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I think it was always just a little straggling confidence issues holding her back, making her think she might not be wanted.
But she was.
God, she was.
I'd never wanted anything more in my life. Which was crazy because I already had her. But the urge was still there. To pull her closer, to fill out the paperwork, to make it official.
Hell, I probably would have asked her months ago if I thought she was ready. I'd known she was the one for so long, and didn't exactly see a reason to hold off on sealing the deal.
"Stop being in such a rush," Kingston had demanded. "This is some of the good stuff. Take your time, enjoy it."
That was what I did, giving her the time she needed to trust me completely, to see the kind of future I'd been seeing from the beginning.
But when Katie had surprised me for my birthday with a little long weekend at the place where things really got started for us, I decided it was too perfect not to take the opportunity to ask her.
"You know what I think we should do for the honeymoon?" she asked, and I couldn't help but smile up at her as she got excited.
"What's that?"
"That road trip we keep talking about. We should take that. Go to try out those skis that are collecting dust."
"While you sit in the lodge drinking hot chocolate?"
"Naturally," she agreed, beaming.
"Then you can warm me up in front of the fire?"
"Of course."
"Then it sounds perfect to me."Katie - 2.5 years"It's not your usual anxiety," Dusty said, shaking her head at me. "It's your fancy new mom anxiety. It has all the hallmarks of the old anxiety, but unlocks the levels that include being terrified about keeping a little human alive, about your man no longer being attracted to the sleep-deprived milk machine you've become, and the concerns about not 'contributing' to the household while you are home with the baby."
I should have known Dusty would be who I needed to talk to sooner.
I'd been digging myself into an anxiety hole for the ten weeks following our son's birth—a nine-pound beast with pudgy everything who had no business growing so big inside my too-small body. He looked like his daddy. Of course he did. Dark hair. Dark eyes. All the charm. Everyone was wrapped around his little finger.
Leaving me feeling like the worst mom in the world because I was stressed out and short-tempered when I was supposed to be enjoying every second of this experience.
"You're a good mom, Kate," Dusty insisted, jiggling little Kade around, calming a sleepy fuss without any effort at all. "It's just your mind telling you different. Are you getting depressed or think you might be getting postpartum?" she asked, point-blank. "It's normal if you have," she insisted. "I had it a little bit after my second. Got back to therapy real quick. And started accepting more of the help that everyone around me was offering," she added, giving me a raised brow look.
She was right.
As soon as Kade came into the world, everyone in the Mallick and Rivers clan had been offering me all kinds of help from food cooking to grocery shopping to house cleaning to actual baby care.
It had been my pride that made me brush it off.
Well, my pride and my fear that accepting help somehow made me less of a mom.
"It's not normal to do this alone," Dusty went on, pushing Kade up against her shoulder, rubbing a palm up his spine, his little legs bunching up as she worked a pesky gas bubble up. "Up until very recently in history, taking care of babies was a tribe thing or, at the very least, a multi-generational thing. Everyone helped out. That was what was considered normal. Literally no one is going to judge you for accepting help when you need it. Even if that means help every single day until you are feeling better. You know you have it."
I did.
I had more help than I could have accepted even if I decided to take to the bed for a week.
My mom and Helen alone were constantly dropping by, doing instead of asking, seeming to know how things were for me, how I was struggling to say I couldn't do it all.
"I am going to keep a standing drop-in," she told me. "Nope. I won't hear it," she said when I started to object. "I would just drop in unannounced, but I know that won't be good for you. So just so you know, I will be coming at ten a.m. Every Tuesday and Thursday for a couple of hours. You can take that time to shower, to go to therapy, to just catch up on sleep, or reading. That is your time. Me and Kade will be just fine. And I can all but guarantee that once the others get wind of this, they will all pick a day too. And you are going to let them come to help. Hell, you won't be able to pry Lea away from this one," she said, taking a sniff of Kade's head. "She misses the babies. We all do. This way, you give us that baby fix, and you get some help. It is a win/win."
