Disclaimer: See prologue.


Jack sat in his quarters on the base, thinking hard. SG-1 always ended up in strange situations, but this was a bit much. He was the first man on Earth to become pregnant. He almost wished he could call Guinness. He felt like a freak.

And yet, he didn't want to end the pregnancy. He might not have asked for this, but when he thought of the life growing within him, he felt giddy, hopeful. He didn't want to give up the chance at raising this child. He was worried, knowing that going ahead was going to be dangerous for both him and the baby, but he knew he wanted to try.

His biggest worry, though, was the NID. He didn't want to chance Mayborne getting his slimy paws on either him or the child. He knew that it was a very big possibility that NID had a spy in the SGC. They could very well find out about this and come in with orders to take him before they could act to keep them out of it. They would have to act quickly.

There was a knock at the door, and Jack made a bet with himself as to who the knocker might be. He opened it to Daniel, winning the bet. "Jack? Can I come in?"

He nodded and turned to sit on the bed again. "Sure, Danny." Daniel took the chair that was pushed up to the unused desk, pulling it around to look at his CO.

"So, what are you going to do?"

Jack sighed. "I want to try, but I'm worried about someone finding out about this and trying to make me and the baby into lab rats."

Daniel nodded. "Yeah, I thought of that. We should probably make a preemptive strike on that, call the President and inform him of the situation, get him to keep NID out of it."

"You think he would? I mean, let's face it. This sounds like something out of a bad sci-fi flick."

"We could always send you off-world with a medical team to one of the uninhabited worlds if things really got bad. Hell, we could even send you back to PX3-983. The human settlements on that world are three hundred miles to the south, so you wouldn't be bothered by hanging around the Gate."

"I'm already having morning sickness, and I'm only three weeks along. This is not going to be fun."

Daniel grinned at him. "Yeah. You're going to get cranky and Janet's going to wish she could risk tranquilizing you. You make the worst patient, Jack."

He grinned right back, putting both hands over his heart. "You wound me, Dr. Jackson." Daniel just laughed at him.


His decision made, Jack felt much better with the idea. Janet gave him some vitamin B6 tablets to help combat the nausea, as well as putting him on a strict diet. She didn't restrict his exercise regimen except for telling him no heavy calisthenics, which he detested anyway. He could still jog twice a week and work with free-weights in the gym. The exercise would do him and the baby both good. He was also forced to give up caffeine, but Sam knew of an excellent brand of decaffeinated coffee and she started buying it for him. The taste more than made up for the lack of caffine, and he thought he might stick with it even after the baby was born.

Janet insisted that Jack come twice a week for a check up, not wanting to take even the slightest chance with the health of either the Colonel or his baby. But thankfully, there was never anything amis for her to report.

Jack found himself wearing sweats since most of his clothes fit him perfectly under normal circumstances and his waist was already expanding slightly, and the nausea lasted for several weeks. He was irritable from the discomfort, snapping at the least little thing. When he bit Sam's head off for asking him how he was doing, she told him that if he did it again she'd take the risk of being arrested for striking a superior officer. That incident made Jack realize what he was doing, so he apologized to everyone and things went much more smoothly from then on. He started having weird cravings in the seventh week, particularly chocolate-covered frenchfries and strawberry jello with onions in it.

Jack ended up having to take estrogen as well, which knocked his emotions even further out of whack. Janet assured him that this happened with a lot of pregnancies, but it was worse for him because he wasn't used to expressing his emotions heavily. He had to remind himself not to watch any female oriented TV because from week ten onward he started crying at the smallest provacation, irritating him to no end.

Janet and Sam got started on the baby shower in about week eleven. They planned it for the end of the first trimester at week thirteen, giving themselves plenty of time to get things together. Daniel had fun trying to explain the concept of the shower to Teal'c, but once he realized what it was, the Jaffa had no trouble with participating. In fact, he took a short trip to Chulak to get a couple of traditional baby gifts. Word was quietly spread around the base, and one of the storage rooms quickly filled up with gifts from the SG teams. The knew not to get him a crib, as Jack had already told Sam that he planned on getting Charlie's out of storage, but bed linnens and a new matress were bought for it. Clothes, toys, diapers and other essentials were quietly passed to Sam, Janet or Daniel, neatly wrapped, then stuck under a tarp in that storage room just incase Jack should get bored and go wandering around the compound.

Jack was starting to feel more level at his fifth checkup, so he didn't even think about it when General Hammond asked him to come to the Gate room to help with some minor loading and unloading. Once assured that Janet had cleared him for it, he went right along. Several others were headed that way, but he was the last one through the door.

When he went in, however, he got the shock of his life. There were plenty of packages, but they were obviously not going through the Gate. They were all wrapped in baby-print gift wrap or gift bags with tissue sticking out the top. One of the packages was huge, and he figured it was a crib matress. The second largest one was suspiciously cylindrical, and he just knew that it was a new set of tires for his Jeep. But there were close to a hundred gifts stacked around the Gate ramp and on the platform. It was the only room in the compound that was big enough to hold the sixty-odd people who had come to what was now obviously a baby shower. He looked at Hammond. "You tricked me, sir."

The General grinned. "All in good cause, Colonel."

The shower went well. In addition to the crib matress and the tires, there were plenty of clothes and toys for the baby and clothes for Jack while he was dealing with an expanding waist line. Teal'c's gifts were the most spectacular, however. One was the Chulak version of a dream catcher, a hand carved lotus blossom made from native wood that would be placed above the child's head as he or she slept to bless their dreams. The other was a hand-woven blanket of native wool for Jack that could be worn as a robe when he was up walking the floor with the baby at three in the morning. Since the thing was meant for both men and women, Teal'c had felt it only apropriate. The weaving was colorful and intricate, and the Jack wasn't alergic to Chulaki wool as he was to sheep's wool, so the gift was much apreciated.

The party was over, the gifts having been loaded onto a cart to be taken to Jack's Jeep later, when suddenly the first chevron on the Gate activated. Instantly, the room wasn't full of friends any longer, but trained soldiers. As the alarms went off and the Gate continued its cycle, General Hammond called out, "Do we have a GDO signal?"

The man up in the control room stood and reached for the intercom. "It's a Tok'ra signal, sir."

"Open the iris." Hammond turned to O'Neill. "Get out of sight, Colonel. We don't want the Tok'ra knowing what's going on."

Jack nodded and turned to leave, grabbing Daniel as he went as help to get the cart of gifts out. One soldier showed some foresight and got the trash can full of wrapping detrius and slid it under the embarkation ramp to hide it. Before the iris was open enough to allow the arriving guests to enter without splatting against the iris, the Gate room looked just like it always did, with marines formed up to guard against possible Goa'uld attack, P-90s aimed at the visitors in case they should prove hostile.

As the door to the Gate room slid shut, Jack said, "This is going to be a very interesting day."

Daniel smirked. "No kidding, Jack."


There you have it, Chapter Three. I hope you all enjoyed it. I'd like to thank all of you wonderful reviewers out there! I got seven reviews for Chapter Two! That's so cool!