“Also, I think I may have just found us a house.”
Blair - 1 year
It wasn’t a stomach bug.
Honestly, I’d known that since the first morning I woke up too sick to move.
Because it wasn’t just the nausea. It was the tenderness, the exhaustion, and the fact that when Nico cooked eggs, it smelled so foul to me that I had to go outside and gulp in breaths of non-eggy air.
I’d just been so scared to get my hopes up after so many attempts and no results in the past.
Even though I knew that it was different, thathewas different, that we both desperately wanted a family, I didn’t know if my heart could take it if I got both our hopes up only to get my cycle in a week or two.
But when the week passed with no signs of my period, I bought half a dozen tests and took them over the course of a few days.
When every one of them came up positive, I finally brought the stick out to Nico and shared the happy news.
Did we do things in the order I once said I wanted? No. But Nico had been right about that. The timing didn’t matter. All that mattered was what made us happy.
We wereover the moonabout a baby.
And we had a giant family who refused to let me lift a finger when it came to packing up our current homes and moving to the townhouse Leo had found for us.
“I’m coming,” I called, voice sing-song, as I drifted from the primary bedroom and into the nursery. There was no need for the light. The sun streamed through every window in this home. “I know,” I cooed as our son shrieked, his tiny face twisted up in rage that I was two minutes late to feed him after rushing through a quick shower. “How dare I try to wash all that throw-up off me?”
I undid his wrap, then pulled him out and walked over to the oversized rocker in the corner near the window that overlooked the backyard.
I pulled down my robe and helped him latch before glancing out the window, looking at the tall stone walls that encased our back garden, then looked down to see Goya in the lush grass we’d planted and painstakingly maintained for him. He was whipping a giant stick around, nearly knocking himself out with it.
He’d been a trooper about the baby since the first day he’d noticed my belly moving as the baby kicked inside.
When we brought our son home, he followed him around anywhere he went. If we put him down in his crib instead of the bassinet near our bed, Goya chose to sleep in the nursery, keeping guard.
When the baby cried, he cried too.
Though he did have a habit of trying to steal the plushies that had been gifted to us at the giant, lavish, lovely baby shower.
I slipped my finger into my son’s tiny hand, watching it curl tight, and feeling my heart swell near to bursting.
I’d known my whole life that I wanted to be a mom. And it was everything that I hoped it would be and more. Especially with a partner like Nico at my side. Someone who was often quicker to move than I was, rushing to change a diaper, rock him back to sleep, or feed him some of the breast milk I pumped and kept in the fridge.
Anytime I caught him with our son, I realized how important it was to choose the right person. Someone calm and steady and dependable. Someone whowantedto carry their half of the load. Or more, sometimes, when I needed a break.
As I lifted our son to my shoulder, the twinkling sound of our doorbell chimed and I could hear Nico making his way down the front hall to answer it.
We were forever having drop-ins since we moved in. They’d only increased after we had the baby.
I couldn’t be happier about it.
It wasn’t even just Nico’s siblings, either. It was the whole Costa crew. They came with meals to throw in the freezer, with coffee, with snacks, with offers to watch the baby so we could nap or shower or just step outside of the house for an hour or two, or even to take Goya for a walk.
It never ceased to amaze me how I’d gotten exactly what I wanted.
The man of my dreams.
Motherhood.
And the giant, crazy, supportive, beautiful family I’d always craved.
