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“Everything is just fine. I can see the head, Carly. Come on, honey, you can do this.”
Why is it taking so long? In movies, the baby was born just moments after the head emerged. Time lost its meaning. She was gone in a sea of pain, drowning in it. She could hear Justin’s voice, but it seemed far away and dim, and the words had little meaning.
Suddenly, there was a strange sliding sensation, and Justin cried out as the baby slid into his waiting hands. “Carly, it’s a girl!” A high-pitched wail filled the room.
Carly sobbed—in relief, in joy. “Give her to me!”
“Let me check her, honey.” Justin laid the baby down on a clean towel, cleared her nostrils with a little blue bulb syringe, tied and then cut the cord. He handed Carly their daughter—a tiny, squirming, squalling bundle, wrapped snugly in the towel. Carly wept as she examined her, counting the tiny fingers, then checking her fat little feet while Justin helped her to deliver the afterbirth and cleaned her up. Carly barely noticed because she was so entranced with her tiny daughter.
“Carly? Can I have her back for a moment?” Justin smiled at her, his eyes tender and warm. “I want to clean her up a bit, and you probably want to get changed.”
Carly hadn’t even noticed the baby was still gooey. She laughed softly and handed the baby to her father, and he used a bowl of warm water to sponge her clean. He’d found an old-fashioned food scale at one of the stores in town and he wrapped the baby in another clean towel and put her into the scoop. “Seven pounds, nine ounces,” he announced, sounding very proud of that fact. “Perfect!”
“She is perfect,” Carly said as she wriggled into a fresh nightgown. Her body ached all over, and she was trembling with exhaustion, but she was the happiest she had ever been. She saw Justin press a gentle kiss to the top of their baby’s head and thought her heart would burst from the love it held for the two of them. “She’s the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen.” And it didn’t occur to her she might be a tiny bit biased.
Justin handed the baby back to Carly and stripped the bed of its soiled linen. When he had it remade, they both climbed into it, leaning up against the headboard. The baby blinked her bleary eyes at them, and they exchanged a smile. Justin put his arm around Carly’s shoulder and drew her close. His eyes were shining, and a huge, goofy grin stretched across his face. They both stared down in wonder at this tiny, beautiful person they had created together.
Carly untied the neck of her nightgown, put the baby up to her breast, and waited. Nothing. Carly frowned, turned the baby a bit, and pushed her nipple into the baby’s mouth. Nothing. Carly looked up at Justin in alarm.
“Don’t worry, honey,” he said. “We read about this, remember? It’s all right if she doesn’t latch on right away. She might not even be hungry yet.”
Her brain knew that, but her heart was panicking as if she’d failed her baby already. What if she never learns to latch on? What if—?
“Carly, stop. No reason to worry yet. Just hold her there, where she can listen to your heart. It will relax you both. Why don’t you sing to her? She loves that.”
When the baby had seemed to be using her liver as a soccer ball, Carly used to sing, and the baby would go still, as if enraptured by the sound of her voice. She sang a lullaby she remembered her mother used to sing to her when she was little. The baby fell asleep, and Carly faltered, her eyes filling with tears. But they were tears of joy, and Justin smiled as he handed her a tissue.
“Have you decided what you want to name her?”
They had discussed and debated many names and had narrowed the list down to around half a dozen for both sexes. She had prayed Justin was joking when he said he wanted to name a son Elvis. “I think I want to name her ‘Dagny.’ It means ‘a new day’ according to the book on baby names you gave me. And that’s what she is. She’s a new day, a new beginning for the human race.”
“I like it,” Justin said. “ ‘Dagny,’ it is.”
They snuggled together with their baby, their new beginning.
Justin came home for lunch, and Carly was grateful for the distraction. She laid Dagny in her crib and went into Justin’s arms for a hug.
“You seem upset,” he said. He bent and kissed her, and she tried to smile, but it was a wobbly effort at best.
“Breastfeeding woes.” That morning, Dagny had latched on just fine and Carly had felt like shouting in victory, but during her second feeding, the baby had turned away and whimpered until Carly surrendered and fed her a bottle of her pumped breast milk.
“Give it time, Carly. She’s not even a month old yet, and she’s not starving. She’s gaining weight just like she should be.”
Carly nodded. She knew all of that, but she still felt like a failure, deep within her secret heart.
“Where’s my little Daggers?” Justin cooed and lifted the baby out of her crib.
“Her name is Dagny,” Carly said, and he gave her a mischievous grin that lightened her spirits a little. “Dag-nee. Remember? You were there when I named her.”
“Oh, I remember. I never forget a name.” He rubbed his nose against the baby’s and smiled down at her. Dagny gurgled and patted one of her plump little hands against his cheek.
Carly snorted. “You forgot mine the whole first week I knew you.”
“No, I didn’t. That was... Well, I needed you to get comfortable with me. If you started off every conversation by correcting me and asserting your identity, you would feel a bit more comfortable, at least subconsciously.”
Carly shook her head with a smile. “I was right about you. You are a tricksy hobbit.” She opened a can of Spam, diced it up into tiny squares, and tossed it into the skillet with some shredded potatoes.
Justin laid Dagny back into her crib and wound up the mobile dangling above it. “Need any help?”
