So, when you asked for a Post-Chibs'-birth "little moment" I am preeeetty sure you had something different in mind, love… but I couldn't help myself with the realism, lol. (Plus, no one in the world can tell me that Crybaby Usagi would suffer the pains of childbirth gracefully. Fight me on this, I dare you to, lol.)Anyway,
thank you so much for your help, love, and I hope you still enjoy your birthday fic 3

Also, for the sake of keeping with the realistic take on the topic (because seriously we do need some realism here, I think. At least I do), let's just place this little moment in 90s anime canon – or any mix that involves no healing powers for Mamoru.

So, here you go, guys, number three in my darling beta's birthday fic adventure!

Sleepless

A Short Story in the "Little Moments" Series

The type of one-of-a-kind, unrivaled bliss you will ever know, they said. A kind of love and happiness so pure it will make you weep in gratitude, they sad.

Well, the weeping they got right.

Usagi dissolved into frustrated, broken sobs when a sharp, high-pitched wail once again rang through the night.

Who did this? Whose idea was this? This was torture. Raw, undiluted terror.

No sleep ever. Constant bleeding. Sewed back together in places she had no idea before that one could rip apart in the first place, and that now made going to the bathroom feel like she was giving birth all over again, and routinely causing her to scream louder than that infant daughter of hers currently terrorizing the entire apartment building.

The way she could not sit without that bloody donut cushion, because why would anyone tell you beforehand that by pushing out a child all the way through your intestines, you would also push out some other parts of your body, resulting in lady parts that looked like a war zone and hemorrhoids that made you not ever want to sit again.

The way she cried, and cried, and cried, and couldn't stop because these hormones were making her brain go through a blender. And Usagi knew of crying. She was no stranger to her very vocal emotions, to sudden bursts of crazy waterfalls… but THIS? This was hell. This was wrong. This was worse. How could THIS be what everybody had praised so much? And all throughout there was no sleep, because that little person in the crib that kinda resembled Chibi-Usa (if she squinted real hard and imagined infant blue eyes a different color) needed her so constantly.

She was not made for this. She wanted to take it back. Who in all the bloody universe would allow her, Tsukino Usagi, unreliable, cry-baby Tsukino Usagi, to raise a child. At 22, no less? Who in their right mind would be happy to be with child at 22?

She had the strongest urge to crawl, bleeding and all, onto the Oedo Line, and only stop once she was all the way out at the doorstep that would bring her begging to Setsuna. So she could at the very least steal a time-key of her own to give herself a good shake, ten months ago, when she was weeping in joy at a pink strip in a piece of plastic.

She'd been so very happy, when she'd found out Chibi-Usa was on the way.

Usagi curled into the pillow, muffling tired sobs even when she painfully lifted her bum from the bed. She felt Mamoru's concerned hand on her back, heard him mumble, but shook her head, brushing him off without even looking, when she got up – tears freely flowing and shoulders shaking with sobs that she was too tired to even try to make sound like they came from a human – and walked over to her daughter's crib, lifting that perfect, yet noisy bundle to her chest, before attempting to lower herself onto her bloody donut-shaped hell-souvenir.

She'd lost a tooth. She'd lost her figure. Puberty had nothing on the state of her skin and the gross cyst-like acne that covered what felt to her like every patch of it. Behind her ears. On her back, her chest, even her bum. Making her look as if she'd repeatedly sat on a bee's nest. She'd grown little spidery, fire-red scars like the branches of trees all across her tummy, and lighter, smaller versions of it on her upper arms and thighs, and even beneath her breasts. Not to mention those weird little skin tags that started appearing in various spots all over her, when this weird human body in its third trimester of pregnancy started growing random bits of skin - because whyever not. The way she hadn't been able to TASTE FUCKING ANY FOOD for weeks in her last trimester, because her sinuses – after months of giving her nose superpowers that made everything smell atrocious - had swelled up for no reason whatsoever except that pregnant bodies did crazy shit sometimes and you weren't allowed to take anything to treat it, so the benefit of being allowed to gobble up all the weird and delicious foods no questions asked – the ONE thing she'd been looking forward to – didn't give her anything even though she was Hungry All The Time because everything she ate tasted like weirdly textured cardboard. And anyway, everything had been gross. What was this living hell where food suddenly made her nauseous? Gross. All of it. Except all the things she hadn't been allowed to eat (and ice cream).

And that had been a tidbit nobody had ever mentioned to her in the first place. She'd imagined pregnancy as this magic place where no one could ever nag her about shoveling All The Food down her throat. And instead there had been all these strict regulations (and Mamoru was strict about strict regulations). No unprocessed milk products. No burgers. Lots of meats off the menu. No raw fish – in a country that had perfected raw fish as their culinary pillars of their cuisine – was not exactly something that helped her navigating Japanese food, and left her with severe food envy for 9 months.

And forgetting the pain? My ass. Dying had been less painful, no kidding.

And then there'd been that tiny little fact that due to Chibi-Usa apparently trying out nightly Senshi training sessions on her bladder, it had been weeks even prior to the horribly scarring and traumatizing act of birthing her that Usagi had slept a night through.

So….

Eating and Sleeping! The two things Usagi excelled at, the two things that made life so blissfully AMAZING… robbed of them. Completely.

And it hadn't even stopped after she'd given birth. It had only gotten worse. Most food regulations were still in place. She teared up when she even thought of sleeping a night through. And eating… Mako-chan had the habit of bringing over home-cooked food. The 21 days they had been out of the hospital, Mako-chan had been there every day to stock their fridge with food, turning on the oven as she left. And not just any food. Yesterday she had brought her soufflé with homemade whipped vanilla cream. The kind you crack open like a crème brûlée and it collapses like a custard-filled, warm cream cake, until you put the cream inside and you get rewarded with heaven on your tongue…

Just that even Makoto's divine, masterful, heavenly confections, once reheated – because of course you don't get to eat food anymore when it's warm with an infant in the house – only tasted like plain sponge cake any more, and Usagi had started crying louder than her newborn over the loss.

The red digits blinked on Mamoru's alarm. 3:19 am. In about three hours the alarm would go off again, and Mamoru would have to get to up for an 18 hour shift at his training hospital, leaving her alone to deal with all this she'd claimed she'd wanted and now felt so absolutely inadequate to deal with.

Chibi-Usa's mewling got louder even when Usagi practically dangled her boob in her little face.

She felt Mamoru's eyes on her. Concerned and sympathetic.

Not helpful. So, she didn't look up to catch his eyes, and her own sobs got a little messier, when, out of the corner of her eye, she saw him get up and leave the room.

She breathed in through her nose, and looked down through blurry tears on the softest, perfect tufts of very light pink hair that she knew from experience would turn darker one day.

That tiny little nose was all wrinkled up, and her little face was currently the color her eyes would turn to be in a few weeks time. Mouth wide open and screaming.

Usagi rocked and rocked, tried her to catch a nipple, grunting.

They'd changed the bloody diaper a half an hour ago. That couldn't be it.

And so she almost jumped through her own tears, when Chibi-Usa was lifted out of her arms, and onto Mamoru's shoulder.

Usagi blinked. He'd put the pink, cotton burp cloth against his neck and chest, and strapped on the little front carrier sling they'd bought only last week, and strapped her inside, rocking all the while.

He looked as tired and frustrated as she did. His hair was sticking up, messy and slightly sticky from sleep. The bags under his eyes were shining lightly purple, and his movements, usually so graceful, were slow and clumsy.

But when his eyes once again met Usagi's, they were as warm as ever, and it made swallowing feel painful, as all her emotions suddenly decided to collect in her throat.

Chibi-Usa got even louder still, but gurgled little sobs even as she clawed her pudgy, little perfect fingers into Mamoru's night-shirt, when he bent down to kiss Usagi's forehead, with tears still streaming down her face just like her daughter, just silent now.

The kiss was soft, and his lips lingered softly against her skin, when he mumbled into it.

"Please," he whispered. "Go back to sleep," he repeated what he'd said to her when she'd first gotten up. "I've got her."

She nodded, hiccupping. And as Mamoru started pacing the apartment, singing hoarse lullabies and rocking up and down for what Usagi knew would be a while, Usagi crawled her way back into bed, and fell asleep the second her head hit the pillow.

At least she wasn't going through this alone.

He got her.

So, sleep deprivation is a form of torture, just saying. And I mean… we're talking USAGI here, let's be honest. So yeah, this kinda sums up how I imagine those first few days of motherhood going for Usagi – and the three of them.

Anyway, those are the ones I've had lined up so far. There are two prompts of UglyGreenJacket's still to go, but not written yet. However, I'm going to Japan for three weeks in less than 24 hours, so I'll be going on hiatus for about a month.

(Though if you wanted to check in on that trip, go head over to my tumblr under the same name. I'll be staying in Azabu-Juban, so I'm gonna try to post a photo or two or fifty of my trip while I'm away ;) !

So, anyway, please let me know what you thought of this very none-so-fluffy short story, and I will hopefully see you again after my trip!^^