As the next couple weeks went on it became glaringly clear that Julia was still angry. Or she just had decided that she didn’t want anything to do with me. I tried texting and calling her. I even tried reaching out to her friends to see if they could put in a good word.
When I was at the hospital I swung by the NICU and a few times I’d seen Julia in with the boys, but I didn’t want to interrupt them. If she needed some time I was going to give it to her. But by the time I heard the boys were getting ready to go home I was beside myself with worry that Julia and I were never going to work stuff out.
It wasn’t like me to push myself on a woman. If she was pushing me away then I stayed away. If Julia wanted to talk to me she knew how to reach me. I also knew that we would probably be running into one another in our condo complex and we should try and settle on how we were going to interact.
As I walked down the hall of the hospital after visiting a patient, I was engrossed in planning some way that I could reach out to Julia without being overbearing. It was harder than it seemed. I had obviously tried calling her over and over again. I’d sent text messages just asked if there was a time we could talk and none of it was working.
“Hey, asshole,” a woman’s voice said as I walked around the corner near the cafeteria.
“Oh, hey Sarah. How are you?”
“Seriously, Mike. You are the lowest of the low. I can’t believe you.”
“What?”
“You know what. You deserve to burn in hell for how you treated my friend. What sort of total asshole just disappears like that? And saying she could take care of her own babies, I mean, wow. That was rude.”
“Sarah, I don’t think you have the full story.”
“I’m sure you have a lot of excuses. But save them, I don’t want to hear it. You stole my girls heart and then crushed it in a million pieces. I know she won’t admit that her heart is crushed but it is. She was devastated by you.”
“I’ve been trying to talk to Julia since the babies were born. She won’t return my calls and I didn’t want to stress her out while the boys were still here. I want to be involved with her. I love her,” I said and paused when I realized the words had just come out of my mouth.
“You love her?” Sarah asked skeptically.
“Yeah,” I reassured myself. “I do love her. I’ve had a lot going on with legal stuff at work and I fully admit to being a total jerk when we went out to dinner. But I didn’t want to say I was going to be an involved father if that wasn’t what she wanted. She said she wanted to do this all on her own. I didn’t want to take that away from her or make her feel like I had to be involved.”
“Have you two talked about any of this? I mean it seems like a pretty big deal and something the two of you should have talked about at some point over the last few months.”
“No. We haven’t had a chance and I’ve been trying to reach her.”
“You guys have been hanging out for months. How have you not talked about what was going to happen after the babies came?” Sarah looked at me as if I was an idiot.
The way she asked the question did make me feel pretty stupid. Julia and I had been spending tons of time together. We were enjoying one another and having fun. We both were avoiding the topic. It wasn’t just me. Julia didn’t bring it up either.
Sometimes I would say something like I couldn’t wait to have all of us go for walks to the park. Instead of speaking up and saying that it sounded like a good plan, Julia simply shook her head in agreement.
Other times when Julia talked about how hard things were going to be for her taking care of the babies all by herself, I wanted to speak up. I wanted to say something about what it would be like if I helped out more. One time I even wanted to tell her that I could stay the night and help with the babies. But the nerve to say something passed and we went back to both being quiet and avoiding the topic.
“Well, we need to make this happen. You two just need to be in a room together and hash this out.”
“That’s what I’ve been trying to do. I’ve been trying to talk to her but she won’t talk to me. This whole thing is just her being stubborn. Okay, not just her. But she is being really stubborn. I can’t believe she hasn’t returned any of my phone calls. I mean, at some point I just needed to take the hint and stop calling.”
“And you being unwilling to communicate what you want,” Sarah added. “You should have told her a long time ago that you wanted to be involved.”
She was right. If I had come out and told Julia that I loved her a long time ago then I wouldn’t have had to worry so much about figuring all of this out now. I’d been keeping my feelings close to my chest and waiting for Julia to tell me her feelings. I shouldn’t have waited. I should have just gone for it and told her. But now everything was a mess. She was angry with me in the midst of trying to care for her newborn babies. The last thing she needed was for me to get her all worked up with my feelings.
Everything was out of control now. Julia was busy with the boys and it had been weeks since we had talked. It wasn’t going to be easy for me to get close to her without the help of her friends. I didn’t even know if her friends could help at all at this point. Julia might already have her mind set; she might have decided to move on.
“I’ve been visiting the boys at night after Julia leaves. I love them so much. I want to be involved. I need to be involved. Not out of obligation or anything like that. I just need Julia and the boys in my life.”
“Then we need to figure out a way for you to tell her that. Let me get Kendra and Teddy, so we can all talk this through and figure out a plan.”
Sure enough Sarah found Kendra and Teddy and the four of us ended up in one of the hospital conference rooms trying to figure out what to do next. Julia clearly wasn’t going to call me back just yet and if she didn’t want to talk to me I wasn’t going to just show up somewhere.
The three of them were like super heroes coming to my rescue. They believed in my feelings for Julia and somehow believed that me being involved in her life was a good thing. There was no way to know what Julia was going to say about the whole thing, but having her friends support me in my quest was a really good thing.
“Maybe we could have you surprise her in the nursery holding the babies?” Kendra said. “You could do that whole kangaroo care where the babies are resting on your naked chest. Oh, yeah that would be awesome.”
“No, absolutely not,” I replied. “I’m not going to hold the boys without her permission.”
“What about if you just waited for her outside the nursery?” Teddy suggested.
“I don’t think it should be done at the hospital. I can wait a little bit. I’ll just come visit her once she returned to her apartment.” As much as I wanted to straighten things out with Julia right away, I didn’t want to push myself on her in the middle of getting ready to come home. She had enough to worry about without worrying about me too.
We sat in that conference room for over an hour throwing around ideas before we finally settled on one. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure I loved the idea, but it was exciting to have a plan and something I could look forward to.
“Okay, well I’m going to work with Julia so I know when the babies are coming home and I’ll keep in touch with everyone else,” Kendra said.
“Yes, I can’t wait,” Teddy added.
“This is going to be fantastic. I’ll help you with your part, Mike so you don’t have to worry about any of that. Within the week the two of you love birds should be on your way to a happy future.”
“Thanks for your help everyone. I really hope this works.”
After some reassuring hugs, everyone took off and left me in the conference room to contemplate our big plan. That was when I started to get really nervous. This was going to expose me more than I’d ever been exposed. I was going to have my raw emotions laid out there for Julia to see and she could decide to stomp all over my heart.
Of course, I hoped she had the sa
me feelings for me as I had for her but there was no way to know for sure. I was already nervous about the whole thing. My hands were sweating at the thought of this surprise. Not just because of what it might mean for Julia and me but for what it could mean for our future.
Chapter 21
Julia
“It looks like the doctor is going to release the babies tomorrow,” the nurse said as I was wrapping up my visit for the night.
“Really?”
“Yep, they are doing fantastic. Neither of them need breathing assistance and they have been gaining weight steadily. You’ll need to set up an appointment with your pediatrician for one week from today.”
“Oh wow, I don’t even have a pediatrician yet,” I said realizing that there was one more thing that I hadn’t prepared for.
“No problem. If you’d like I can set you up with one that we recommend?”
“Perfect, that would be wonderful.”
As I left the nursery to head back to my apartment for the night I couldn’t stop worrying about all the things I still didn’t have situated. I hadn’t even been staying at my condo; the times I was there I had very little energy to get things situated.
I’d ordered some baby stuff for the nursery but I hadn’t even made the beds up yet. I also had two bassinets for my bedroom for the boys to sleep in the first couple of nights but neither of them were assembled at all. There was a changing table, rocking chair and swing that had to be assembled to. Basically I felt totally unprepared to be bringing the boys home already.
I should have had more ready by now. They had been in the hospital for weeks and even though I stayed at the hotel most of the time I had come home several times over the past weeks. I was just exhausted.
The truth of parenting twins hadn’t even started to set in yet and I was already barely able to walk straight I was so tired. I was visiting the boys and taking care of them during the day. I was able to breast feed them when I was there but then I pumped in the night time and they received bottles from the nurses.
My level of exhaustion felt like it couldn’t possibly get any worse and yet I knew when the boys came home it was going to get worse. I wasn’t going to get enough sleep unless someone was at the house to help me. There was no way I could manage alone. All my confidence about being a single mother was gone. As I stepped into my condo and saw the mess of things everywhere around the living room I just collapsed onto the ground and started sobbing. It was so overwhelming, everything was so overwhelming.
I planned to stay up late that night getting as much ready as I could possibly manage. I would start with the small bassinets that were in my room and then work down my list by what I felt was most important for when the babies came home the next day. Well, at least my plan had been to stay up late and get things done, unfortunately I fell asleep right there on the floor of my entryway.
When I woke up to my phone ringing I was so disoriented that I couldn’t even figure out how to answer the darn thing. It was morning, I could tell that by the light shining in through the window, but I had no idea how long I’d been sleeping.
“Hello,” I said as I finally clicked the right button to answer the call.
“Hello, Miss Rivas. I just wanted to let you know that the doctor has written discharge orders for the boys. When do you think you’ll be in this morning?”
“I’m on my way,” I said without skipping a beat.
I was still in my clothes from the day before and I probably smelled horrible, but I grabbed a sip of orange juice and headed back to the hospital. On the ride over I sent a text message to Sarah, Kendra and Teddy to let them know what was going on. The last few days they were all harping on me to keep them in the loop.
When I arrived back at the hospital it looked different to me. Before I’d been engulfed with sadness as I came to visit the boys each day and that sadness made the hospital look dreary. As I walked through the halls on this morning everything was brighter and full of life. I was bringing my boys home and I couldn’t wait.
“Good morning, Julia,” the nurse for my boys greeted me as I finished washing up and made it back to their corner of the room. “The boys are both hungry if you haven’t pumped recently.”
It was then that I realized I’d slept all night long and hadn’t pumped at all. My breasts were so full that they were starting to leak through my nursing bra. I quickly grabbed a spot in a rocking chair and the nurse handed me Brody to feed first.
The nursery they were in now was the regular nursery. They had moved there a day before in preparation to go home. Neither of them had any special needs at that point; just the basic baby care like all the other infants in that room.
I was the only mother in the nursery with her babies though. Most of the women just had the babies in the rooms with them. A few of the babies would stay in the main nursery if their mother needed some sleep or if the baby was going to have to see the doctor soon.
After feeding Brody the nurse handed me Benjamin. I had been worried that I wasn’t going to be able to tell the boys apart, but I was able to tell them apart from the first day I saw them. They were identical twins, but I could still see a different in them. It was hard to describe but I saw it.
My phone was buzzing in my purse as I fed Benjamin and I didn’t reach for it. Whoever it was would leave a message if it was important. Somehow I’d gotten on some new mother calling list and I’d been getting a lot of sales calls for baby stuff.
“Do you have someone coming to pick you and the boys up?” The nurse asked.
“I was just going to take an Uber,” I laughed.
“That’s fine.”
“Well, maybe I’ll get my friend Teddy to ride home with me,” I said as I reconsidered how much stuff the boys had and how hard it would be to get them loaded into an Uber.
“The car seats you have will carry really nicely and should be easy to strap into a cab or Uber. But it would be nice to have a second set of hands, especially for your first couple of trips. Is the father not in the picture?”
It was the first time a nurse had flat out asked me about the father of the babies. Most of the nurses skirted around the issue. Sometimes they would ask about my partner or other random questions to see if I would spill the beans, but this was the first time the father of my babies was brought up.
I did need to figure out what my answer was going to be when people asked me such things. I was certainly going to get asked it a lot. A young woman with two new babies and no man by her side; people would be gossiping about that every time I showed up at a mommy and me event.
“He’s not in the picture,” I said without giving any further details.
“Well, maybe one of your friends could help,” she said in a freshly upbeat voice.
“Yes, I’ll give my friend a call.”
When I finished feeding Benjamin I tried dialing Teddy, but he didn’t answer right away. I then saw that I’d missed a call from Sarah so I tried calling her to see if she knew where Teddy was.
“Hey,” Sarah answered her phone. “I’m going to drop some stuff off at your place. Is it cool if I let myself into your apartment?”
“Of course, that’s why I gave you and Kendra a key. You two are always welcome there. By the way, do you know where Teddy is? I think I’m going to need someone to ride with me and the boys home from the hospital.”
“Teddy, can you go to the hospital and ride home with Julia and the boys?” Sarah asked him. “Yep, he’s right here helping me out. He is on his way. He says he can’t wait to help.”
“Now you’re just making things up,” I laughed. “Teddy is never excited to help.”
“You’re right, he normally isn’t, but I think he’s making an exception for those boys. I have a feeling he would do anything for them,” Sarah said before she was distracted by a loud noise in the background.
“What’s going on there?” I asked.
“Nothing, but I better get going. Will you be home soon? I could wait for yo
u there.”
“Yeah, maybe after we get everything sorted out and loaded into the Uber.”
“See you then,” she said and quickly hung up on me.
Sarah seemed off. I wasn’t sure what was going on but she seemed like she was up to something. Hopefully the loud crash I’d heard wasn’t her breaking something at my condo. She was notorious for breaking things and then getting rid of the evidence. Then I’d spend weeks wondering where I put something only to find the broken pieces stuffed in a bag somewhere in the back of my closet. The last time she had broken a picture frame right after I moved into the condo and I looked through all my boxes thinking I’d lost it.
When Teddy showed up at the hospital we spent a whole hour getting the boys ready to leave. I fed them both again and we put them into a couple of cute outfits I had waiting for them. Teddy was a huge help to have around and he was much better with the babies than he gave himself credit for.
“I think I’m doing this wrong,” he squealed as he tried to change Ben’s diaper after a big blowout. “Help, I need help.”
“You’re doing great,” the nurse said as she stood next to him and encouraged him.
I was busy finishing up with Brody and had just finished getting him latched into his baby carrier when he blew out his diaper too. I had a feeling all my money was going to go to diapers in the near future.
When we finally managed to get both the boys fed, cleaned and loaded into the carriers it was time to head out. The nurses filled a cart full of the miscellaneous items that the boys had at the hospital. They gave me the rest of the formula that was in their drawers, diapers, little blood pressure cuffs. Pretty much everything that the boys had used during their stay was put into some bags and loaded onto the cart for me to take home.
“We have the car seat guy waiting downstairs. He will help you load them into the vehicle and show you how to make sure each seat is in right.”
The Baby Package Page 22