Just like I wanted, we were going to be a family.
“I’ve got you,” Preston said as he strengthened his arms underneath mine. “I’ve got you all.”
And somehow, I knew he was telling me the truth.
Twenty-Seven
Preston
Just as I figured, all three of our children needed a stay in the hospital to gain some weight. Abigail’s oxygen levels were doing fine, but Aiden and Charlotte were slow to tack on the weight necessary to allow us to bring them home. Delilah and I were bundles of nerves for the two weeks they were in the hospital. Delilah was released three days after her cesarean section, but our children were still in the NICU.
And getting Delilah home to sleep was a challenge.
“I’m not leaving my children here alone,” she said.
“But you need rest to recuperate. Yes, you gave birth. But you had major surgery to make that happen. You need sleep,” I said.
“I’ll sleep in this chair. It pulls out. It fits my entire body now that I’m not a planet.”
“You need to let me take you home so you can rest properly.”
“I’m not leaving my children here without their mother, Preston. Now you can suck it up and go home alone, or you can stay with me and be the father I know you want to be.”
“Me wanting to go home and sleep in my own bed doesn’t make me a bad father. They’re cared for here.”
“And they’ll be cared for with me at their side,” she said.
Eventually, I caved. I packed her a suitcase and booked the hotel closest to the hospital our children were in. Sometimes I could get her to go take a nap if I promised to stay with our babies, which meant she would also clean herself up. Her going back to the hotel prompted her to do things like brush her teeth, take a shower, put on fresh clothes.
The hotel seemed like the only compromise I was going to get, so I ran with it. I packed our bags, set us up in a hotel with a miniature kitchen, stocked the fridge with food, and set it up like home.
Delilah still wasn’t there as much as I thought she needed, but at least she was showering.
It took a toll on Delilah, seeing our children in those incubators. And it didn’t do me any favors, either. At least Delilah had the capability of holding them whenever they needed to be fed. She breastfed all three of them on a regular basis with the strength and stamina of a goddess, but I didn’t have anything to contribute. I couldn’t feed them, holding them put them at risk for contagions I was carrying, so I took care of their mother so she could take care of them.
Delilah and I had a bunch of arguments those first two weeks. From keeping her clean to forcing her to sleep, she argued about it all. It was frustrating and exhausting, and sometimes I wanted to shake some sense into her, but I had to try and see it from her point of view. She was a new mother who couldn’t take her children home, and I would have no idea what kind of impact that was having on her.
Because I didn’t carry those children for eight months. Because I didn’t have my body split open for them. Because my breasts weren’t producing food for them.
But finally, after two awful weeks in the NICU, our babies were ready to come home. We were discharged from the hospital and we loaded them up in their newborn carriers, finally able to take them home. Delilah was so happy she was in tears, holding my hand tightly the entire way I drove us home.
I didn’t want a driver taking us. I wanted to be in control of the vehicle my children were in.
When we arrived home, my stomach did fucking somersaults. I had a surprise for Delilah in the nursery, but I wasn’t sure how she was going to react to it. I carried Abigail and Charlotte up to our apartment while Delilah carried Aiden, and the five of us pushed through into our new home. It wasn’t new to us, but it was new to them, and it was new for us to have them there. The sunlight streaming through the windows coated our skin, and as we turned for the nursery my legs felt weak.
“I think we should try to lay them down for naps,” Delilah said. “They all look pretty tired.”
“Whatever your mother’s intuition says, I’ll follow,” I said.
We walked into the nursery and Delilah turned on a lone little lamp. It cast a small hue across the room with just enough light for us to see what we were doing. I was preparing Abigail and Charlotte for bed, removing them from their car seat carriers and placing them in their respective cribs. But as I turned to see how Delilah was doing with Aiden, I saw her gaze hooked onto Aiden’s crib.
And I knew she had found it.
“Preston?” she asked. “What’s this?”
She turned around with Aiden in her hands, holding a little black box.
“Why don’t you open it and see?” I asked.