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“My breath was the worst! But I couldn’t help it. If I tried to eat anything else I’d get sick. My boyfriend hated the smell of them, but I told him I was growing a whole person so we need the party size bag of chips,” she said, and Julie laughed.
“For me, I thought it would be ice cream or like spicy stuff, because I like spice, but right now I’m mostly all about just good old meat and potatoes. And toast. God, I love toast. Sourdough bread, lightly toasted with just a little bit of butter, enough to melt and then spread some peach preserves. My mouth is watering,” she laughed.
“We’ll get you some toast at home, I swear,” Rory said.
The technician cleared her throat, and we piped down to pay attention to the main event. She explained the internal ultrasound process to Julie whose hand tightened in mine. I bent and kissed her knuckles. Darren leaned down, seeing that she was nervous and whispered, “If it hurts, I’ll punch her for you. Swear,” and Julie looked up at him, shaking her head, barely held laughter on her face.
She winced when the technician began and watched the screen rapt for any sign of the baby. I squinted at it for a moment before turning my phone camera toward Julie. I took a burst of many shots as the tech pointed to the dot on screen that represented the peanut that would become our baby. I watched Julie’s face transfigure in the dim lighting as she searched, brow furrowed, then spotted it and gave an elated gasp, pointing at the screen to show us.
Darren kissed the top of her head, and Rory leaned around the back of the screen to get a better look. The tech turned the monitor so he could see, and after some animated pointing from Julie and explanation from Kayla, he located the spot on the screen and high fived Julie. “Way to go!” he said.
“She’s not shooting a free-throw, man,” I said to him, and Rory shrugged.
“What? She’s doing a great job.”
Kayla took measurements and gauged fluid volume and printed out a strip of still shots from the scan.
“Is it a girl?” Rory said. “Because she’s convinced it’s a girl.”
“I can’t tell you that right now. It’s way too early. You’ll come back at nineteen or twenty weeks for the gender scan,” Kayla said patiently.
Julie showed the still pictures to Darren and Rory while I snapped photos of the three of them looking by turns excited and puzzled by the pictures. Before we cleared out, Kayla offered to take a photo of the four of us together. I was really grateful because part of me felt a pang and not being in the pictures that I knew Julie would put together into a photo album for the baby sometime in the future. We crowded around Julie who sat up, trying to keep the paper sheet pulled up to disguise the fact that her gown was open in the front, and we smiled for the photos. Our first family picture as a party of five.
Kayla left us so Julie could get changed to move to the exam room. As soon as she was gone, we all started talking at once. We were ecstatic, and more than that, we were all going to be parents to this baby. It didn’t matter which of us was a biological father and which two were uncles, because we were all becoming dads. When Julie had asked solemnly if we wanted a DNA test to determine who the legal father was, we unanimously declined. We all had the same family medical history so that was a nonissue, and so was the very idea that we’d fight over who was ‘in charge’ or whose baby it was. This baby was a Beckett, as much ours as Julie’s, and we loved her and the baby regardless of whose name ended up on the birth certificate.
The other two had to rush back to work, but I had taken the rest of the day off, so I remained in the doctor’s office with Julie. I had the privilege of staying with her in the exam, holding her hand when she was nervous about what the doctor would say.
“You saw the screen and the pictures to prove it. The baby is fine. It’s very early days, but you’re going to have a strong, healthy baby. We’ll make sure your pregnancy is peaceful and happy. I’ve been reading up on it, and any kind of trauma or increased cortisol levels in the mother during gestation can affect fetal brain development. We’re going to make sure that doesn’t happen and get you plenty of toast and bad action movies to keep you content,” I promised.
The doctor came in and went over the ultrasound with us and answered any questions we had. His printouts on prenatal nutrition and exercise were old news considering all the research I’d done, but we took them with us to be polite. In the car, Julie reached across the console and leaned her head on my shoulder. God, I loved that. I loved being this close with her, this comfortable. The drive was wonderful, peaceful and intimate, just the two of us. I felt a little sorry for my brothers who had to work and were missing out on sharing the happy mood Julie was in after her appointment. The other part of me was greedy and liked having her all to myself from time to time.
