I laugh in spite of myself. “Doctor Sourdough Daddy reporting for duty.”
Another contraction comes, more intense than the ones before. I bear down as hard as I can as the pressure intensifies.
“That’s it. The head is almost out.” His voice is a dull hum beneath the rapid beating of my heart. “Push push push. I have a shoulder. Keep going, baby. You’re doing so good.”
I take a deep breath and bear down a second time.
The contraction dwindles, and everything around me stills. I glance between my legs at a teary-eyed Griffin holding a grey-ish purple blob in his massive palms.
It’s quiet.Tooquiet. Why isn’t the baby crying?
Panic overwhelms me.
“Please, please, please,” I whisper. “You have to be okay.”
Griffin wraps the baby in a warm towel and starts to rub their back. “Come on, baby. Make some noise for daddy.”
My heart splinters with each passing second as time slows to a crawl.
A high-pitched cry fills the silence, and tears roll down my cheeks in wave after wave of overwhelming relief.
He places the baby on my bare chest, still connected by the umbilical cord, wiping away the blood and fluid. “It’s a girl,” he chokes out. “We have a baby girl.”
“A girl?” I glance down through misty eyes, taking in the little bundle with the cutest button nose and a head full of hair. “Hey, Jessie. I’m your mommy.”
Griffin slides onto the bed at my side and cradles us both in his arms, pressing kisses to my head and face. “You did so good, Angel. I’m so goddamn proud of you.”
“Wedid good. I couldn’t have done this without you.” I choke on the words, overcome with a mix of emotions, not the least of which is love for the little girl on my chest, and the man who helped bring her into the world.
Sometime later, Evelyn arrives with paramedics in tow.
“Hi, Mama,” Griffin says. “Come meet your granddaughter.”
Evelyn’s eyes turn glassy as she stares down at the bundle in my arms. “Another girl? Goodness, she’s beautiful. Look at all that hair. She looks just like you, Angelina.”
My heart swells with pride. I always thought newborn babies just looked like indistinct blobs of flesh—sometimes aliens if I’m being honest—but looking down at my baby girl, I see it. My hair, my nose. Her eyes blink open, and I recognize those, too. Not the color—they’re that hazy blue-grey most newborns have—but the almond shape I inherited from my mom is there.
One of the paramedics approaches Griffin. “Ok, Dad, would you like to help us cut the cord?”
Griffin looks to me for approval, and I nod without hesitation as emotion clogs my throat. I became this little girl’s mom the day I found out I was pregnant. Though Griffin claimed us both long ago, there was never a single tangible moment when she truly became his. Until now. This was a long time coming—an amalgamation of all the little ways he cared for us over these past nine months. It feels earned in such a profound way.
Once the umbilical cord is cut, they load us into the ambulance, and Griffin stays by our side all the way to the hospital. Everything happens so quickly, it’s like no time at all has passed when we arrive in a room that’s already prepared for us.
There, they deliver the placenta and assess Jessie’s vitals. When she’s given the all clear, they take her footprints andstamp them on the tops of Griffin’s hands before placing her on my chest. She latches onto my breast for the first time, and the world around us seems to disappear.
There are only the three of us and a deep sense of rightness I’ve never felt before.
Chapter 32
National Tater Tot Day
? To The Men Who Love Women After Heartbreak - Kelsea Ballerini
Griffin
I sway backand forth with Jessie in my arms, skin to skin, her tiny fist wrapped partially around my thumb as Angie fills out a pile of paperwork from her hospital bed.
“Does this look right? I’m not sure if I got all of the details correct.”
