The Future

They didn't really have a "honeymoon is over" phase. One of the benefits of a 6 year relationship, including a 2 year engagement was that you sort of figure out most of the things to make it work in that time period. Especially if you're as smart as Charlotte or as caring as Jasper.

The problems that they ran into were almost exclusively work related.

Jasper had become someone that he wasn't sure that he wanted to be (something Charlotte warned him about when he initially accepted his internship), but he felt like he HAD to do it. She never wanted him to try to change for her, but she did appreciate that he had the desire and the potential to do so. He made the choice to be who he felt like he should be for them and a future family… and it was a little bit miserable. He had been working at the firm for a few years and for most of that time, he sold stocks, had sales meetings, and just worked himself like crazy at something boring and often uncomfortably unethical.

How had he gotten to that point, he would sometimes wonder. He rationalized that anywhere he could get his foot in the door would be some place that he would work hard, prove himself and move ahead. He was correct about that, but that fact didn't bring him joy and neither did all of the money that he was making. Plus, Charlotte was working so much, so many fickle hours, and having a hard time at work. They weren't seeing much of each other and even when they tried to plan their quality time together, she usually fell asleep before time was up. He didn't mind it too much. She was still there. They just weren't connecting like he wanted them to. He missed his wife.

He had been so eager to try to get Charlotte to settle down and to try to take care of her that he abruptly rushed into a career that he believed could sustain them, that he could also possibly be good at. Now, he realized that he should have probably figured out more about himself, instead of trying to have things together - or seem to - just because she had things together for herself. Because of that misstep, he was now trying to figure out something else that he could do, and also trying to be a good husband to an even busier wife.

Charlotte was saving lives, building artificial body parts, researching, and testing medical treatments. She had been part of a team that made several HUGE advancements in her field. And on this team, she was one of only two women, and one of only three people who were not Caucasian. Herself, three men - one Indian, one Chinese, and one Korean, and a Russian woman were the only minorities in the entire building, and they rarely worked on the same projects, so.. Basically, she was often alone and even when they were around, the microaggressions they faced were very different. From her perspective, it seemed like she frequently got the brunt of things. Because even those male counterparts seemed to forget how they were sometimes treated and they handled her with the very same attitudes. (Or they just viewed her differently, from the start) Either way, the work, while rewarding, was exhausting enough without the additional stress of her coworkers being unkind, but sometimes, they honestly seemed like they were trying to shove her out or make her quit!

Jasper began to conduct these seminars to try to tell CEO's how to make sales jobs less hateable and while Charlotte didn't think it would lead anywhere (she knew that if he fell on his face, she'd have them covered). He… actually did well - above and beyond what she expected and by their second anniversary, he was branching out from the firm and beginning his own career as an Executive Coach - which Charlotte didn't even know WAS a profession, much less that it could be as lucrative as it seemed to be for him. He hardly even seemed to be working and he was starting to bring in more money than she was! She. Was. Saving. Lives… But, she was on a team saving lives. He was helping huge companies… by himself… and he was LOVING it! Sigh.

One day, she came home particularly upset while he was finishing up some items on a PowerPoint presentation, and she was ready to either punch something, or cry, or both - but was trying to rationalize that if she did either, she might have to explain it to him. Before she could come to a decision, she felt Jasper's hands on her waist and she jumped. She hadn't even seen him get up. "Whoa! You okay?" He asked. She started crying and leaned against him. "Hey… Who do I have to go down there and punch?" he asked, rubbing her back.

"Nobody… I just… Why are they always so…?" She wiped her face on his shirt and squeezed him tightly. He lifted her up and went to sit back down, resting her on his lap when he did. She sniffled, "I thought that once I had my official degree and had been working there for a while that the respect would come. I thought - there's no way that the kind of treatment that I got in highschool at my crummy job was gonna be the way that it was when I became a member of society. It's so much worse. They don't respect me any more than at the Man Cave, but these people are all intellectuals, so you know that it's deliberate, that they mean it, and that they can cover it up, rationalize that it isn't what I'm saying. And if I'm outnumbered, what then? I look either crazy or angry, which just gives everyone else more fuel to invalidate me. I HATE that place, so much! But, I fought to get there. It is a coveted placement. All of my work history is there. Every change that I've helped to make is related to this company. If I leave, I don't get to take my individual merit with me and what will they say to potential employers? Probably bad things! Any time that I even so much as glance at another laboratory, they treat me like I'm trying to go sell secrets or something."

"Why don't you just take a little break?" He wondered.

"I can't. It could be career suicide. By the time I get back, things have still kept moving and nobody will care to catch me up, if I can't stay fully immersed enough, and that would defeat the entire purpose of a break. The only way that I could possibly do that is to get sick, injured, or pregnant and even then, the bounce back might keep me lagging behind…" He was staring at her. "What?"

"Just… the thought of you pregnant. It always makes me...enraptured."

She smiled and leaned back against him. "I mean, I've eventually gotta… We did say that we'd have a couple of them."

"How about this? We work on putting a baby in you and if it doesn't happen and you have to vent every single day, I'll be here for you, unless I'm on my way down there to give somebody a piece of my mind. If it does, then you'll have an excuse to get some space from them and you'll still have work to do, because - hello, we'll have a baby."

"I'm not gonna argue for or against anything at the moment, but I definitely want to immediately get into the stuff that translates to working on it."

"You wanna do some sex stuff."

"I feel like I clearly suggested as much."

"Yes!"

.

It took her a couple of months to decide to stop using her birth control, and another month or so for her body to feel normal without it, and around the fourth month after this conversation, she received her news via every single pregnancy symptom imaginable and Jasper pulling out a home pregnancy test and saying, "I got a good feeling that this is it!" While her face was still in the toilet.

Yes, he quickly realized his foolery and rushed to try to see about her, hold her hair back, etc… hunt down crackers and salt. Once she was capable, she took the test, but she already knew what it would say. She had never felt this way in her entire life! Besides, she worked in the medical field, she knew what this had to be. Positive.

Jasper called his parents on a group call, first and spoke with them for a while, about arrangements and them coming to visit and stuff. Then, he called the Man Cave. He thought to call them first, but since it was officially a family thing, he went for his blood family first. Besides, he knew that this call would be much longer. They talked for at least a few hours and didn't wrap it up until Piper wondered, "Is that Charlotte lurking around in the background?" Charlotte was finally out of bed! She greeted everyone, whined about there being nothing to eat (the fridge and pantry were both full, though, and started crying as she went back to bed. "Is she gonna be like that for the next few months?" Henry wondered.

"I don't think so. She just didn't feel good today. Threw up all morning and had to call out of work. Now, she'll have to start setting steps in motion there to prepare for this and I think she's just tired. I'll have to get her something to eat, though. There's food here, but maybe she's having cravings? I'll have to check, so I have to go!"

Charlotte had called her mom first, cried a lot and said that she was already tired of being pregnant, even though she had just found out. They talked for a while, then she laid down and listened to windstorms, then took a nap and woke up extremely thirsty, only to find that after drinking half a gallon of water in one sitting, she had zero gallon of food she wanted to eat.

She flopped into the bed, crying. This was… scary. For some reason, she thought that when this happened, she'd be cool, since she had every aspect of the plan figured out and stuff, but she had not taken the way symptoms that she had only read about previously would feel. The nausea was unsettling, and she was starving, but the thought of eating anything in there for whatever reason made her feel sick, as Jasper came in and sat on the side of the bed next to her, she snuggled herself into his lap. "You're hungry? What ya wanna eat?"

"I don't know."

"You want… some bacon and eggs?"

"No!"

"A sandwich of some sort, maybe some soup?" She considered this, but then, shook her head. "Give me a nudge, Chef's Kiss. Italian? Chinese?"

"You know those fried turkey tenders from the food truck near the university? I want some of those, a basket of them with the chips and gravy." She sobbed, because that was about 30 minutes away.

"Okay, well… You'll have to ride along, if you wanna eat it fresh," he said and began to help her into her shoes. "I think I'm gonna get something from there too."

She sat up and sniffled, "It's kinda far and we have food in the house."

"You kidding? You're literally growing a life inside of you. Even if it's early, it matters to me. I don't care what you ask for, you're gonna get it as long as you're like this. Why not? You were already worth everything and now, you're worth everything plus one." He lifted her up gently, by the hands and promised, "And you always will be immeasurable to me for this."

"More than before?" She wondered.

"Not because you weren't enough! Because, you were already more than enough and you've still given me this wonderful thing. This is gonna be much harder on you than it is on me, so… I have to make it as easy on you as I have the power to. Come on, Pretty Little Thing." He placed his hand on the small of her back and helped her to the door.

Fried turkey tenders became her go to food. Jasper would order them for delivery almost every night so that whenever she got home, if she wanted some, they were available. She also ate a lot of chips. She would always have a family sized bag on her at all times, sometimes, multiple.

She worked for several months, as her job technically couldn't get rid of someone for being pregnant, but her work load definitely had to change. Even if her body wasn't suddenly very aware of how tiring a single day in the life of her was, Jasper was always monitoring stuff. "Should you be doing that? Because at least 17 articles stated that you shouldn't at this time…"

From the day that they found out about it, Jasper began a Junior Journal. He put everything in it pertaining to the future addition and wrote it as though he was writing to the unborn child, sort of like the affirmation journals that he and Charlotte kept, but with way more details in it. He even wrote "Father Vows." So that it is official everything that I intend to do for you for the rest of my life…

"Hey, Charlotte… you're getting kinda far along now, so I was wondering if we could maybe figure out what we're having and maybe… start thinking of names and stuff?"

"I was thinking that we were raising any children without labels and letting them tell us when they're ready what they feel like they are, and also… I like the name Jasper."

He smiled brightly, "I definitely like the thought of not putting any genitalia based societal pressures on them, but you know… society will, and what if they… look like a girl?"

"Jasper can be a girl's name, if they turn out to be a girl at some point that they're sure of. I love the name Jasper and I think it's good for a firstborn."

"Firstborn? You… would really do this again? You HATE being pregnant!"

"I mean… I hated the early days, definitely, but the further we come, the closer I feel to them. Now, I'm like… This is my kid in here, finishing up their formation. No longer a mass of tissue making me feel like my stomach has been kicked around. Now, they're my little Jasper. After the initial issues, I'm grateful for them."

.

By seven months, she was at home most of the time. Maybe being a mother could help her segway from the lab, onto somewhere that she might be valued. She was going to keep her hand to the pulse of the science community to figure that part out. Meanwhile, she was able to do most of the nursery by herself, while Jasper took on a few huge clients, including his former employer, and he began negotiations for his first business related book.

The nursery Charlotte decided to tap into her love for art - something she rarely allowed herself a chance to do very often, because she had been so busy. But, she had been in a baby shop with her mother and saw a cute adorable Creation Story nursery set, so she basically copied that idea, but of course, with a more practical spin. Where Did I Come From? Was painted onto a very lovely sign to hang up right when you walk into the nursery, and the "creation story" along the wall was basically a reenactment of her relationship with Jasper, including some gifts and souvenirs that highlighted certain moments, like the collection of Custom Star Maps that Jasper had began getting her when they were dating and gave to her as an engagement gift. "The moment we first kissed, When you told me that you love me, The night that we… Chef's Kissed, The night that you decided that I was worth another chance, The night that you said, "Yes." The next one will be monumental. It'll be one for the moment you said "I do."

So, she hung up six custom star maps in the nursery that had a kind of space/planet type decor, stars, sun and moon and stuff on a dark purple color. The custom star maps were designed to look like what the sky looked like at the exact moments that Jasper had ordered them for. The next one, which she intended to hang next to the crib would be the moment that Jasper Jr. was born. She began calling them Jasper Jr. in her mind to differentiate between her Jaspers mentally.

Jasper loved the idea of putting the maps in the nursery and of course, the idea of Charlotte spending hours chronicling their love on walls for their baby had him a completely mushy mess.

Henry came over to help out and convince Charlotte to allow him to throw a Sip and See for "Baby Jasper," which was what Henry called them.

"You got that from Real Housewives," she said.

"Yeah, and it was fabulous. Imagine us all, dressed in all white, like an all white party or whatever and the baby in their brightest, flyest, boldest outfit and everyone is sipping bubbly and gushing over Baby Jasper and all he wants is to you know, suck on some titty."

"Sounds like too much and also, please do not speak of my titties in this way."

"In the titty way?"

"STOP SAYING TITTY!" She snapped. She calmed down and said, "If you wanna throw a party, you can do the shower. I don't think I'm having one, otherwise."

"Your mom's not doing one? Or Adanna?" He asked, surprised, then immediately called Piper, "Hey! Did you know that we're supposed to be in charge of Charlotte's Baby Shower?"

"WHAT? Since when? Rosemary and Adanna aren't doing it?"

"I don't really need one," Charlotte tried, but Henry and Piper were already in their mode. He was sending her all over the shop for different stuff that she would have to set aside for his Baby Shower vision. Charlotte laid on the couch and ate roasted nuts. They'd be at this for a while and at seven months, she was never in the mood for any of their "extra."

.

Rosemary and Adanna had been planning a baby shower, but it was proving difficult for them because they kept having to cross out ideas that pertained to gender. Neither of them noticed how much gender related entertainment was a part of baby plans. Even with ordering gifts - Charlotte had given them a list of acceptable items, but whenever Rosemary sent her a photo to ask about something, she often declined, saying, "Something more gender neutral."

"You know, this kid isn't gonna just want gender neutral stuff their whole life, right?"

"When they're old enough to see stuff that they want and like, then it's their choice. Right now, anything else would be imposed upon them. I just want Jasper Jr to be able to look back at baby photos of themselves and seeing their baby pictures. Too many people have told me that they look at baby pictures of a body that they didn't feel connected to, dressed in the wrong type of clothes and playing with toys that they never would have selected for themselves. That's heartbreaking."

"Okay, but anybody can be a firefighter!"

"Yes, but that says fireman in training, Mom. If there's one that says firefighter, sure. I mean, it's weirdly worded because what baby is "training" to be a firefighter?" Rosemary hung up on her.

Adanna began sewing stuff for them. She didn't want baby blue or baby pink items, but she accepted baby blue AND baby pink items, so whenever one of them found something that was too cute to live without, Adanna brought it home and touched it up to be a more inclusive outfit. Rosemary joked, "This baby gonna be wearing transgender flags until they can talk!"

Adanna told her, "I am so excited that you're familiar with a trans flag!"

"Girl, I been studying all the gender neutral stuff that I can to make sure my grandbaby winds up both loved AND fierce, and a lot of the parents with gender neutral upbringing tips are either trans or have trans kids, so I got a lot of flags in my memory banks, now. Have you kept up with Pansy to make sure she's sticking to stuff properly?"

"I try to not keep up with her as much as possible. I thought since you live in Swellview, you were on that!"

"Ugh, I don't like her though!"

"Put Cohort on it. She's good at being around people she doesn't like, because she doesn't like anybody."

"Yeah, but she might give her gills on her face or something if she gets on her nerves too much… Which… You know what? Wouldn't be my problem! You're right, Sis."

.

Charlotte spent most of her free time working on stuff that made her pregnancy easier and fussing about the fact that people didn't think of a lot of this stuff sooner, then often sulking about the fact that they probably did, but didn't get the support or funding to make it mainstream because their society didn't care about reproductive care. It made her consider medical school. Sure, she had been out of college for a few years, but she still could go, and that would pave the way for her to be either away from the lab or more qualified to move to a different one. Maybe, she would be able to be a medical biochemist. She had some familiarity with it, having worked with some in her career. It wasn't like if she became a medical biochemist she would somehow not be able to do biomedical engineering anymore. She'd be better for it, and so could maternity. Her mother kept sending her reports about the dangers Black women face in the maternity process (thinking that she was unaware or that it was helpful, when really, Charlotte knew all of this information and tried not to think about it so much as she made sure that she would have the proper treatment and care), but it DID light a fire under her about medical school!

The day of the shower, not very long before her due date, Henry and Piper took her to this spa to have a day of pampering, styled her afterwards in this all white maternity gown with one of those halo crowns and Piper did her makeup. "You look like an angel," Henry gushed.

"A pregnant angel?" she retorted.

"Yes!" He squealed.

They got back to her house and whenever they pulled in, she was already emotional. Dang pregnancy hormones. There were white, pink and blue flowers and balloons decorating the outside of the place and whenever she got inside, she saw a life sized statue of herself on a pedestal, wearing what she had on right now and as pregnant as she was. "What the?" She looked around, extremely confused.

"It's my present!" Jasper cheered. She was in shock. "To you… For the…" he gestured at her belly. "It's a gesture of tribute." Tears were falling. Was he gonna be doing stuff like this to her for the rest of their lives?

Henry prompted her along, "She's a little overwhelmed. Let's get to the shower, Mama."

Between the four of them - Adanna, Rosemary, Piper and Henry - they were able to organize a beautiful and fun gender neutral baby shower and evaluated all of the gifts beforehand, to ensure they fit the criteria. Jasper had on his crown and remained next to Charlotte the entire time. She looked happy that everyone was there, but very tired, too. His mom and stepdad showed up together. It was the first time he'd seen them together in a while, but his stepdad told him how proud of him he was and how excited he was to finally be a grandfather… Weirdness. Jasper couldn't help but wonder if it was because he now had money, was very successful and continuously becoming moreso. But, he wasn't gonna hold a grudge. Years of therapy made him unresentful towards the man and he did seem to genuinely want to be a grandfather.

Craig did the photos, and the photoshoot, which included pics like Charlotte seated with various groups around her, one with her friends, with her parents, with all the parents, with all the moms, with all the dads… And in all the dads, she somehow wound up with her dad, Jasper's dads, Ray, Schwoz and Mr. Hart. Her dad stared at the last three whenever they came forward when Craig said, "And now one with the dads!" But Charlotte took his hand into hers and just shook her head. They laughed about it and it became one of her favorites of all of the photos.

The past nine months had been a voyage that she hadn't expected. The future was going to be glorious.