God, please, let it be real. Please let this be a healthy pregnancy. Please, please, please…
I shut my eyes and tried like hell to force the tears floating behind my lids back. I was afraid if I let the dam truly burst, there wouldn’t be soft cries or a delicate sniffle—I would be wrecked, fucking ravaged by full-on sobs. And I wouldn’t have any control over how long they lasted. The emotional roller coaster Kline and I had been on during the past several months had taken its toll on me.
I felt my husband’s hand wrap around mine, and I found the strength to open my eyes and meet his loving gaze. “I love you,” he mouthed.
“I love you too,” I mouthed back.
“Okay, Georgia, I’m just going to put this gooey and most likely cold stuff on your belly and see if we can see your baby on the abdominal ultrasound,” Dr. Shay instructed. She was an OB/GYN on staff at a hospital nearby and, thankfully, had been more than willing to make a house call to our hotel room, with her ultrasound machine in tow.
“Since you’re a little over eleven weeks, I think we have a good shot of being able to see the baby, but I don’t want you to get worried if that’s not the case,” she continued as she slid on latex gloves. “Sometimes, we need to do a vaginal ultrasound to really get a good picture.”
“Um…vaginal ultrasound?” I asked with wide eyes and glanced around the room at the various faces of our friends, all of which were pointed directly at me.
“Oh, don’t worry, Wheorgie,” Cassie chimed in. “We’ll cover our eyes if she has to shove anything up your vag.”
Winnie laughed and shook her head. “No, we won’t cover our eyes, we will leave the room and give her privacy.”
Cassie’s face scrunched up in annoyance. “Speak for yourself. I’m staying. I’ve seen her vagina anyway.”
“No, you have not!” I exclaimed, and Cassie quirked a brow. “Shut up,” I muttered when I recalled the home Brazilian wax debacle during college. I hadn’t been able to walk straight for a good week after that.
“Anyway,” Cassie continued. “I think you have a very pretty puss-ay. I can understand Kline’s fascination with it.”
“I’m a female, and I have a vagina,” Lexi leisurely announced to the room. “The vagina is a muscular and tubular part of the female genital tract which, in female humans, extends from the vulva to the cervix. The outer vaginal opening may be partly covered by a membrane called the hymen. The vagina allows for sexual intercourse and childbirth and channels menstrual flow.”
Various reactions flew through the room at the words sexual intercourse and menstrual flow leaving a six-year-old girl’s mouth.
Kline smirked down at me in amusement.
Wes choked on saliva and started coughing.
Thatch and Cassie burst into laughter, startling a sleeping Ace to cry softly for a moment on his dad’s shoulder before drifting back into dreamland.
“Um, sweetie,” Winnie said as she picked Lex up into her arms. “Where did you learn that?”
“Netter’s Atlas of Human Anatomy.”
Winnie raised a brow. “You’ve been reading my books from med school?”
Lexi nodded. “Uh-huh. I can tell you a lot more about the vagina. Do you want to hear, Mommy?”
“Yes, please, I’d love to hear more about it,” Thatch announced. “One of my favorite subjects.”
“Jesus,” Wes muttered, and Kline and I both laughed.
“How about you tell me all about it later?” Winnie smartly redirected before things got out of hand.
“Okay, Mommy,” Lexi agreed.
“Ready?” Dr. Shay asked as she sat on the edge of the bed beside my hip, her hand confidently holding the ultrasound probe.
I mentally scolded the nerves in my belly and forced a smile and a nod. They’d better get out of the way because I didn’t want to see them. I wanted to see my baby. Kline squeezed my hand as he noticed the change in me.
“Okay, let’s see your baby,” she said with a smile and squirted three blobs of ultrasound gel onto my stomach.
She placed the probe onto my skin and started to rotate it around in circles, and Kline’s hand’s grip grew tighter on my mine. I had to shut my eyes to stop myself from bursting into tears.
“Oh, here we go,” Dr. Shay announced, but I still couldn’t find the strength to open my eyes. Here we go could have been anything. Here we go could have been bad news. Here we go could have been…
“Would you like to hear your baby’s heartbeat, Georgia?”
My baby’s heartbeat?
My eyes popped open, and I let out the breath of air I didn’t realize I was holding tightly in my lungs. Wes and Thatch high-fived behind their women, and Cassie covered her mouth with a hand.
“Would you?” Dr. Shay asked again. I forced myself to stop looking at my friends and see her. The happiness in her eyes. The good news that lived there.
I nodded.
She reached toward the ultrasound machine with her free hand and tapped a few buttons, and then the room was filled with the steady and strong whooshing sounds of a little heart beating.
It was the most beautiful sound I had ever heard in my entire life. Half of Kline. Half of me. All of our love wrapped up in one tiny little package.
Kline had tears in his eyes as he stared at the ultrasound screen in absolute awe. I followed his gaze and, for the first time ever, I saw our baby. Its tiny face and his or her little heart, a bright spot on the screen fluttering like a hummingbird’s wing.
“There’s your baby, Georgia,” Dr. Shay said with a smile. “Everything looks healthy and strong. I’d say you are around eleven weeks and three days, but once you get back home, your doctor will be able to do a vaginal ultrasound and give you exact dates and gestation.”
I couldn’t hold back the tears after that, and I didn’t even try. They streamed down my cheeks in a steady flow of relief and all-consuming and unconditional love.
Our baby.
“That’s our baby, Kline,” I whispered in amazement. “Right there, on the screen, that’s our baby.”
He smiled, and two tears slowly slipped from the corner of his eye and down his jaw. “Our healthy and strong baby.”
I glanced around the room at our best friends and saw their faces mirroring our joy. They were happy for us. So very happy for us. And for the first time, maybe ever, they were quiet. Letting us have this.
Wes smiled a genuine smile and wrapped his arm around Winnie’s shoulder, tucking her into his side. “Congratulations, guys.”
“I’m so happy for you, Georgie,” Cassie said softly, all of our years of friendship a slideshow in her voice.
I honestly didn’t think I had ever experienced a more beautiful moment than this one.
Love.
Both inside of me and all around—and so very obviously unending.
“Cass!” I called out in a loud whisper as the door to the room shut behind me. I’d been for a run on the beach with Kline and Wes a couple of hours after the ultrasound, as Georgia, finally at peace, got some rest. I’d been gone for no more than an hour and a half, but I was more than ready for some time with my woman and baby.
It was weird to feel so contently dependent on their company and daily nurturing, but they gave me something that I couldn’t give myself, no matter how good I was at everything. And let’s be real, I was good at everything.
But as much as I loved myself, there was a vast difference between that and the love of another, someone you loved with your entire being. All I wanted was to have their love in return, so getting it felt all that much more rewarding. I wanted to love myself, but that wasn’t a challenge.
Slowly, knowing enough about life with a baby to be quiet after not getting an immediate answer to my call, I worked my way through the suite until coming to the room we’d been using as Ace’s nursery away from home. It was actually the bigger of the two bedrooms, but the sun didn’t blast straight through the windows in the morning and it was the farthest from the hall.
I could hear the soft sounds of Ace’s sleeping inhalation all the way from where I was, and a premature smile formed on my face. He was one of the loudest breathing babies I’d ever encountered and a completely different animal than Frankie and Claire’s Mila. She’d been a needy baby, constantly aching for attention and crying out for it with all the power in her little lungs.
Ace had more of a low-key vibe about him, as long as you were catering to his exploration of the world around him.
Two long strides brought me to the doorway. I watched, leaning into the frame, as Cassie reached up and wrapped her hand around the tiny, clutching fingers at her throat and closed her eyes.
She started to sing, no louder than a hum, really, but I knew Ace could feel the vibration of her words just fine. Skin-to-skin, chest-to-chest, he soaked every ounce of warmth and love Cassie had to give straight inside his tiny body.
Cassie’s face was soft and free from the stresses of motherhood as she completely lost herself in the perfect moment.
Content baby, at ease mama, and the unbelievably beautiful picture they made for the man who loved them—I fought an unwinnable war to freeze time.
“When you’re fast asleep, um, dream and lose your heartache, something something about a fluffling rainbow…”