A/N: Been playing around with this one and it's been requested quite a bit in the past so here you go.

He woke up and stretched lazily. He turned and looked at the clock on his nightstand. It was barely past midnight. He turned to face Shayera. To his surprise and disappointment, she wasn't there. The covers on her side of the bed were thrown back. He frowned and sat up. Judging by her pillow she hadn't been in bed for a while.

He got out of bed immediately and called out her name softly. He didn't get a response so he walked out of the bedroom, glanced into the bathroom, and then Emma's room. She wasn't in any of those rooms.

He felt a bit relieved when he spotted her on the couch in the living room, half-lying, half-sitting, eyes closed. He could tell she was awake by the pattern of her breathing. There was a bottle of ginger ale on the table next to her with only a little bit left in it.

"Hey," he said softly, kneeling in front of her.

Her eyes fluttered open and she sighed tiredly but managed a small smile for him, "Hey."

He lifted his hand to stroke her hair, pushing her bangs away from her face. "You okay? How long have you been up?"

She shrugged. "A couple hours, I think? I'm okay just..." she paused before she swallowed. "Throwing up and nauseous."

Thanagarian immune systems were stronger than human ones. That ruled out the flu or any other type of stomach bug. Food poisoning was off the table. The last option didn't make sense. The only time they had any time to themselves was when they had Wally watch Emma for them on New Years. John paused as he cautiously stared at the Thanagarian in front of him...that had been little under six weeks ago.

After contemplating for a short while he finally spoke, "Morning sickness, huh?"

Shayera just stared back at him before sighing, "Most likely."

"Can I get you anything? Are you feeling any better?"

"I'm fine John. Give it an hour or so and I think it'll pass."

"Okay," he reached for her soda bottle. "You should be drinking water, not soda. I'm guessing you don't want anything food related like crackers?"

She shook her head emphatically at the mere mention of the word and he nodded.

"Right, will you be ok if I go back to bed?"

She lightly chuckled as she shook her head. "I'm a big girl. I can take care of myself, go on."

He grinned and leaned in for a kiss but was stopped when she stuck her hand in front of his mouth, wearing an adorably apologetic expression. "Sorry but I haven't brushed my teeth or rinsed out my mouth yet."

John chuckled and kissed her forehead instead.

Over three hours later Shayera was laying on the couch feeling like death; she had almost forgotten just how bad morning sickness was. She had been vomiting all night and was too sick to even go back to bed. She heard the door to their bedroom open but she was too tired to sit up and look over the couch.

"Shay, you're still out here," he said sympathetically. "How are you feeling?"

"I'll give you one guess," she quietly replied with a frown

"Like shit?" She nodded in response. "Why didn't you wake me up?"

She slowly sat up and ran her hand through her hair. "It's not like you can take on my nausea for me. Plus you were asleep."

"Like you should have been," he protested as he sat next to her. "You think you can get off the couch and come back to bed?"

She shook her head, "Not yet. You can go back to sleep, though."

"Not a chance. Let's talk about something...anything. Maybe if you stop thinking about feeling sick, it'll make it let up."

They sat for a good three minutes in silence as they stared at each other.

Shayera raised an eyebrow and let out a huff, sounding annoyed, "So are you going to distract me or not?"

John sighed, definitely a mood swing. There was no doubt in his mind. He had not missed those in the least. "Um...so...you ok with being pregnant again if it turns out you are?"

"There's no questioning if I am or not. I'm happy but at the same time I'm not exactly thrilled about the timing being just as bad as last time," she stated as she frowned. "Emma isn't even a year old yet. I wanted at least two, maybe three, years in between before we had anymore kids."

"But you still did want more than one. Right?"

"Of course I did that's a stupid question," she flippantly replied as she rolled her eyes.

"That's two symptoms," John muttered to himself.

"What do you mean by that?" Shayera narrowed her eyes at him as he swallowed.

"Nothing," he quickly replied as he held his hands up. "Just...from prior experience you're definitely pregnant."

She in turn glared at him, "What cause I'm irritable? Or maybe throwing my guts up wasn't a good enough of an indication."

John threw an arm around her shoulder to pull her closer so he could kiss the top of her head, "Shay think of it this way, you went through all of this once already so this time it'll be a piece of cake. You already know what to expect."

"True," Shayera smirked. "Now you're just trying to get me in a good mood."

"Is it working?"

"I'd say so," she paused. "You do realize we're going to have a toddler and an infant. Right?"

"How hard can it be?" John immediately learned that was the wrong response when he saw the unamused look on his wife's face. That and she socked him on the shoulder, hard. He grimaced as he rubbed his shoulder. "Let me rephrase that. You're a great mother so for you it'll be easy."

"That's much better."

"Needles, why does everything involve needles?" Shayera rhetorically asked as Batman wiped her arm with an antiseptic and then tied a tourniquet around it. "And somehow we always get Bruce involved."

"Well you refused to go to the Medbay. That leaves the Batcave as the only secure place left," John reminded her.

"Considering the circumstances this time around, I'm nearly happy to do this," Bruce replied with hardly any emotion in his tone. He then turned his attention momentarily to the nine-month-old being held by John. "She turned out cute."

"See that Emma, your Uncle Bruce actually complimented you," John said to the young girl.

Bruce smirked as he pulled out Shayera's arm and stuck the needle in to draw blood. The Thanagarian winced as she shut her eyes. "You handled that better this time."

"You're real damn funny Bruce," Shayera muttered as he bandaged her arm before walking off.

Emma giggled. Shayera turned towards her and smiled, "I'm glad you find Mommy's suffering to be amusing." She then looked up at John. She followed his line of sight to the machine Bruce used to analyze the blood. "It seems to take longer then it actually does. Trust me, I was the same way last time."

"So you want to take a guess?" Bruce asked, sounding a bit sarcastic.

"I think we already know what you're going to say but enlighten us anyway Bruce," Shayera stated.

"You said it was on New Years right?" Bruce asked as Shayera gave a slight nod. "Six weeks, you were spot on."

"Knew it," John said with a smirk. "I told you so."

"Hey, it's not like I was denying it anyway" she then directed her gaze at their daughter. "You're going to have a sibling you can wrestle with and torture. That should be fun for you Emma."

"You're already trying to instigate aggressive sibling rivalry. What if we have another girl? Girls generally don't like to roughhouse with each other."

"I'm sure Emma and Rex will get along," Shayera said as she took Emma from him.

"What?" John raised an eyebrow at her.

"Call it that mother's intuition or whatever it is but I was right last time that we were having a girl. I have a gut feeling that this time it's Rex."

"That gut feeling might be your nausea," John quipped but was soon met with a punch to his already bruised shoulder.