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The nurse nods. “Her APGAR scores were strong, and she came into the world screaming.” She looks around the room behind me and smiles. “Your little girl wanted everyone in the room to know she’d arrived.”
It might be funny on a different day, but right now, I just want both my girls in my arms. I’ll laugh when Caitlin is with us.
I’m guided through the swinging doors, and my knees nearly give out when the nurse walks me down the hall, past the room Cait and I were in not thirty minutes ago.
Bloody rags are discarded on the floor, and Caitlin’s bed is gone.
“Where is she?” I ask, more fucking scared than I’ve ever been in my life.
“Caitlin was taken to the operating room.” She opens the door of a private room and steps aside for me to enter. A different nurse stands next to a tiny clear plastic bed on wheels, and a sob claws its way from deep in my chest at the first sight of my daughter and the reality that her mother isn’t here with me for this moment.
This isn’t how any of this was supposed to happen.
The nurse picks up my tiny baby girl, and it’s like a sucker punch to the gut.
Her mother is supposed to be holding her.
Anastasia is wrapped like a baby burrito in a tiny white hospital blanket and a stretchy pink hat and matching big bow.
“Would you like to sit first?” she asks, and I nod, words failing me as I get lost looking at our beautiful baby girl.
I sit without answering and wait for her to place Anastasia in my arms.
Love and fear thickening each breath I take.
She’s perfect and beautiful and looks so much like her mother, it hurts.
Tiny red lips purse, and I swear Caitie has given me that look before.
“Hi, baby girl,” I whisper right before she opens her big blue eyes. “We’ve been waiting to meet you.”
Caitlin
Everything hurts when I crack my eyes and open my mouth to call out for Callen.
But as my eyes adjust, I find him right here, next to me.
He’s sitting in a chair, as close to me and the bed as he can be, and he’s holdingher.
Oh my God. She’s here, and it all comes rushing back to me.
“Is she okay?” I cry as he turns to show me Anastasia’s sleeping face.
“She’s perfect, baby. You did so good.” His voice is hoarse, and stress covers every beautiful line of his face as he gently grazes his lips over mine, then kisses away the hot tears I hadn’t even realized were falling. “Kenzie said she’s perfect. Her lungs are perfect. Her sugar is good, coloring is good. All the things they warned us could be wrong are fine. You did that, baby. You kept her safe. You protected her and got her here.”
He kisses me again with tears in his own eyes. “You scared the shit out of me, Caitlin. You can’t do that again, baby.”
“I’ll try,” I whisper.
“You’re gonna feel pretty crappy for another day or so. Kenzie said you’ve got to stay on a magnesium drip for at least twenty-four hours, but your blood pressure has already started coming down, beautiful.”
“I want to hold her, Callen,” I demand through my tears, even though my arms and legs feel heavy, like they’re encased in cement.
“You lost a lot of blood, Caitie.” He slowly stands. “How about I sit next to you and get her situated on your chest? You feel up to that?”
“Give me my baby, Callen,” I cry, and he does exactly as he said and gets situated next to me. His big body moves so very carefully, when in reality, him just being here next to me gives me strength. Then so gently—and if I wasn’t already madly inlove with him, I would be now—Callen lays Anastasia against my chest and wraps an arm around me. Holding us both close.
“Hi, sweet girl,” I say softly to our baby, so completely in love, it washes away all the fear and pain. “We’re so excited to meet you. Mommy and Daddy love you so much already.” I tug off her little beanie and smile at the crazy puff of black hair shooting in every direction, then notice the pink polka-dot blanket she’s wrapped in. “You remembered?”
