Total pages in book: 121
Estimated words: 113130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 113130 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 566(@200wpm)___ 453(@250wpm)___ 377(@300wpm)
Well, my son said “not so fast.” The minute I got undressed and put on that beautiful, sexy blue hospital gown, got into bed—breathing in and out like they said to do—got hooked up to the monitor so they could monitor the laboring, my son said, “hold my bottle of milk” and it was like a knife was inserted into my vagina and straight to my stomach. The burning, my God the burning, felt like I was being roasted by a lit flame. I had never in my life felt that much pain. Jaxon was, to say the very least, beside himself and ready to strangle anyone who wouldn’t listen to my pleas for drugs. Any drugs. The problem was, the anesthesiologist was in the operating room with a heart patient and couldn’t leave and the backup one was stuck in traffic. The sounds that came out of me were something I’ve never heard before. They were feral from what my parents said, they could hear me in the waiting room, which just made my father even more stressed. He was one step away from getting a helicopter to find the anesthesiologist stuck in traffic and have him flown in for me.
The contractions were on top of each other, giving me barely a chance to get ready for the next one. Apparently, our son had gotten the notice it was time to vacate. He was ready to get the fuck out of my uterus and he was waiting for no one, and I mean no one. The doctor barely made it in the door before the nurse was telling me the baby was crowning, something I had no fucking idea what that meant. But after forty-seven minutes, I felt that I had just done a triathlon, and the doctor looked at me and said, “If you don’t push him out now, we’re going to have to do an emergency C-section.”
Again, our son was ready to come when he was ready to come, and three pushes later, he was out. I can’t describe to you what it feels like to hold your child on your chest, watching him take his first breaths. You feel this overwhelming sense of love that is just so big you thought it couldn’t exist, until it does. Or so I thought. When you see the man you love take the child you made together in his arms and take off his shirt, so they can do skin-to-skin, that is when you have this sense you are going to do whatever it is in your power to make them both happy.
If anyone had brought in someone who could have married us, I would have married him there on the spot. I didn’t tell him that though because, knowing him and our parents, it would have happened.
When our parents came into the room to meet him, Evelyn and my mother went straight to the baby, with Manning trailing right behind them. But my father, my father came straight to me. Tears were in his eyes, and when he took me in his arms, letting out the biggest sigh of relief. He was the last one to hold the baby, happy to just hold my hand and watch everyone else. But the minute he held my son in his arms, he looked at me with tears in his eyes. “You did good.” It's a look and those are words that I’ll always remember.
I lean against the doorjamb. “What are you two doing?” I ask him and he looks over at me.
“I heard him fussing,” Jaxon whispers softly, “and thought I would rock him for a bit and let you sleep.”
“You are going to spoil him,” I tell him. I can see his soft smile in the room and he bends to kiss the black hair on our son’s head. Hair just like Daddy, eyes just like Daddy. He’s his father’s son, and there is no doubt about that.
“I’ve hardly held him.” He looks back up at me. “I never get him. People are always hogging him.” He rubs his big hands over his back. “If he’s not in one of our parents’ arms, he’s in your arms.”
“That’s because I have the goods.” I point to my breasts. “He’s a big boy and needs to eat a lot, apparently.”
“I don’t get any time with him if I don’t get to rock him.” I roll my eyes when he says that.
“The minute he unlatches from me, you take him away from me.” I point at him. “It’s a good thing you have summer break.”
He chuckles. “It’s almost like we planned it.” I walk to him and stand beside the rocking chair. Seeing Jagger curled into a ball on his chest, his big hand under his small bum, while his other hand comes out to rub the back of my legs. “I’m going to get another bassinet,” he says to me, “so we can have him in our room.”