disclaimed
Here's what fatherhood has taught Jake Peralta.
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(Don't worry. It's a short list.)
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1. No matter what you think, it's not safe to let babies sit on the edge of the bed. (Even if there's carpeting and your daughter doesn't have any bruises or noticeable brain damage. Never mention these incidents to her mother. Or your mother, for that matter. Ever.)
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It was one time, okay.
Jake puts Cora on the bed, a clear six inches away from the edge, because he's not an idiot, okay, and goes to go grab the diaper bag from the living room. And it isn't even that far of a drop, okay, it really isn't. A foot, maybe, because they haven't set up the new bed frame yet, and there's carpeting—all of this reasoning is mostly so he stops feeling like self-immolating.
And Cora doesn't even cry that much, just a little bit of wailing when she hit the ground. But, jesus, his heart has never been in his throat so fast.
No, wrong.
His heart's on the ground, wailing. Jake dives for his daughter, holding her close to his chest, as if proximity would make her feel better. He's pretty sure that she's fine. Like, there's no bumps or dents on her head and her eyes aren't going cross-eyed, which are the main symptoms he needs to keep track of, according to WebMD.
(That doesn't mean he's going to ever tell Amy about this. He's pretty sure she would kill him.)
(So would his mother, for that matter.)
(He knows this for a fact; one time he thought it would be fun to pose Cora with a glass of scotch and a cigar in her mouth. It was hilarious. His mother and Amy were less amused. He tries not to imagine what their response to dropping the baby would be.)
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2. Diapers are radioactive, no matter what your girlfriend says.
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He first changes a diaper when Cora is two days old. It is her first day home, and Amy's taking a bath, and Jake takes it upon himself to change his daughter's diaper when he notices the smell.
He saw how the nurses did it at the hospital, saw Amy do it to prove she still could. She told him it was muscle memory—her brothers all have kids, and she used to get roped in to babysit when she was younger. She told this all to him during one of their we're-gonna-mess-this-up conversations.
They had quite a few of those, during the two days that Amy was in the hospital.
A lot.
Point is, he's sure it can't be that hard. Put the baby on the table, open diaper—
sweet mother of God, help, Mary Joseph and Jesus. I have stared into the abyss and the abyss stared back.
Jake has seen dead bodies, guts, gore, blood beyond belief, and it does not, in any way, measure up to the warzone he is witnessing. His kid is the size of a stuffed animal, and she could produce that?
When Amy surfaces from the bathroom, she finds her daughter napping, and her boyfriend staring at the ceiling with a lost look on his face.
She shrugs it off.
(It does get easier. Jake can manage to change diapers without almost vomiting, now.)
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3. Girls can still pee on you. Do not believe that this is a fluke, the first time. Or the second time.
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Amy tries to warn him. But, like, Christ, no, that's not possible. Girls cannot pee on you like a boy can, for a number of reasons.
He's so wrong.
So, so wrong.
(He's started wearing those plastic aprons from soup kitchens, because Cora seems to make it a game of how many times she can ruin his clothes. The final tally is twelve times.)
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4. Those ridiculous flower headbands are actually really cute. Don't knock 'em 'til you've tried 'em.
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His mom buys some for them, because Jake usually tries to keep from going into the baby section of any store, simply because he'll feel compelled to buy it all, and Amy generally just gets things that are easy to clean and easy to hide stains on.
Flowered headbands have had yet to find their way into the Santiago-Peralta home. And when they do, Jake scoffs.
Amy ignores him and puts one on their daughter—"It's polite, Jake."—and he has to admit that Cora makes it kind of adorable. He knows he's lost the battle when one day he's dressing her for the park and finds himself reaching for the accessory drawer.
(It wasn't even really a battle.)
(Those things are damn cute.)
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5. Your girlfriend is the strongest, most patient person in the world. She carried forty extra pounds for nine months. You can and will hold all of her bags for the rest of eternity, no matter where you are.
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There was no coercing or convincing required.
Jake's sort of makes it his personal mission in life to actively make Amy's life easier, and therefore makes it a point to take any and all bags she may or may not be holding and carry them for her. It's not that he doesn't have faith in her strength, it's just that he wants to help.
Amy finds it annoying sometimes, and sweet others, but when she sees the earnestness in his eyes, she never complains.
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Here's what motherhood has taught Amy Santiago.
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(You can worry. It's a slightly longer list.)
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1. You are not a bad mother because you once clipped your daughter's nails a bit too close and got a little skin and accidentally made her bleed. No matter what your primal guilt may say.
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It happens once and Amy wants to set herself on fire. Cora doesn't even cry—she sort of whimpers just as a bit of blood wells up, and Amy has this terrible, tight feeling in her chest, and she kind of wants to cry—scratch that; she really wants to cry.
When Cora's down for her nap, fingers no longer bleeding, Amy sort of freaks out.
Jake had been in at the bullpen, putting in hours to finish paperwork, and when he comes home, Amy's in a ball in the middle of their bed, shaking because holy shit, I'm going to fuck this up, I'm going to fuck this up so bad.
(She cries for about an hour and feels ridiculously better after. Cora grins when she goes in to get her up for a feeding, and Amy thinks that maybe that afternoon was not the end of their blossoming mother-daughter bond.)
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2. Babies are resilient. You have not ruined your child by letting her hit her head on the edge of the coffee table. Honestly. She's fine.
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Jesus.
Amy had thought, when pregnant, that it would be Jake letting their kid wander into dangerous situations. He wanted to name their baby Starlord, for god's sake. She thought she would be the responsible parent, the one that would practically wrap their baby in bubble wrap.
But she went into the kitchen for a second—one second!—and when she walked away, she was sure that Cora was fine, just crawling around on the living room carpet, and next thing you know, her baby is wailing and red faced, with a red spot forming on her forehead, and Amy, in some small, rational part of herself, wonders how fast that kid must have been crawling to do that damage.
Amy scoops her daughter up, rocking her and shushing, soothing as best she can as she tries to tamp down the rush of guilt. The pediatrician tells her that Cora should be fine, that she should look for dilated pupils and unfocused eyes, but that it's probably nothing.
"And Amy?"
"Yeah?"
"Don't worry about it. Babies are resilient."
(Jake does not let her live it down. "So, now we're even—she rolled off the bed on my watch, and slammed into the table on yours!" "She did what?")
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3. She's fine. She's fine. She's perfect.
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Cora once kept them up for three nights straight. She's only a couple of months old, young enough that when she cries she doesn't produce tears, and Amy thinks they have to be doing something wrong.
Cora's napping a few hours in the daytime, but outside of that, no one in that apartment is sleeping. Ever.
And honestly?
Amy thinks she's going crazy.
She throws a pair of safety scissors at Jake when he tries to joke about their appearance, lack of sleep making his voice less joking, more taunting. And then one day—it stops. Cora falls asleep at ten thirty three on a Wednesday night, and stays asleep.
Amy actually cries. She's pretty sure Jake does too.
(Her daughter has never been more perfect than in that moment, asleep on the couch, in between parents with wild eyes and unhinged grins.)
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4. Your mother is right about a lot of things, and wrong about a lot of things. For instance—your daughter does not have colic. And the week you spend in a complete panic over it goes to show you should take your mother's helpful hints with a grain of salt.
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Pro tip: any time Amy's mother starts a sentence with, "Well, it could be…" people need to run. Fast and hard. Preferably in the opposite direction. Because that sentence leads to sleepless nights spent feeling sick over the off chance that her daughter might have some rare disease. Or worse—colic.
Jake tries to balance out her crazy by being the rational one, a sudden switch in roles that makes Amy very unsteady, but it's sweet as he tries to talk her down from insisting, no, no, our daughter has colic.
(Cora does not have colic, by the way, but Jake is kind enough to bite back the I told you so.)
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5. Your boyfriend will inevitably use the baby's tummy time as coffee table time. When you come home to find your daughter asleep on her father's chest, with pretzels laid out on her back as he watches TV, try not to freak out. It's not a big deal.
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It's their first major fight, since Cora was born.
Amy comes home after a long day of errands and grocery shopping and family visiting, and Jake is watching trashy reality shows, and Cora is asleep on his chest.
This would be fine.
Except Cora has Chex Mix spread out on her back, and Amy gets irrationally angry. They have a goddamn coffee table, so why the hell is their daughter being used as one?
Their argument is mostly consisting of whispers and half-thought out insults and ridiculous low blows that they will both regret later.
(They both apologize, in the end. Amy overreacted, and so did Jake. Maybe this is what adulthood is.)
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6. Honestly, half the stuff you will freak out about is not a big deal.
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Here are the examples that Jake puts in front of her.
Diaper brand (there were a lot of options, okay, and she wasn't sure whether to trust Pampers or Huggies or if they should be environmentally conscious and use cloth diapers.)
Spit up (Amy wasn't sure that it was a normal color, okay?)
Shoes (it's winter, but she also knows that Cora will be inside most of the day, but then again, does she want to risk her daughter's little toes getting frostbitten on the way to the cab? No. No she does not, thank you very much.)
Cradle cap (okay, the fact that Amy shouted, "Crap, she's molting," does not mean that she was freaking out. It just was not something she had expected.)
He doesn't even get to the fifth item on the list before Amy punches him and calls him a butthead. Cora giggles from her play mat on the floor.
("See! The baby's on my side." "She laughs at everything. I'm pretty sure that's the only sound she knows how to make.")
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7. She is your first baby. You are allowed to panic and be overprotective. Anyone that tells you otherwise is negativity that you do not need in your life.
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Amy gets told to chill out a lot. To loosen up. But loosening up is damn hard when you've worked homicide cases so gruesome, you're pretty sure your great grandkids will have nightmares.
Amy has seen the worst of the world—has seen the pedophiles and baby killers, the rapists and sadists, so forgive her for panicking a bit at the thought of bringing a child into the hot mess of a world they live in.
Jake teases her to an extent, but she sees the same fear in him, as well.
They can't keep Cora locked up in a tower; can't send her out with and armed escort at all times. One day their baby bird will leave the nest and they will have to figure out how to handle that—the fear that comes with intimate knowledge of the underbelly of the world.
But for now, Amy can dress her daughter in extra layers and keep her in sight at all times when out of the apartment, and she can one day teach Cora how to scream for help and how to best use any attacker's larger size against them. She can teach her how to bring a man to his knees without breaking a sweat.
And she can have Rosa teach her how to bring them to their knees with just one look.
(It's not much. But it's more than a lot of kids will get, defense-wise, and it helps Amy sleep at night.)
(Once, one of her brothers tries to tell her that she is overreacting. She doesn't speak to Tommy for a month.)
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8. Accept help. You can't have it all if you're juggling.
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She can be fiercely independent. She's the first out of bed when the baby cries, always, because she feels like that's what she's supposed to do. It comes to a head when Jake comes home from the precinct and finds Amy sobbing in the bathroom while Cora naps in the bedroom.
She admits, finally, to how overwhelmed she feels, how unprepared.
Jake starts sleeping with the baby monitor on his side of the bed. Gina comes over on Thursday nights and forces Amy to get some sleep while she coos over her goddaughter. Charles brings them casseroles and lasagnas and gourmet food that would never find it's way into the Santiago-Peralta household otherwise. Holt offers random pieces of advice that prove to be some of the best. Terry promises babysitting for date nights. Jake's mother teaches Amy how to correctly swaddle Cora.
(The bags under Amy's eyes disappear after a week, and she thinks that she was an idiot to think that she had to try and balance everything on her own.)
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9. It's a-okay to sleep on the floor of your daughter's room when she has a fever. It's fine that you set an alarm to wake you up every thirty minutes to check on her. Your boyfriend camps out halfway between the bedroom and the door, car keys in hand in case you have to go the hospital, and you're not the only crazy one.
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Cora is four months old and running a fever of 104. Amy sits on the floor of the nursery, hand slid through the bars of the crib to press her fingers to Cora's sweaty back. The baby whimpers in her sleep, twitching and fitful as Jake talks to the pediatrician in the doorway.
"How long should we let it go for?" There's some intense mmhmming, and Amy twists her head to see Jake looking worried, leaning against the wall as he stares at their daughter.
"Thanks, doc," he says finally, hanging up with a sigh. "If it gets up to 105, we should go to the ER," he whispers. "Until then, we're supposed to keep her cool."
So they do. Cool washcloths are cycled through to rest on Cora's forehead, and turn the AC up.
Jake leaves to get baby aspirin, and when he comes back, Amy is asleep on the floor, arm bent at an uncomfortable angle to keep contact with her baby. Her phone is gripped in her other hand, and after a few minutes, it goes off, and Amy jerks awake, immediately staring at their daughter, inspecting her for damage, eyes focused on her chest to ensure that she's still breathing.
Yawning, Jake drags in a pillow for her, and a blanket, before falling asleep in the hallway. His car keys stay in his hand until morning, when the fever breaks. This is a story they will love to tell Cora when she's being a brat.
(One time, when she's sixteen, she will tell her mother that she hates her. Jake will play peacemaker, and tell Cora this story again. And he will tell her about the time that she had the flu and Amy slept on the couch with her, so that Cora would be closer to the bathroom when she had to puke and so that Amy would be closer to Cora, to hold her hair and rub her back. And he will tell her about the chickenpox time, and that time Cora broke her arm and Amy refused to let anyone get between them.)
(Cora finds her mother in her parents' bedroom and says nothing as she crawl into the bed next to her and tucks herself against her.)
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10. Your body carried another human being for nine months. Give it the rest it deserves.
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Amy naps when the baby naps. And when the baby doesn't nap. Really, she naps whenever it is safe for her to do so. Jake makes fun of her a little for it, calling her an old lady and reminding her to wear her Life Alert pendant, but Amy knows he exploits sleeping opportunities to their full extent as well.
(One time, Jake's mom came over to visit, and found Jake and Amy passed out on the couch, while Cora rolled around her play pen. The don't ever quite live that one down.)
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i can't just leave a good thing alone can i?