Chapter Summary: Lea finds out she is pregnant again.

AN: I'm still feeling sad after the most recent episode (it was actually difficult for me to teach my students yesterday), but writing this has been a good coping mechanism (although I do think it's important that infant and pregnancy loss should be addressed no matter how sad and upsetting it is, especially in entertainment). However, expect long delays in chapter updates this month because I'm a full-time teacher who is finishing everything for the school year.

Lea said it not long after the camping trip and the relief mission - that she wanted to have another baby. Shaun thought about it and eventually decided that he was ready as well.

It had only been three months since the early stillbirth (right around the time their doctor recommended trying again if they were planning on it), but the young couple was super eager to try and produce a child, especially when they abstained from sex for three months straight so they could work through their grief and repair their relationship.

However, Lea's confession that she wanted a baby wasn't the only bomb that was dropped after the relief mission, but also Shaun proposing marriage to Lea, to which she said "yes" and then kissed him excitedly, which she hadn't done in a long time.

As soon as they got home, they talked about every single thing regarding conception (most of the concepts were things that Shaun brought up) - ovulation and fertilization, fertile windows, cervical mucus, charting body temperature, fertility apps, sex frequency, sperm count, diet, giving up coffee and alcohol, etc.

They also debated whether they should allow themselves more time to grieve before imagining the future or to try again in order to help them come to terms with their loss even further.

As usual, they chose the latter, and then immediately started trying for a baby and enjoy the countless series of unprotected sex they were going to have.

"So, are you ready to make a baby?" Lea whispered seductively after Shaun pulled her in for a passionate kiss.

"Yes!" Shaun excitedly expressed as he guided her into their bedroom and then climbed into the bed with her. "I'm ready to make babies."

Lea reached up to kiss him in response, securing her hand against the back of his head and yanking him towards her. "But…let's just hope we only make a baby. There's no way in hell I'm going to have octuplets," she panted jokingly as Shaun's hands softly nuzzled the back of her neck.

"Our chances of having multiples are probably at 4%," specified Shaun. "And if we do end up having multiples without IVF, there is a 95% chance of them being twins."

"I think I could handle having twins…or maybe triplets…although I hope we don't have triplets," inclined Lea. "Anything more than triplets is a deal-breaker for me."

"I don't think I can handle dealing with more than two or three children at once," appended Shaun. "Also, pregnancies with higher-order multiples are at higher risk."

"Let's not worry about that right now," Lea prompted. "Because I'm 100% sure that we'll have less than triplets if we get pregnant. Right now, let's just focus on getting pregnant."

They then resumed their love-making session.

For just one moment during the entire sex, Shaun and Lea oddly seemed to forget about Eleanor for a while despite the fact that today was October 15th, the day of Lea's due date and also pregnancy and infant loss awareness day and month.

However, those two facts did eventually kill the mood later that night, especially since St. Bonaventure now had a few decorations of posters and pink and blue ribbons.

Since that night, Shaun and Lea got back into the habit of having a lot of sex, this time without using any protection (no condoms and no birth control pills) except for being tested negative for STIs.

In less than three weeks, on November 4th, Shaun and Lea were married in a simple ceremony at San Jose City Hall, surrounded by Dr. Glassman, Debbie, and Lea's parents (she still wasn't on good terms with her brother, as he had recently been arrested for a DUI).

On December 2nd, four weeks after the wedding and on her day off, Lea started to feel off, and she realized it was a sensation that seemed kind of familiar as she was feeding Albert and Poppy.

Fatigue wasn't the only thing she was experiencing (she had actually been feeling that way for weeks now). Her breasts felt unusual, they were tender to the touch, sore, tingly, heavier, and fuller. Her periods were known to be irregular, and she did usually of feel kind of like this around the time of her period, which she got seven weeks ago…or she at least thought it was her period at the time. The symptom that definitely caught her attention was the nausea and vomiting she experienced, like she just ate three-month-old sushi.

Then, wondered if she could be pregnant. So, just like at the start of her last pregnancy, she purchased a home pregnancy test (two this time), which came back positive, except this time when Lea saw the two pink lines, she took another test to be sure…and the second test was positive as well.

That wasn't her period, it was implantation bleeding.

Did I actually get pregnant on my first try? She wondered. She and Shaun had been trying for a month, but she and Shaun decided that they wouldn't be taking any pregnancy tests until she started showing symptoms, and right now, she was definitely experiencing symptoms.

As she stared at those two pregnancy tests, Lea felt so many emotions, except they weren't the emotions that she wanted to feel. She expected to feel joy, euphoria, and excitement, but instead, she felt nothing but fear and nervousness.

She curled up into a fetal position on the bathroom floor and broke down crying, something she didn't do when she stared at the test when she found out she was pregnant with Eleanor.

She remained in that spot until Shaun came home from his shift.

"Evening, Lea," Shaun called out to his wife once he walked into their apartment. He shut the door behind him and then hung his backpack and jacket onto the hooks right next to Lea's jacket and purse.

Lea didn't reply back like she would have. Instead, there was silence.

"Lea?"

Still, there was no reply. She was definitely home because her purse, phone, and keys were still here, and she'd never leave without her house keys.

"Lea, where are you?" He called out again.

"I'm in the bathroom, Shaunie," he heard her behind the ajar bathroom door, sniffling softly. She sounded like she was crying.

Desperate to see what was wrong, Shaun walked into the bathroom to find Lea sitting on the floor right next to the toilet, sobbing. Her knees were pulled up to her chest, her face was buried in her knees, and her arms were wrapped tightly around her legs.

Before Shaun could even ask Lea what was wrong, he noticed the two pregnancy tests on the sink counter, both of them were positive.

"You're pregnant?" He guessed, faltering nervously.

"Yes," sighed Lea. "I just found out today."

Shaun was kind of in shock. He didn't think he and Lea would actually get pregnant on their first tries.

Was he excited and overjoyed? To be honest, he wasn't, and he thought he would get excited at a moment like this. He couldn't even describe how he felt. In fact, he felt kind of empty. And Lea looked like she wasn't feeling excitement either.

Without saying a word, Shaun just sat down on the floor next to Lea and held her to comfort her.

They wanted to feel excited about this, but they couldn't help but feel nothing but fear, and it was a lot more fear and anxiety than the amount they had last time they found out Lea was pregnant.

"I don't know why, this doesn't make sense," Lea cried into her husband's chest. "We wanted to have a baby, and yet we can't feel happy? Maybe it all happened too fast? Maybe…I'm just terrified of losing this one, too? I don't want to go through that pain again."

"I don't want to go through that again, either. If you want to terminate the pregnancy, we can do that if it's too much for us," suggested Shaun, wondering if that was helpful. "I'm still not over losing Eleanor."

"I'm not over it, either. And, no," sniffed Lea, wiping a tear from her eye. "I want to have this baby. Maybe we'll start to feel excited more as time passes? Do you want to continue with the pregnancy even though it might not be the right time, but will it ever be?"

"Yes," replied Shaun. "I want to have this baby, but having another baby isn't going to replace the one we lost."

That was true, and it was one of the many things that their friends from their infant and pregnancy loss support group agreed on.

For Abby and Victor, the fact that they already had a living and breathing five-year-old daughter when they lost their son didn't automatically make them feel better about their loss, especially because they said that their daughter cried when they told her that her baby brother was never coming.

Maureen had two more daughters (both of them now adult women with children of their own) after her first baby girl died. During the pregnancies and births of her two other daughters, she never stopped thinking about the daughter she lost to SIDS. "Heather was not a replacement, and neither was Stephanie," she said. "Even after I became a grandmother, I never stopped feeling guilt over what happened to Jennifer."

Sophia was still very young, so she still had plenty of time in the future to have a baby when she was ready. What broke Shaun's heart about Sophia's story was that when she lost her baby, her parents actually celebrated the miscarriage and told her to be happy about it. What made things worse was that it was her dead boyfriend's baby. Sure, it probably wasn't a good time for her, but she said the unplanned pregnancy motivated her to become very responsible and mature.

"I know," sighed Lea. "But, we can do this, and whatever happens, we'll get through it. However, if we also lose this baby, I don't want to try again. Do you understand?"

"Yes," said Shaun, feeling disappointed at that confession yet also aware that another loss would be too painful for them. "Also, I don't want to tell anyone until you make it past 13 weeks gestation. I don't want to be too excited about this."

"Alright," Lea nodded, totally understanding where Shaun was coming from and starting to feel guilty for getting mad at him for not feeling anything for their baby during the previous pregnancy. "But you know it's not guaranteed that we're safe after 13 weeks. We lost Eleanor at 22 weeks. So many things could go wrong."

"I know," agreed Shaun. "I don't care what Dr. Glassman said, but I'm going to be blinking and not relaxing. I'm not getting too excited until after 22 weeks, even though we're not guaranteed to be safe after that either."

"Honestly, I don't want to get too excited either, and if you want to call it a fetus, go ahead because I'm going to be doing that until I'm close to my due date, that is if I ever make it to my due date. I don't want to get too attached to it," exhaled Lea before getting up off the floor. "Well, it looks like we're really doing this again."

"We're having another baby," repeated Shaun. "We need to make an appointment to confirm how far along you are."

They both thought that it was kind of silly that they were choosing to be this pessimistic, but they wanted to be like that for a while. They thought that maybe once they saw their baby on the ultrasound, they would start to feel happy.

AN: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, and please review as I appreciate constructive criticism. However, prepare for a rollercoaster of emotional chapters in the future because although I'm not going to make them lose the baby, this pregnancy is not going to be all sunshine and rainbows.