Wish Come True (The Blogger Diaries Trilogy Book 3) (29 page)

Laying her at the foot of my bed, she unwraps Avary, who sleeps right through it all as Rebecca gives Jason a lesson on the perfect swaddle. “And then, once, she’s all baby-burritoed, you can hold her really any way you like. Like, cradling her…” She demonstrates the way Jason was previously holding her. “…or my personal favorite, the football hold.” She spins Avary’s tiny body in her arms, pressing the baby’s chest to her side, her legs tucked behind Rebecca’s back. In this position, the nurse can hold Avary’s head in the palm of her hand, needing only one hand to hold her, leaving the other one free to get anything she might need done. I used to hold Josalyn like this sometimes while breastfeeding until she got too heavy to hold with one arm, and knowing Rebecca is a L&D nurse who works with and holds multiple babies every single day, I didn’t even blink at the way she comfortably and confidently moved my newborn around like she weighed nothing.
 

Jason, on the other hand, looks like he is about to annihilate the poor woman. His feet are spread shoulder-width apart, his body tense, almost like he’s ready to pounce, forearms rippling as his hands ball into fists at his sides. Daddy doesn’t like his baby girl being tossed around like a football, apparently.

Seemingly oblivious to Jason’s battle-stance, Rebecca flips Avary around once again and holds her out, saying, “Now you give it a try.”

It appears to disengage his building anxiety, and he reaches out to take her, tucking her under his arm like the nurse showed him. “Wow, that is a comfortable hold,” he says after a few moments, his body visibly relaxing.
 

There’s another light knock on the door before a different nurse comes in pushing a wheelchair, letting us all know my room for the next forty-eight hours is ready. In the blink of an eye, and without my boyfriend seeing, the nurse removes my catheter and guides my feet through the openings in the padded fishnet underwear I’m to wear until I take a shower and can get into my own comfy granny-panties we brought in our hospital bag. The feeling in my legs has slowly started to come back. They still feel fat and heavy, like your lips when you get Novocain-ed at the dentist after a filling, but I can move them and could probably stand up with help.
 

Jason looks between the baby in his arms and me, and I see the sheer panic of not knowing what he should do written all over his face, so I put him out of his misery. “You take care of our nugget, baby. These ladies know what they’re doing. They won’t let me hurt myself.”

He nods, but still comes around to the other side of the bed to hold the wheelchair steady while the two nurses help me swing my legs over and get my footing before I attempt to stand. I brace myself, remembering the excruciating pain I had after I gave birth to Josalyn when the epidural started to wear off, but I’m happily surprised to find there’s not even a twinge of discomfort. They get me turned around and assist me while I lower my bottom slowly and carefully into the seat of the wheelchair.
 

What stands out to me in the next several hours is how very different this experience is, going through it with a man who loves me unconditionally, who cares about me more than anything else in the world. The only time Jason leaves my side is when I ask him to go get me something, which isn’t very often, because this hospital is treating me like a queen. After Jason—giddy as a schoolgirl—pointed out that Avary was born on the 21
^st
, in room 21, at 4:21p.m., we realized it was well past time for dinner.
 

Using the call button at the side of my new bed, they directed me to pick things from the different sections of the menu conveniently located on the stand next to me. I picked a garden salad with ranch from the soup and salad section, and a cheeseburger for my entrée, but when I couldn’t decide between seasoned French fries or a sweet potato as my side, they said they’d send up both at no extra charge. “We take care of our moms while you’re here,” the woman on the phone explained. Finishing up my order with a chocolate brownie as my dessert, she estimated it would be delivered to my room in about twenty minutes, which would give Jason enough time to run down to the cafeteria to get whatever it was he wanted so we could eat together.
 

Now, as I sit up with Avary cradled in one arm, I nurse her as I eat my burger one-handed, having told Jason no when he tried to take her from me so I could ‘eat in peace.’ I needed the distraction of my dinner to get me through the initial pain of breastfeeding. I didn’t miss this feeling whatsoever. Mentally telling myself I just have to make it through the first four days before it would get easy again, I dip my French fry in ketchup and take care not to drip it on the baby.
 

When all three of us are finished eating, I push the rolling food tray from where it was hovering above my thighs so I can place Avary between them to change her diaper. Jason hands me a fresh one and some wipes, and as I lift her miniature booty out of her soiled diaper, she wastes no time peeing all over my lap.
 

“Seriously? I thought it was only baby boys who were supposed to pee on you when the cold air hit their little pickle,” I gripe then laugh.
 

“Well, you said you needed to take a shower anyways, so now you have no more excuses to put it off. Time to take care of Mommy,” Jason says, and after I have her clean diaper in place and her wet nightgown changed, he presses the button on the side of the bed.

“Nurses’ station. What can I do for you, Miss Greenwood?”
 

“Hi, we’d like someone to take the baby to the nursery for a little bit now so I can help her mom take a shower,” he calls out.

“Perfect timing, Mr. Robichaux. It’s time for her heel-prick and hearing tests. When you’re ready for us to bring her back, just let me know. Sending someone now,” she replies pleasantly.

“Thank you,” Jason says, and I hear the line disconnect.

Within a minute, one of the nurses who had been in and out of my room doing various checkups on both me and Avary comes to get her, placing her in her clear bassinet and wheeling her out of the room.
 

“All right, babe. Let’s get ya clean.” He comes around to the side of the bed and holds out his hands for me to take. I stand carefully, still not believing I have absolutely zero pain after just giving birth. It’s like I’m waiting for the ball to drop and all the agony I felt last time to suddenly hit me all at once.
 

Jason keeps a firm hold of me as I slowly shuffle into the spacious bathroom, and then closes the door behind us. Trying to rein in my self-consciousness as he helps me undress under the bright fluorescent lights, I do my best to ignore the heat of my cheeks as he tells me to put my hands on his back while he bends down to remove my super snazzy long blue socks with grippers on the bottom that they’d put on my feet. But I grow dizzy with embarrassment when I’m left in nothing but the nude, padded fishnet undergarment and grab onto his shoulders.

“Don’t,” he growls, and I look into his intense gaze. “Don’t you dare be embarrassed right now, babe. You just gave birth to my baby.
My
baby. Something I never dreamed I would ever have. You are the most beautiful, perfect creature I’ve ever seen in my life, and today, your beauty in my eyes grew a hundred-fold. Nothing I see as I take care of you right now—not your body, not the blood, not this sexy ass pad-thing they put you in, nor the highly attractive granny-panties I’ll help you into when I get you all clean and dried off—will make me look at you any differently.”

I can’t help but laugh, which brings a mischievous sparkle into his eyes, and I reluctantly nod.
 

He turns his face to kiss one of my hands on his shoulders and then keeps his gaze locked on mine as his fingers grip the waistband of the underwear. “I’m not looking, babe. Promise,” he assures me, and I keep my balance, stepping out of them as his eyes stay on my face. He folds them up, steps on the pedal of the biohazard trashcan beside the toilet, and tosses them in, never once looking at them.
 

To my surprise, he swiftly undresses, and then grabs two towels off the rack, placing them on the toilet lid next to the shower opening. I wasn’t expecting him to bathe with me. I see there is a stool inside the shower, just like at Womack, and I explain what I did last time, how the nurse taught me to fold up a towel, place it on the shower seat, and soak it with hot water to sit on while I cleaned myself. He follows my instructions quickly and holds me around my waist as I step inside the wide stall and sit down. Although I don’t have pain from the birth, the hot towel is soothing, helping me relax as Jason takes out our toiletries from the bag sitting on the floor beside the door.
 

In these moments, as Jason lathers and rinses my hair, even following my directions to leave the conditioner in a few minutes before he washes it out, and then uses my loofa to clean the rest of me, I’ve never felt more loved and taken care of in my whole life. And when he takes the showerhead down once more to rinse away all the sweet-smelling suds then follows the stream of water with his lips, kissing nearly every inch of my body, including my now-deflated and squishy belly, I fall even more in love with him.
 

Kayla’s Chick Rant & Book Blog

December 24, 2009

Merry Christmas, everybody! I’m on winter break and finally had a spare second, so I thought I’d stop in and give y’all an update on everything that’s been going on before I get on with this busy day I’m about to have. Plus, Jason is making me want to kick his ass today, and I decided to lock myself in the bedroom for a little bit, since playing on my blog makes me feel better. I swear on my BOB, if he doesn’t get out of this foul-ass mood he’s in, I’m gonna flip my shit and go postal on his ass. It’s Christmas! I know I fought tooth and nail to get the hot, broody, tatted-up bad boy, but damn.
 

Thank you for all your kind words in the comments under the pics I posted of our little nugget. It’s been a rough few months. As usual, Avary woke up about thirteen times last night to nurse and take her Gripe Water. I’m so ready for her to grow out of her colic. You’d think at four months old it would have gotten better by now, but no. My poor girl has the worse acid reflux I’ve ever seen in a baby. I guess God started me out with an easy, perfect child first with Josalyn before testing my strength with my new little one. I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since a few months before Avary was born, because she moved around so much while I was pregnant. And yet, I still woke up in a fantastic mood, because, well, again… it’s Christmas!

When we got up this morning, Jason barely spoke to me while we got the girls dressed, made breakfast, and ate at the kitchen table. He didn’t even look at me or try to cop a feel when I changed into the cute outfit I’m wearing to Tony and Buffy’s house tonight. I don’t know what’s crawled up his ass, but he better get over it soon.
 

Buffy has welcomed us in with her family’s tradition of Bring-Your-Own-Crab for Christmas Eve dinner. She and Tony will be making a prime rib and the sides, and then she told us to bring all the crab legs we want to eat, and they’ll cook them up when we get there. We’re… at least
I
am super excited about it. I can eat my weight in crab legs. It was one of the first things Jason and I ever bonded over, our love of the delicious seafood. A pain in the ass to eat, but so worth the effort.

Anywho, this is what I’ve been up to for the past few months:

End of August:
 

My semester started a week after I gave birth, and I quickly had to drop two of my classes, which I will take during the spring semester and be able to graduate in June. Doing two physical education classes in one semester just was not going to happen, so I kept my Yoga I class and dropped my weight training one. I’ve really been enjoying learning yoga, so I think next time I’ll take Yoga II instead of something different.
 

Funny story:
 

Soon after we got home from the hospital with Avary, exhausted and with sore boobs, she woke up for what had to be the eightieth time one night, screaming her little brains out after I had just gotten her to sleep maybe an hour before. Jason, trying to be comforting, reached over to rub my back right as I was bracing myself for Avary to latch onto my nipple, which felt like it would fall off at any moment because she’d been overusing them so much, and it’s like his hand electrocuted me. I probably looked possessed by the devil himself as I yelled,
“Don’t fucking touch me!”
and then immediately burst into tears as at the exact same moment I was overcome with shame for screaming at my loving baby-daddy for trying to make me feel better and Avary grabbed ahold of my raw areola with her razor-like gums. I sat there, bawling my eyes out, and then cried even harder as Jason got out of bed and left the room, and I felt like the worst human being on the face of the planet.