Jack was at work when labor started again, and Sam didn't trust his ability to drive when he was in full panic mode. Besides, it would have taken twice as much time for him to drive from the base to their house, get her, and then drive back. She wasn't even sure if Janet was going to attempt to stop the labor when she arrived or not. She is only three weeks before her due date, which is about the best you could hope for when it comes to the birth of triplets.
So, she goes next door and gets Mrs. Swann to drive her to the base. The sweet old woman is not alarmed by the labor at all, and offers a mixture of motherly birthing advice and distracting stories in a calming voice during the drive.
Sam's water breaks about half way there, and she starts to cry half from the worry that she's going to have to deliver her own triplets in the back of an old lady's car, and half out of humiliation that she had just made a mess in the car.
"Samantha, I had three boys. I can assure you that what just happened is not the worse thing that back seat has seen. There is a good chance that one of my grandbabies was conceived back there."
"I'll help you clean it up when we get there," Sam says.
"Bah! No, you won't! You'll get right in and have your babies. You leave this too me. I don't plan on this being the last time that I clean up after your little ones."
The getting right in to have the babies proved to be more difficult than either one of them had imagined at first as well. Of course, Edna Swan had nothing by way of security clearance or even a family pass, and so they had to wait for someone to vouch them on.
It only took five minutes, which might have been a world record for the process, but to the two woman it seamed eternal. Then there was another security checkpoint just a bit farther on, but Jack had already called ahead to this one, apparently seconds after getting off the phone with the first one.
Jack met them in the parking lot. He gave the older woman a quick hug, before pulling his wife out of the car.
"My water broke, Jack, they're coming today."
"And we're ready for them Sam," he assures her. His voice sounds more confident than she's felt since her memory had returned, and with it the knowledge of just how difficult it was going to be to raise three children.
-0-
"Baby is in fetal distress," a doctor declares. Sam doesn't even know the name of the doctor, she thought that she was going to know the names of everyone who was involved in her surgery.
"Which one?" she demands.
"We've got to get her out of there," a nurse declares completely ignoring her.
"Janet!" Sam calls not even being able to see her friend in the jumble of people around her.
"It's okay Sam, they're just going in for the smaller girl. Her heartbeat is a little worrying. It's a problem if we don't get her out of there fast, and that's why we're going in after her."
"Jack?" Sam says wondering why her husband is out of sight on the other side of the cloth looking at her stomach.
"Sam, I'm looking at your organs right now!" Jack declares.
"Well stop it, and get over here, and comfort me," she says.
"Sam, I really want to see the babies right when they come out, can I please stay over here?" he begs.
"Damn it, I'm about to be completely over run with puppy dog eyes, what am I going to do?" she whines.
"Baby number one," the mystery doctor declares, and a pale blood covered mass rises above the blanket shielding Sam from the surgery taking place on her.
"Cry baby," Sam pleads.
Jack looks on frozen as a doctor and two nurses disappear with the still silent baby over to a table.
"Go with Mia, Jack," Sam commands.
"I don't want to get in their way," he says looking torn between obeying his wife and following her own instincts. She gives him a little node of assent so that he won't feel guilty no matter how it turns out.
"Baby number two," Janet says.
This one lets out a cry right away, and Janet puts him in his father's arms. Jack starts crying, and bouncing the baby.
Then Mia starts to cry, the whole room seams to breath collective breath of relief. One of the nurses that had been swarming around the infant comes to take Eli form his father's arms.
"Baby number three," Janet says holding up Bri.
"Are they all okay?" Sam asks.
"Right now, everything looks fine. Give us some time to get you more details," Janet says offering her friend a smile as she gives the last child to a nurse, and returns her attention back to the surgery she is doing on her best friend.
-0-
Sam didn't even remember falling asleep, but it must have been not long after the surgery. She woke up with a start yelling, "Mia!" She attempted to sit up quickly, which resulted in a shooting pain through her stomach that she couldn't understand right away.
"Take it easy Sam. You don't want to rip out those stitches that Janet worked so hard on. You know how she gets when you do that."
"At least I wouldn't have ripped them out while trying to flee the infirmary, so she would probably be a whole lot less mad at me than she gets at you."
"Fair point," he smiles.
"Jack, our kids?" she asks pressing his hand more than a little concerned that he is using all of this small talk as a way to distract her, and very unnerved by the fact that he's with her instead of with the newborns.
"They are doing fine."
"Really Jack? Because the fetal distress, and the not breathing…"
"They are being closely monitored. The two little ones are incubators. Brianna was five pounds six ounces, so she just barely made it over the cut off, but they are still keeping a close eye on them."
"It's not that I don't trust the doctors and nurses, Jack, but they are our kids, and you should be in there watching them."
"I've been in there several times, Sam, don't worry, and it's only been about an hour since their birth. I just wanted to check on you as well. You have just had surgery."
"Jack, they are babies. They should have family with them."
"They do, at least, depending on your definition of family. Daniel is absolutely obsessed with Mia. He hasn't let her out of his sight. He keeps stroking her little belly through that big glove thing they have in the incubator, because he's just convinced that it's going to make her get strong. Teal'c he's doing a great job as a bouncer to keep all those 'humans carrying multiple pathogens away from the newborn infants'."
"Who exactly is he chasing away?"
"The entire SGC, Sam, the entire SGC wants to see our kids. General Hammond has installed himself as guardian of the male child. The man was blessed with daughters and granddaughters, and I think he is trying to make up for his lack of sons by borrowing our kid."
"Yeah, he's probably going to do that quite a lot if how he was with my brother Mark when we were little, and Dad was stationed at the same base as him is anything to go by. What about Bri? Just because she's a little bigger than the rest, and she's not in an incubator doesn't means she shouldn't…"
"Cassie," Jack declares. "I was in there ten minutes ago, and none of them would even let me hold my own children."
"I'm glad they are loved," Sam says with a smile.
"Me too, and there will be plenty of time for us to hold them when the new excitement wears off."
"I want to hold them now," Sam says, "In fact, I want to try to feed them. Did any of them inherit the awful O'Neill curse of teeth?"
"You know, I didn't check, Sam," Jack says with a giggled, "But I have always suspected that my mother was exaggerating a lot when it comes to those stories. Like, I'm sure we had teeth early, but I don't think it was at birth, and half the problem was that she breastfed like forever. She was into attachment parenting before attachment parenting was cool."
"I want to see my babies," Sam says again trying to sit up farther in the bed.
"Let me go get Janet to see if they want to move you over to the kids or the kids over to you."
-0-
A few minutes later, Sam is settled in a chair next to two large incubators and one bassinet holding her tiny four-pound daughter.
"She's not eating," Sam says.
"It's not terribly surprising given her size, and how close to the birth she is. Let me try to help," Janet says kneeling beside her friend.
"Maybe we should just use a bottle. I wasn't planning on breast feeding exclusively anyway. I was worried that I wouldn't be able to produce enough milk for all of them."
"I don't think we should give up quite yet. There are a lot of things in the very first batch of milk that just isn't in formula."
Sam nods swallowing hard, "It's just, she wouldn't breath, and now she won't eat…" and starts crying.
"Sam, I promise you, that we are not losing this baby over this. Okay. I will keep nourishment in that kid no matter how I have to do it. She's a couple of hours old, give her some time," Janet says.
"Why don't you start with the chubby one?" Jack says carefully switching her daughters. They'd practiced switching the babies in their arms many times, with dolls, and right now all of Sam's drills were looking justified.
Bri easily grabs on, and starts drinking.
"Well, all that time beating up her siblings in the womb seemed to have done her some good," Jack chuckles.
"Not a great joke, honey," Sam says with venom in her voice belied by the last "honey" comment.
"Sam, we had three babies today. All of them reasonably healthy. You can stop doing all of that worrying you did the whole time you were pregnant with them. We did it. We made it."
"I'll stop worrying when they go off to college," Sam declares.
"Oh, it's funny that you think that. I mean, Cassie isn't in college yet, but I'm pretty sure I am going to worry about her a lot more when she is than when she is right where I can keep my eyes on her. Did you know she started popcorn on fire last week? I do not mean that she burnt the popcorn I mean that she literally started it on fire."
"Mom, you swore that you weren't going to tell anyone about that!" the teenager moans turning from her position facing the wall for the first time since Sam started to breastfed the babies.
"Well, the people who were seriously considering letting you take care of their babies needed to know," Janet says with a shrug.
"I can still babysit, right? I swear I won't try to make any popcorn."
"I think we will be more than happy to have you over doing child care. Solo care of three kids is too much for you, and we said that long before the ill-fated popcorn incident," Jack reminds her.
"Oh I know, but just wait until you're a couple of weeks in, and then you'll be more than happy to let me take the little monsters off of your hands," Cassie says confidently.