She held the newborn's damp weight in her hands, taking in all the little details she had missed in the hours before. It was the first time she'd had any time alone with him, without the nurses and the check-ups and the constant resident peeking in to say hello. She hadn't let her guard down, but now it was just her and him, and she couldn't avoid the fact there was a little person that now somehow existed.
She scanned him from head to toe, lightly touching his rounded cheek, feeling with the tip of her finger his quick fluttering heart beat through the blue baby grow. He formed little creases across his brow when he yawned, and stretched against her touch. The soft downy brown fluff on his head, his small fingers, all complete with perfectly round nails no bigger than a tic-tac. Impossibly small, she thought.
His eyes were brown. She'd only just noticed, and something made her feel warm and comforted at this.
Eyes like his father, they'd all said, the Sloan gene suppresses all.
And that's how she had always imagined him, brown hair and sharp blue eyes that pierced through her, a mirror image of Mark. But there he was, with unmistakably brown eyes, her eyes.
It was rare in newborns, brown eyes, and she smiled as if he had overcome his genetics just to look like her, like he wanted to show the world, hey, this is my mom.
She was still scared of hurting him, even though everybody had assured her he wouldn't break, or disintegrate in her hands.
He was just so small, only six pounds and nine ounces, and his eyes were scrunched up whilst he slept. She was sat up in the hospital bed, and he lay cradled half in arms, half resting on the hospital mattress. A drip snaked into her wrist, full of fluids to keep her hydrated after the delivery, and there was a little talkie talkie type thing on the side by her bed that she recognised as the baby monitor she and mark had invested in a few weeks before; he'd be keeping tabs on her, she was sure.
It wasn't planned, but then again nothing was ever planned with them. They'd been taking it slow; they'd been enjoying being them again, after so long, after so many complications. Only now they were just them, with a baby.
She'd cried when she found out, bawled her eyes out for days, convinced her career was over, and then she'd felt guilty, because that's not how you're supposed to feel when you discover you're pregnant and the man you love is right there with you. But she accustomed herself to motherhood slowly, she had always imagined his children, their children, she had just imagined there would be time and planning and other convenient things like that.
But chance had always liked throwing things at her, she reflected, like the shooting and George's death and the plane crash that had ripped them apart two years ago. She had lived, barley, and been in the ICU for over three weeks whilst they had sewed her up from the inside out.
She still had trouble with her legs sometimes and the uncontrollable shaking; it stopped her from standing up in surgeries for more than a few hours long. Mark was better; he only had one surgery scar where as she had six, but he still couldn't run without his heart pounding too hard in his chest.
But things had gotten better since the crash, despite the injuries. She had him, for the most part and things were simple. They had nice normal worries, like who had left the milk to spoil, or if their salary would cover the deposit on a house, how many groceries to buy and what time did the other get back from work.
At her twenty week scan, when they discovered the little person they were creating was in fact male, she had for the first time been happy to be pregnant. Not because of Mark, but because now she felt she could give him something for the first time. She loved Sofia, the four year old had become so much part of her that she often regretted she wasn't involved right from the start, but there was another part of her that hated she couldn't give Mark fatherhood for the first time, that she had to go through become a parent for the first time alone. But after the scan, she was giving Mark something he hadn't experienced before; she was giving him a boy, and there was something that made her ridiculously happy about that.
Now looking down at her son, she thinks it's stupid, she thinks she was selfish, and that whatever just happened in the last twenty four hours is so new and unique, it would never hold any less value to how Sofia came into the world.
They still haven't decided on names. She had a list when she was pregnant, a very long list, but now none of them seemed to fit, and he was too different to what she expected. She is suddenly jolted out of her thoughts by his little noises, a quite whimper that makes his expression crease again. For a moment she is on edge, but then he yawns a wide O, and settles back into her arms. He's going to cry soon, she thinks, and I'm not going to know what to do.
Mark would help her of course, he would show her just the right way to rock him or how to angle a bottle, but she didn't want his help, she wanted it to be between her and the tiny sleeping body. She took a shaky breath, and then lifted him up off the mattress, so now the only thing supporting him was her. Awkwardly, and slowly, she manoeuvred his small limbs so they cuddled into her, and his head comfortably resting in the crook of her shoulder.
Peeling back the covers with the other hand, she moved her feet so they rested on the cool lino floor. She could feel his little breathes coming out fast on her neck, and she took a deep breath with him, as she stood up in a fluid motion.
He didn't stir and she relaxed a little. Her heart was beating too fast, she was nervous, but her hands didn't start shaking, she didn't slip and he didn't fall.
Gradually, she started moving slightly, swaying from side to side as if there were music playing in the background. He would grow to appreciate good music, she decided, he would listen to Elvis and Nat King Cole and all the old Beatles tracks her dad liked. As she rocked him, she whispered to him softly, little stories that he would one day understand.
The sun had started to creep through the windows, it was morning. It cast shadows across the darkened room, sending ribbons of light across her face and up in patterns over the walls. He whimpered, squinting at the bright lights and she rubbed her fingertips on his back in small circles, instinctively.
From the doorway, he looked in at her first tentative moments with their son. He smiled.