Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot.
This birth was quite similar to her first. Painful, uncomfortable, long, etc.
But it also quite different. It didn't mean something the had come to dread. It didn't mean the parting of them and their child. It didn't mean never getting to see her again.
Also a bittersweet moment.
They both held their baby for the first time, marveling over her rosy complexion, her angry fists, her cranky wails. They took turns rubbing fingers over soft, smooth cheeks and a little button nose. The messy smattering of hair atop her head was her darkest feature, something she already shared with her father.
Neither could bring themselves to remember the hair of their first child. They weren't even sure they'd actually seen it.
If they dwelled on the thoughts of her, the guilt would consume them. They did what they had to for her and themselves.
Ironically, they'd been given similar names.
Annabell Elisa Swan.
Isabella Elizabeth Doe.
AN:
Since I have absolutely no idea what they'd do in this sort of case, I made her last name the generic Doe. Like John/Jane Doe. Just so you know. And I changed her middle name.
A rite of passage in my high school (before it was just high school) was watching the baby video in seventh grade health class. The teacher is almost sadistic.
So the video goes from conception to birth and that's fine. But it's a real, uncensored birth from like the eighties. What he does is he lets us see the baby come out. Then he takes his little remote and rewinds it so the baby goes back in and then he makes it pop back out. Repeat like five more times. Add sadistic laughter.
Mention the baby video to anyone in that school and 99% of them were traumatized. Including me.
Also, there was just a shadow shift like someone waited by my bed and everyone else is asleep. I didn't move anything more than my finger. Someone save me?
-Cannibal