by Julia Kent
“But everyone’s supposed to write parenting advice for us.”
“I don’t mean time for them to have cake. Time for me to have cake.”
He laughs, hand on the small of my back, the only part of me that is still small. “Agreed.”
We’re finishing off two slices of Mom’s king cake with vanilla cream cheese frosting and an amazing caramel sauce that Mom made when Dad comes into the kitchen and laughs at us.
“You’re hiding,” he says, in a tone that makes it clear he understands.
“We’re carb loading,” I explain. “For birth. It’s like running a marathon.”
“But you’re not due for five weeks.”
“You can never be overprepared for labor.” As I bite down, a hard plastic baby figurine hits my tooth, sending a ripple of pain through my jaw. I spit it out. Dad laughs. Dec just shakes his head.
If only labor were so easy.
Dad grabs a slice and pours sauce over it. “Very true. I remember when your mother gave birth to you. You were the easy one.”
“I was?” I know the story, but Dec leans in, suddenly interested.
“You were. Marie had no idea she was in labor. Said it just felt like a big rubber band being stretched inside her. So different from Carol, where she felt every pain.”
“What happened?”
“Shannon was damn near born on the Mass Pike in our 1985 Chevy Celebrity.”
He winces. “Yikes.”
“I know,” I say. “Can you imagine if I’d been born on the highway?”
“That would have been awful, but I’m more troubled by the fact that your parents owned a Chevy Celebrity.”
Dad steals Declan’s piece of cake from him. “Hey, now.”
Mom appears, flushed and hyper. “There you two are! The guests of honor. Come into the living room–we’re opening presents!”
“Shouldn’t we open the presents?” Dec asks.
“We’re doing it without you if you don’t get your asses in here!” She flounces out.
Dad sighs. “It isn’t a big party until Marie gets upset.”
We migrate into the living room, where Mom has two chairs reserved for us, with crowns on them.
“I am not wearing that,” Dec says flatly.
“I want to wear it,” Tyler declares.
Declan takes the opening, puts it on Tyler’s head, and grins. “Tyler makes a great king.”
There’s that Christian Bale smile again.
Mom puts my crown firmly on my head, giving Declan a glare filled with mixed signals. “Let’s start!”
The room is filled with gifts, big and small. I know Mom and Dad got us the stroller/carseat combination we wanted, and Carol and Amy went in on a side-sleeper attachment for our bed. James gives us a card with a big check in it. Amanda and Andrew offer babysitting services and a session with a very popular family photographer in Boston who doesn’t have an opening until 2021 – but now magically does, for us. Terry’s gift is a promise of a portrait of the baby from an artist friend.
It’s awkward, having my middle class family and our middle class friends mixed with Declan’s family filled with people who could drop a year of my Dad’s salary on a single gift for our baby and not even blink. We just don’t talk about it. Declan and I have a tacit agreement that whatever each family gives or does is to be respected. No comparisons. Even James is good on this point, but Dec says that’s only because he’s convinced himself that he always gives the biggest gift.
Whatever.
Everyone has been generous and kind, and as we open the presents and ooohhh and aaahhhh, I start to get used to the attention, the baby moving slowly inside me as if he’s reveling in it, too. Agnes and Corrine give us beautiful hand-crocheted baby blankets and sweaters, everything matching in a gorgeous blue. Josh and Greg give us boxes of diapers, breastfeeding supplies I’m certain Greg’s wife actually bought, and a little rainbow outfit I can’t wait to put on Finn.
Pam’s gift is an intricate baby book system for keeping track of milestones, and a new instant camera that prints actual photos, so we can put the pictures right in the baby book.
As the presents pile up, Amy keeps a written list of who gave what for thank-you notes.
I’m teary and grateful, but I’m also exhausted.
“This one’s for you to open,” Carol says, handing a big, flat box to Declan.
“You already got us something!” I protest, knowing Carol’s broke, so any gift to us is money she can’t spend on herself or the boys.
She holds her finger to her lips. “Shhh. You’ll see.”
“Please tell me this has nothing to do with labor, orgasms, or...” he pauses, swallowing hard, “...constipation.”
“Nope!”
“I knew you were my favorite sister-in-law.”
“Hey!” Amy protests. “What about me?”
“It’s a tie.”
“Ever the diplomat,” Carol says, laughing.
“No. I’m just a married man who should know better.” With a smile, Declan opens the gift, his grin turning to puzzlement when he lifts the top of the box. Two gold rings, the diameter of a baby’s head, are sewn into a loop of fabric, tie-dyed in a fabulous Grateful Dead-style rainbow.
“Uh, thank you?” he says to Carol.
Dad lets out a cheer. “The baby wrap!”
“The baby what?” Dec asks, looking at me for clarification.
“It’s for wearing the baby,” I explain.
“Wearing the baby? Like one of those carriers?” He holds his hands out front. “The ones that look like the baby is bungee jumping?”
Mom goes around the corner into the family room, and before I can explain to Declan what’s in the box, she has a photo album in her hands.
“This is how you wear a baby.” She peels a big photograph from one of the pages and hands it to Dec. I look over her shoulder.
“Oh, geez, Marie. Look at how young we were,” Dad marvels. “I haven’t seen that picture in years.”
In the photograph, Dad is standing near a big window, baby Jeffrey balanced on his hip, grinning like a madly teething, happy baby. The baby wrap is over Dad’s shoulder, firmly securing Jeffrey to him.
Dad’s grin matches the baby’s, minus the teething part.
“Is that me?” Tyler asks, pointing to the baby.
“No, Ty. That’s Jeffrey.” Dad touches his whiskers, suddenly nostalgic. “Only eleven years ago, huh? Jeffrey was about six months there. I had a lot less grey in my beard.”
“And a lot more hair on your head,” Jeffrey adds.
“Thanks, kid,” Dad mumbles, but in an affectionate way.
We all laugh.
“I kept this,” Carol says softly. “I have so many memories of my kids being carried by me, by Dad, by Mom and Shannon and Amy. I wanted to pass it on to you.”
I choke up as I realize she doesn’t mention the boys’ father, Todd. He thought baby wearing was for–his words–“pansy-ass guys who don’t know how to take charge.”
I look at my very take-charge husband, who pulls the long, flowing fabric out, holding the rings in one hand. I hold my breath. Which way is this going to go?
“Show me,” he says to Carol. “How do I wear this?”
Mom’s eyes catch mine. We both exhale.
Told you, she mouths.
“Wait,” he says, as Carol starts wrapping it, the rings on his left shoulder, the fabric going through like a cotton belt. “Don’t you want to keep it?”
“Why?”
“In case you have more children.”
Carol gives him a sad, complex look and whispers, “No. This has served my little family well, Declan. Let me pass it on.”
He gives her a hug, the rings clinking.
And now Mom and I are crying.
Fitting it just so, Carol finishes and takes a step back.
“Now you need to have a baby to fill it!” Jeffrey says.
Dec reaches for my belly and rubs it. �
�Working on that.”
“You could wear Chuckles in it, for practice,” Amy says.
“I like my skin where it is, Amy,” Dec replies.
Hamish walks in and does a double take at his cousin. “If that were made of the McCormick tartan, I’d think ye were in formal Highland dress.”
“Can we get one in McCormick tartan?” Mom asks him. “Because that would be amazing for Jason to wear when we’re babysitting and out for walks!”
“You’re not a McCormick,” James reminds her.
“No. But the baby is,” she shoots back.
“Fair enough,” he says, conceding the point.
“Speaking of McCormick tartan,” Hamish says, clearing his throat and handing me a wrapped box, “why don’t ye open this one next?”
Inside is a onesie... in McCormick tartan.
“Oh!” I gasp, tearing up for the nineteenth time. “It’s adorable!” There’s a gift card for a very posh baby store on Newbury Street as well.
“Thank you,” Dec says. “He’ll look good in it.”
“He? I wouldn’t be so sure. I dinna get the one with ribbons and lace, but I was sorely tempted.”
“We know it’s a boy,” Declan says amiably. “We had an ultrasound.”
“We? We didn’t drink a gallon of water and lay on a table while having an ultrasound wand turned into a Titanic submarine expedition,” I grumble.
Hamish ignores me and laughs at Declan. “Ye know about our side of the family, no? Since the ultrasound became a part of pregnancy, it’s been wrong for every single McCormick child.”
“What?” James interrupts. “I haven’t heard anything about this.”
“At first, it was just a fluke. Then it became a pattern. Without fail, if a woman in the family is told she’s carrying a boy, it’s born a girl. If told a girl, it’s born a boy.” Hamish looks at all the blue clothes and accessories in the room. “I dinna know if the same happens here, but she’ll look fine in that sky color as well. Sapphire suits all babies.”
The room laughs.
“You think I’m joking? Just wait.” Hamish grins, his hand held up in a toast. “To the mystery of birth.”
Dec holds his glass high as well, and adds, “To family!”
We all drink, my seltzer water turning salty as I cry.
To family, indeed.
Chapter 20
Due Date
* * *
Shannon
* * *
“The baby hates me,” I say first thing as I wake up and realize I am not in labor.
“The baby does not hate you,” Dec mumbles, shoving his pillow over his head.
“I am grounding this child the second he is born.”
“For what?” A dark little tunnel, just big enough for Dec’s mouth, opens up in the white pillow puff covering his head.
“For not coming out on his due date.”
“Pam told us only five percent of babies are born on their due date.”
“Our son was supposed to be exceptional!”
“He will be.”
“I can’t go longer than my due date. This is agony.”
“The doctor said you can do an induction.”
“I don’t want that. Let nature take its course, you know?” There’s also the fact that I am absolutely terrified of what’s coming, so actively initiating labor and delivery feels about as awful as living day to day with forty pounds of baby and organ support system hanging off me, pulling me down, making me feel like all I can do is eat and cry and obsessively clean closets and cupboards.
Nuzzling my neck, he murmurs, “How about we let nature takes its course right now?” putting my hand between his legs where there is an organ in need of support. A nice, big one, growing bigger by the second.
“You want sex? With me?”
“No one else I’d prefer.”
Declan shifts my body so I’m on my side, his lips moving down from my shoulder to my breast, mouth hot and steady, moving in a languid way that makes it clear he’s interested. In spite of my ever-spinning mind and aching body, I rouse, my pulse relocating to my earlobes, my core, my tongue.
“Mmm,” I say as he licks his way down to my belly button, where a long, brown line makes its way over Mount Phineas.
“I can’t sit like this, Dec. My hip,” I whisper, hating how big I am, how awkward, how I can’t just be. My brain hums all the time, unable to plug in, tune in to my body. Sex is as much mental as it is physical, and right now, my brain is in Zimbabwe while my body is half of the United States.
“How do you want it?”
“Can we turn back time to 2017? Because if you’re fulfilling wishes, let’s go with that.”
Instead of a time machine, I get gentle, loving hands on my hips, his palms sloping under my belly, up to cup my breasts, the sensual, exploratory nature so inviting that tears fill my eyes. I want nothing more than to be fun, uninhibited, free and easy and good natured.
All I can manage now is to stay upright and to cry. Dec touches my face, feeling the tears. He tenses.
“I… I can’t have sex with you while you’re crying. I’m sorry Shannon, but it feels too–”
“You’re using my crying as an excuse to avoid touching your big old whale of a wife!”
“When have I ever turned down sex?”
“Half our honeymoon!”
“Well, yes, but…”
“And all those times during my second trimester when you complained!”
“I complained once. Once, honey. And it was after seven times in twenty-four hours. Even high-performance race cars need to make pit stops to refuel.”
“But you said no!”
“Ok… aside from that?”
“Never.”
His hand brushes away the tear on my cheek. “Why are you crying? Does it hurt?”
“No! It doesn’t hurt. I’m crying because the entire reason for having sex is so my baby will come into the world and meet me.”
“And that makes you.. cry?”
“Doritos commercials make me cry, Declan. When you leave a dirty sock under the bed, I cry. Getting ready to meet the most important person in my life–second to you–and having him emerge from my body is a much better reason to cry than Doritos and socks.”
“Yes. Yes it is.”
“And besides, this may be the last time we make love for a very, very long time!”
He goes still. “Very long? Most of the guys I talked to said once the doctor approves you at the two-week checkup, you’re fine to go.”
“And ALL of the women I talked to said they weren’t ready by six weeks, and it was three months or more before they could even think about being touched by their husbands!”
“Three months?”
“Or longer!”
Silence. Something wet splats against my lower back, then trickles down the cleft of my ass.
“Dec, is there a leak in the ceiling?”
“No.”
“Then what is that dripping on my back?”
Silence.
“Declan, are YOU crying?”
“I don’t cry! It’s sweat.”
I cry harder.
“If anyone should be crying now, Shannon, it’s me.” But he holds me until I can’t stand the pain in my hip, and I peel out of his arms to stand up.
Where it all just hurts.
“No one tells you it’ll be like this!” I cry out as he stands, too. I’m pacing now, my belly moving two seconds later than the rest of me. I’m naked and ranting and I don’t care, because if there is ever a time when a righteous woman should rant, it is now.
“Like what?”
“THIS!” I put both palms on either side of my breasts and squeeze. Milk drops form on my nipples. To my surprise, a little comes in if I squeeze, and because I’m curious, I did a few weeks ago. The midwife says it’s normal for some women. When am I ever normal? I take her words at face value, though.
My hands move down to my belly, where I pl
ay bongo drums with an enthusiastic partner inside me.
“No one tells you a sneeze is one half-second away from a tsunami in your panties. No one tells you that your cervix will become a charley horse. No one tells you that you’ll go from talking to the baby and telling him your deepest, darkest secrets and your wild declarations of a love you didn’t know you were capable of feeling to rage at heartburn caused by an alien your semen inserted in me. No one–” My rant cracks in half with a sob.
Patient and sweet, he stops and holds me. I hate being like this. Hate it. Live, snapped electrical wires after a bad ice storm are more predictable than a pregnant woman’s emotions.
“I still,” I say through sobs, “cannot believe we built a baby. We said we wanted one, we had sex, I got pregnant, and we’re making a baby.”
“You’re making 99.99 percent of it.”
“True. But Dec, I mean–we really did it! He’s more than ready to come out, and once the labor and delivery is over, we’ll have made a human being. Words are so inadequate to describe how crazy that is. We just–made another person.”
“It’s basic reproduction.”
“It’s more than that.”
“Yes.” The skin around his eyes crinkles with happiness. “It is. I can’t wait to see you holding him, breastfeeding him, just being here, around the house, living life. We’re starting a family. I never in my wildest dreams thought this was what my life would be like the day before I met you.”
“Really?”
“Really. I–” He pauses and squeezes me harder. “Words aren’t exactly communicating what I’m feeling, either.”
Movement deep inside me reminds me of how much I love Declan, the physical manifestation of that love perched on the precipice between the safety of my womb and the loving but decidedly more risky world outside, where Declan can finally hold him. I’ve had the luxury of these last forty weeks alone with my baby, the only person allowed to be with him.
That all changes very soon.
Maybe today.
“I love you,” I tell Declan as he palms the baby, seeking movement, a sign, a fist bump. Simple acknowledgement.