Rub, rub, rub,” he instructs.
“They’ve been debriefed,” my dad explains, removing his coat. “And we washed them from head to toe before coming.”
“Thanks, Dad.” My mom’s already by my side, peeking with teary eyes at her granddaughter sleeping in my arms.
The boys are done with their hands, so Gabriel climbs on the bed after kicking his shoes off, and Lex picks Newt up to help him do the same. Like their dad demanded, they’re very gentle as they settle to my side, their eyes fixed on their two-hour-old sister.
“She’s so small!” Isaac whispers.
“She’s actually a big baby,” I explain. “Bigger than you two were.”
“Really?”
“Yes, Daddy and I make big babies.”
“We do,” Lex confirms, standing on my left while my parents watch from the right.
“How did it go?” Mom asks.
“It was okay. Less than an hour of pushing. She slipped right out.”
“That’s one way to say it,” Lex mumbles.
“What happened to your hand, mijo?” she asks him.
He brings his hand up, where his middle and ring fingers are held together by a splint. “Your daughter broke it.”
“What?! Carino …” She abandons my side to go around the bed and check his hand.
While she does, my dad grazes his granddaughter’s hairy head with the back of his knuckles, so softly she doesn’t stir.
“She’s beautiful, peanut,” he praises with emotion.
“She is, isn’t she? Even more than Poppy and Emma, right?” I ask, knowing perfectly well he’ll never go for it.
It’s my mom who replies with, “Andrea, we’re not about to compare our grandchildren. Your nieces were beautiful newborns, and so is Maya Camila.”
As she busies herself with the bag they arrived with, taking out containers of food, Dad bends over to whisper, “She’s a prettier baby, yes.”
I grin widely as he straightens up, resting his index finger on his lips to keep me silent. Honestly, those poor girls had half my brother’s genes. They never stood a chance.
“Mommy?” Gabriel asks.
“Yes, sweetie?”
“Do you think she’ll like Legos, too?”
“And pancakes,” Newt adds.
“If she’s anything like Mommy, she’ll love those things,” Lex answers for me.
When my mom returns with a box of fresh sushi, I almost tear up with excitement. “You found some.”
“Yes. It wasn’t easy, it’s a little early. But here you go, pollito.”
Minding the sleeping baby, I rearrange myself. Lex gets the boys out of bed and tells them, “Don’t you two have something to give your sister?”
“Oh, yes!”
As they rush to the bag, Lex opens the sushi box and prepares everything. He knows exactly how I like it, so he adds a generous slice of marinated ginger, a dab of wasabi, and brings it all to my lips. His chopstick skills have improved so much in the past decade, they’re as good as mine now.
I’m chewing when the boys return with an uneven package. “There, Mommy. It’s for Maya.”
“Can you open it for her, my loves?”
They comply, barely fighting over who gets to do the most, and then brandish an adorable plush armadillo. Gabriel carefully lays it next to his baby sister before laying a small kiss on her head.
That stirs her awake, and she opens her eyes with a stretch.
“Hello, there,” I coo. “That was a big nap. Look who’s here to meet you.
” I turn her around. “This is Gabriel, your big brother. And this is Isaac, your other big brother. Y esta es tu abuela, and this is your grandpa,” I whisper in her perfect little ear, grazing the short hair on her skull.
I’ll never get over how soft babies are everywhere.
And her smell … I love the way she smells.
This soft, pure scent I never knew before having my own children.
When my mom extends her arms to pick up her nieta, I let her.
She cradles her in the crook of her arm, coming close to my father so they can admire her together.
When the boys ask if they can hold her as well, Lex makes them sit down on the armchair in the room’s corner and gives them some instructions.
I watch it all unfold, feasting on my sushi, as my mom lays Maya Camila on their laps.
Neither of them was very excited about having a sister, preferring another brother instead, but I can already tell they’ve changed their minds. This girl will grow up with two loving brothers protecting her.
“Look at them,” Lex proudly murmurs, back at my side.
“They’re all so perfect, aren’t they?”
“Well, they’re half you, so are we even surprised?”
I shake my head with a chuckle. “I see you’re already lobbying for baby number four …”
“No, I think three is our number.”
“Three is a party.”
It’s his turn to laugh. “Exactly.”
I follow his gaze back to the armchair, to our sons sitting impossibly still, shoulders squared with concentration, as if protecting their sister is already a sacred duty.
Maya Camila is wrapped in love before she’s even learned the shape of the world.
My parents hover close, as proud as one can be of their grandkids.
Before meeting Lex, I couldn’t have imagined this fullness. A life that feels this complete. And yet here it is, soft, solid, and real.
My husband, the cause of all this, presses a kiss to my temple, grounding me. He looks at our family the same way I do—with gratitude, like he knows exactly how lucky we are.
This is our legacy. Not money, not power, or ambition. What we’ll leave behind is love that multiplies, roots that run deep, and a home that will always be full of tenderness and respect.
We built this one day at a time. This is our now and forever. And it’s so much more than I could have asked for.
It’s infinity and beyond.