Page 95 of Full Out Fiend
“What can I do for you?” he implores, smoothing back my hair and staring at me, helpless, with those big lagoon-blue eyes.
I didn’t even get a chance to see if her eyes were blue like his before they took her away.
Another sob ripples through me. And thanks to the spinal block wearing off, a singe of pain shoots through my lower half, making me hiss.
The anesthesia is fading, which is good, because they won’t take the catheter out until I have feeling in my legs. But also—ow.
“Maybe you should just go back and be with her,” I half-heartedly suggest.
“Absolutely not,” Fielding counters, pulling his chair as close to the hospital bed as possible. He strokes my face, but I can barely stand to look at him.
“She’s fine. She’s more than fine. She’s getting the best care possible, and they won’t let me hold her while she’s still in observation anyway,” he explains. “Youare where I need to be.”
“I’m sorry,” I whisper again. My lower half may be partially numb, but I feel so vastly empty. “I’m so sorry she came early.”
He sighs and wraps me in a gentle hug, careful not to jostle me. “You’re allowed to feel however you need to feel right now, angel. But you have nothing to be sorry about. Just wait until you see her. You’ll be the first one to hold her,” he promises. “I know this isn’t the way it was supposed to go. But I promise we’ll look back on this day and we won’t remember the hard parts or the scary parts.”
He shifts back in his seat and pulls out his phone. “Look at what you created.” He beams, swiping through the fifty plus pictures he’s already taken of our daughter. “Look at what we made together. Do you know how proud I am of you? Do you know how grateful I am?”
He tilts his head and smiles softly at an image on the screen.
“You’re amazing. You’re perfect. I know you feel like shit right now, but someday soon, this will just be a memory. One tiny moment in a lifetime of memories we get to make together with our daughter.”
Chapter 54
Fielding
“Backtobreakanotherrecord?” Roberta asks as I make my way over to the sink to scrub in.
“You know it,” I reply smugly with a wink. Daphne’s back is to us, but I’d bet she’s rolling her eyes. I’ve only been gone for a few hours—I ran home to get us both a few changes of clothes and to wrestle with the infant car seat in the privacy of my own damn driveway. But it feels like I’ve been gone for days.
I dry my hands quickly before striding over to the rocking chair and crouching low to peek at my girls.
“Why does she look bigger?” I pout, pulling down the edge of the swaddle blanket where my sweet little Winnie lies sound asleep on her mommy’s chest. I can’t help but inhale—she smells so fucking good. Like fresh soap and warm blankets and love.
I’ve very quickly become addicted to baby cuddles. And baby smells. Pretty much anything to do with this baby is my new favorite. I love it all. I simply can’t get enough.
“Shh,” Daphne urges. “You’ve only been gone a few hours. I promise she didn’t grow in that time.”
“Hmph. Easy for you to say. You’ve been here getting all the snuggles while I was cursing out a car seat base,” I tease as I peck her on the lips. She also smells divine—like herself, but with this new layer of sweetness from the breastmilk.
“Did you get it figured out?”
“Of course,” I assure her. I don’t mention the three YouTube videos I watched—more than once—to get the install just right. But both bases are safely installed in our cars, and those suckers aren’t going anywhere.
I smooth Daphne’s hair and cup her face affectionately. “What do you need? Do you want to eat before her next feeding?”
She glances at the clock and grimaces—she’s got less than twenty minutes before she has to nurse again.
This is one of the most insane parts about being in the NICU—intuition and baby-led anything are completely disregarded. Winnie has to nurse at a specific time, just like she has to be changed and weighed at a certain time. She takes nearly an hour to nurse on both sides. Then we weigh her again to calculate her intake.
If the weigh and feeds aren’t enough according to the powers that be (a.k.a., the crabby nurse practitioner who’s made Daphne cry no less than three times this week), they have to push the remaining feed through an NG tube. Since Daphne is determined to breastfeed, that means every nursing session ends with her having to pump, too. Then the whole shebang repeats three hours later.
It’s brutal. And yet she keeps going.
“Please eat,” I encourage her. I’m useless in a lot of ways right now, but making sure Daphne is fed, somewhat rested, and staying up on her pain meds are things Icando to contribute.
Plus, Winnie’s had two great nursing sessions so far today. If she keeps this up, they plan to remove the NG tube tonight, and she can do her car seat test tomorrow, which puts us one step closer to going home. Hence why I rushed home to get the car seat bases installed this afternoon.