“Don’t pay her any mind,” the dragonborn nurse who entered the room shortly thereafter had huffed. “They come through every once in a while, and we have to let them.”
“I can appreciate the importance of the job,” Lurielle had gritted out. “Like, I get it! This is new and scary for all of us and help is help! But does she even realize that different species have different needs?” Lurielle had fumed as the nurse clicked her tongue.
There were certain proteins that existed in the breastmilk of an orc, proteins her son needed, proteins her body didn’t produce.
“Which isn’t a problem at all,” her doctor had assured her. “There are formulations for every species on the shelves at the Food Gryphon. Don’t get yourself worked up over nothing, Lurielle. I can already see that look in your eye. Combination feeding is fine. Splitting between nursing and formula feedingisn’t going to hurt him a bit. Fed is best, end of story. As long as he gains weight as he should, there’s nothing to stress over.”
She had been glad for it, once they were home. He was ravenous, always. Completely normal, everyone had told her.
“That’s just the way orcs are, suge,” his eldest sister had assured her. “Vardok save you when he’s bigger. He’ll eat you out of house and home.”
She was pumping as much as she could, racing to get ahead of the point when her body simply wouldn't be able to keep up with the demands of a growing orc, and knowing that she had to supplement with orc formula from the start made it easier to contemplate that eventual day.
Khash prepared the bottles and handled every feeding from the moment he came home in the late afternoons until nearly the middle of the night, squeezing in the early morning before he left for work.
“Boy, you’re like a tick on a teddy bear. That’s good. A fine appetite is the mark of a warrior.”
She would listen from the kitchen or from her chair on the other side of the room, not wanting to impose when she had him all to herself all day.
“But don’t go thinking you don’t need to be smart. Brains are just as important as brawn. Your great-grandaddy used to say the strongest fist was no match for whoever was smart enough to have an ax in the hand. You look at some of those fools I grew up with. All they cared about was Grumsh’vargh and goin’ out every night. What do they have to show for it? Not a pot to piss in or a window to throw it from. We’re going to make sure you go to the best school they have here.”
“It’s the public elementary school,” she supplied. “And it’s excellent.”
He looked up, scowling. “Bluebell, he needs to have aspirations. There’s nothing wrong with reaching higher than your raisin’.”
“Well, you can aspire your way to a clean diaper when he’s done, because I can smell him from here. I’m taking a bath.”
“That’s an excellent idea. He’s not the only thing I’m smellin’.”
She slept in the afternoons when the baby did, pushed him around in the little buggy they’d been given by one of Khash’s sisters, letting him travel with her from room to room throughout the day, going outside to enjoy the nice weather for lunch every afternoon.
Everyone told her this would behard.
She had been terrified of failing, certain she would get everything wrong. She had listened to horror stories from coworkers for years about how exhausted they were, how much those early days had run them ragged, how they were sleep-deprived and exhaustedallthe time.
Lurielle wasn’t sure whether she should still be waiting for the other shoe to drop or not, but so far, motherhood had been easy. So easy that she had begun to wonder if everyone was right.
Is it better for him if you stay home?
No, she would remind herself quickly. She loved him, loved this, but she missed adult conversations with someone other than Khash. She missed talking about topics that weren’t baby-related. Shelovedbeing his mother. He was her favorite thing in the whole world and her most favorite topic of conversation at the moment, but she knew that was because he washers. She wasn’t using her brain, not in the way she was used to, and she couldn’t shake the pervasive fear that if she didn’t get back to doing so in the foreseeable future, she would forget how.
The guilt over the swiftness of that ‘no’was fast to follow, and she would spend the rest of the hour feeling like the worstmother in the world for even contemplating leaving him at daycare.
But then you won’t be happy. How can you be a good mother if you’re not happy? You’ll raise him in an unhappy home, because you let other people make you feel guilty about something that’s not any of their business. How is that the right thing to do?
There were no easy choices, she had come to understand.
None of those suppositions needed to exist when she was in the rocking chair, though.
When he finished eating, he went limp with satisfaction, milk-drunk and heavy against her. Lurielle rocked on, relishing the solid weight of him in her arms, turning him carefully until his head was at her shoulder. He made a small, indignant sound, vocalizing the betrayal before resettling immediately. She patted his back gently, toes pushing off the floor in a gentle cadence, rewarded with the sound of his tiny belch — and the immediate smell of his spit up, a reminder that she had forgotten to pull the burp towel from the bassinet.Oh well. It’s not like he hasn’t spit up on every single thing you’ve worn every single day for a month.
As she rocked, she could hear the lapping of one of the dogs from their fountain in the kitchen. Ordo, she could tell from the sloppy wet splash of it. Further beyond, an excited burst of barking, Junie letting herself out the dog door, ferociously announcing the presence of someone at the back of the house.
Junie was uncontrollable and would never change, but Kael had been listening to her bark since the day he came home, and she didn’t wake him now.
“Pssssst. Hey! I don’t want to wake the kid if he’s sleeping.”
Her mouth split into a wide grin and her face brightened, realizing the stage whisper was coming from the window. “He just went down. I’ll be right out!”
