It was stupid really- but whenever she pictured having children with Delphine she always pictured a little girl. A little girl with Delphine's eyes and pretty curls. Seeing her beloved in her child's face, a Delphine in perfect miniature. She'd seen pictures of Delphine as a little girl. Laughing happily, looking so beautiful. How could she not want that? Luckily they'd only had to try twice before Delphine conceived. Why had she only fantasized about a daughter? When she was shocked at the sonogram her wife had reminded her that it was equally likely that their child would be a boy. It had taken the last few weeks for it to sink in.
She couldn't imagine things any other way now, cuddled into Delphine's side, admiring her bare 30 week belly, the webs of blue veins that run across it. And every once in a while movement from within. Delphine seemed completely delighted and enthralled with her pregnancy. It was actually kinda sexy, keeping their hands off each other was more of a problem now than in the first two years of their marriage.
"Léo." Delphine said decisively running her fingers down the swell of her belly. "Definitely Léo."
"Leo, huh?" She smiled. They hadn't talked boy's names until now. Girls names had given them enough trouble. Naming a child who would be raised speaking at least two languages was not easy. It became more complicated when her dad had reminded her that she should speak german to her son, as he had to her when she was little.
"It's perfect." Delphine states, "Works in French and English. Pronounceable by my french relatives and your german ones."
"Leo. Leo Niehaus-Cormier." She repeats, entwining her own fingers with Delphine's, ghosting over her belly, over their rapidly growing child within. "I like it."
OBOBOB
It was 2 in the morning, she'd surprisingly stirred awake before Delphine. Delphine who's biology was so attuned to their newborn that she woke at every whimper to take him to her breast. Or sometimes in a panic to find their son - who was usually just waking close by. It was actually a fairly nice arrangement, she wasn't jealous like she thought she'd be. And she did get more sleep, being a non-gestational parent had it's small advantages. And her son's immune system would be kickstarted properly - which was important to both of them.
She couldn't stop looking at him. Looking at their son, who was just waking up. Watching his little hands curl in the bassinet beside their bed. Her hands react before anything else, she reaches out for him. She glances at Delphine, asleep on her side, her nightgown hanging open from his last feeding.
She finds herself whispering, "Hey Leo. Let's let Maman sleep a little bit longer? Ok?" Bargaining with her baby probably won't work. She can feel him beginning to root around for a non-existent nipple around the vicinity of her collar bone.
She looks at his dark blue eyes, knowing somewhere in the back of her mind that they'll go brown, and then a beautiful hazel - just like Delphine's. All she sees when she looks at him is Delphine. She sees her in the curve of his tiny lips, his perfect little nose. The donor's genes seem impossibly recessive, at least to Cosima. How could she have wanted this to go any other way? Her son continues his rooting, beginning to make noise.
"Okay little dude." She sighs, an idea forming in her mind. She could let him suckle, buy Delphine a few extra minutes of precious sleep. If he begins to whimper again she knows that he'll wake her. She adjusts her own nightie, and brings her squirming son to her breast. She latches him like she's watched Delphine do so many times in the last two weeks since their son was born.
It's a strange sensation, Leo for his part takes a couple of minutes of contented suckling before he realizes that there is no milk there for him and unlatches with a loud whimper. Well that was unsuccessful. Shit.
She turns to find Delphine, awake, a sleepy smile playing on her face, she reaches for their son and brings him close to feed him on her side.
"Thank you." She yawns, eyes on their little one.
"It didn't really work." She shrugs, admiring her wife and baby. She curls herself in behind Delphine, kissing her cheek affectionately.
"You were trying to let me sleep. It's very sweet." Delphine turns her head to address their baby, "Mon petit bonhomme!' She croons at him. How anyone could manage to be that adorable at 2 am was beyond her. And she was stuck with two of them. She didn't have to stay awake, but sleep was overrated compared to this.
"More like your very hungry caterpillar." Cosima jokes, it's true what they've read, newborns eat all the time. Even her mother had warned her, that their baby would spend much of his first weeks of life literally attached to Delphine. Though, it was all kind of beautiful. A kind of odd perfection in the symbiosis that was being created between the two of them, how Delphine would often wake right before Leo needed to be fed, how he'd nestle closer to her in sleep.
"Brat." She turns her face to stick her tongue out at Cosima before returning her attention to their newborn, "Je sais que tu avais très faim. Pauvre Léo."
"Poor Leo? Poor me - that's some impressive suction..." She jokes.
Delphine furrows her brow saying nothing, it must be far too early for those kind of jokes. Probably unwise to joke about that at all to the mother who will actually be breastfeeding their child. And hormones.. yeah probably a bad time.
"I just think it's cute - calling Leo a very hungry caterpillar." She's getting ideas, Halloween costume perhaps? She smiles at the mental image.
"Mmm... Yes it's cute." Delphine hums sleepily. She's probably going to drift off to sleep again. She loves watching them together. She loves laying around with her baby on her chest and Delphine cuddled into her side. She loves wearing him in a wrap around the house, letting him sleep on her, soothed by her heartbeat.
She leans in to kiss her wife's forehead, "Go back to sleep beautiful."
Her family was beautiful and hers. So absolutely hers. She may be an evolutionary developmental biologist but right now she doesn't give a damn about genetics.
