"Mrs. Swanson?" She hears a voice shake her from her thoughts, surprisingly calm, though her thoughts were not.
It had been two hours since the arrival and Beca was in recovery, wondering how in the world the babies were doing and when her husband would be there. She felt ill from the meds and the fear, and spent the long hours spacing out at the blank white wall, waiting for news on her babies.
"We can wheel you into the NICU to see the babies. They're doing well." Nurse Julie smiles, offering a hand to help Beca into the chair, but she doesn't move.
"Becs? The babies are doing okay, didn't you hear that?" Chloe tries to help, but Beca just shakes her head.
The babies would be covered in wires from head to toe, and blindfolded to be shielded from the bright lights that kept them warm. It pained her to know that her babies had a long road of recovery, even if they weren't necessarily suffering. She knew that they weren't okay, just stable, that with multiples anything was predictable, and she struggled to believe that it would stay like this. Inevitably something was bound to happen, but she needed to trust the work of God because this was out of her hands.
"I don't want to see them." Beca plainly informs them.
"Beca, it's going to be okay. They're your babies; Seeing them is beneficial for you both. You can hold them, and they can hear your heartbeat. If anything, it may help." Nurse Julie informs her, gesturing to the chair silently.
"I want my husband to be here." Beca states.
"Beca," Chloe pleas but Beca's glare scares her off.
"Mrs. Swanson, it's up to you, but whatever you decide is fine. I just thought I'd let you know."
Would it really bother Jesse if she visited them first? Probably not because right now they were completely neglected, parentless, and that thought upset her. She knew that they were lonely, and having nurses in and out of the room to check on them couldn't compare as the same comfort.
"Sure." Beca forces a smile, climbing into the chair with assistance from Chloe.
They wheeled her down a long, cold hallway and into the children's pediatric, a warm, yellow colored building with wooden puzzles and teddy bears on the wall. Quietly in the background played children's nursery rhymes and it made her feel warm inside.
"Here we are." She was turned by Julie into the room, four plastic incubators lined against the wall near the back.
They weren't as dramatically portrayed as Beca had feared, and actually looked quite comfortable. The babies were lined up according to their birth order and not the letters the were in the womb. Baby 'A' was actually the second to last born, Julie informed her, and second from the viewing window. They lay peacefully, undisturbed in their incubators, unaware that their mom was gushing over them.
"Which baby do you want me to take you to?" Julie asks, and Beca shrugs, impatiently trying to try and hold them all.
"That one." She nods towards the baby that was screaming, her small pinkish skin turning a tomato red.
Baby 'B' was the first born and the baby she and Jesse had initially wanted to name according to the second name they had on the list. But as Beca held her light body in her arms, the baby flailing her limbs against her mom's chest in anger from being awoken, Beca immediately knew that this was her feisty child.
"And you areā¦" She nervously looks down at the little bundle throwing a fit in her arms, "My little Nina Rueben, or "Ruby"." She relaxes a bit, despite her little spit fire fighting back as if she didn't agree with the name.
Rubies were literally a type of fiery stone that was known for its red, sultry, sassy color. Nina was a little sassy fighter, and even in utero was the baby Beca recognized as most active. Nina was initially Jesse's pick but Beca was onboard when she realized that it was a perfect fit for the baby, baby 'B', that was always moving inside her, and kicking her in the ribs. It seemed that every time she ate something spicy, Nina was the one kicking back.
"What about this one? It looks like she's content, unlike her sister." Chloe asks, pointing to the baby that looked as if she was smiling.
"That's our Lettie Louise." Their baby 'D'.
"Beca, how are the hormones treating you?" Chloe smiles, realizing how Beca was not herself in the way she was talking.
Beca was usually the cut to the chase, no balogna, say it as it is type, but with all this gushing, Beca was a moody barbie. She basically had no control over her emotions, both happy and sad. Chloe knew hormones would be difficult to control, but she didn't expect to see this new Beca and certainly hoped this emotionally gushy stuff didn't last (even if she secretly loved seeing a tender hearted, softy, Beca)
"So which ones are going to be the other two?"
Chloe had known the names ahead of time, just not which baby would be assigned which name. What she didn't know was that Beca had actually given the one of the girls Chloe's middle name as a first. Mila Elise was quad 'A' and lastly, baby 'C' was named Luna Eleanore.
"Can I hold one?" She suddenly hears a voice from behind them, and to her relief her husband's loafers click on the floor, walking towards them both.
Jesse walked in, a small box tied shut with a red ribbon, and inside it held a card and an envelope with documents. He handed it to Chloe who was up until then, watching over Luna as she longed to hold her, but couldn't.
"Just a little something for our favorite God mom." Jesse smirked, waiting for Chloe to catch on.
"You mean?" Chloe asks, tears welling up in her glassy blue eyes.
Chloe side hugs Jesse and wraps her arm around Beca's shoulder in a squeeze, disbelief that they chose her over Jesse's sisters to be a Godparent. After all, Chloe had been a huge part in their lives and fertility journey.
When Beca had considered IVF for a second round, Chloe was right there for support. When they considered adoption and they got rejected because they weren't what the parents were looking for, she was there, at their home everyday at six in the morning when Beca couldn't leave the bed for a month. She had at one point offered to carry a baby for them, but they decided against it, no matter the generous offer.
It was suddenly that Nina began gasping in Beca's arms, in a way that was heartbreaking, a fiercely vivid imagine that Beca swore she would never forget, because no one could forget the look of struggle and fight on the little girl's face. It wasn't something she had seen before, but now it was something she couldn't unsee.
"What's happening? What did I do?" Beca's voice began to tremble with panic.
Heart monitors and machines were going off everywhere and Beca felt her heart palpitate and her thoughts race, everything becoming a hazy state as the nurses ran in and took Nina from her. Another nurse had also rushed in, ushering Beca's wheelchair and Jesse out of the room, tears now streaming down Beca's anxious body. She was a sweat covered, tear stained, beautifully fearful mess.
-XXX-
The hours after that seemed to inch by, every minute going by slower than the last. Beca pondered her thoughts on what she could have done wrong, what if there was something she could have done to prevent it. She felt at felt, a guilt only a mother could feel and criticized herself. She literally felt that she could have prevented this somehow, that she did something wrong in her pregnancy, even though the nurses assured her that Nina's difficulties had nothing to do with Beca.
When four hours had passed and no word on Nina's surgery, Beca looked to Jesse, his face a mess, and inquisitively watched him play with his wedding band, twisting around on his ring finger repeatedly.
"Jess, do you think there's anything I could have done? Like, why didn't I just pass on the girl's night? It had to be all the activity that I was doing. Because if I would have stayed on bedrest, or had taken it easier, this wouldn't have happened."
"Beca," Jesse looks up, walking over and sitting cross-legged on the end of the hospital bed. "Nina's lungs were under-developed and collapsed. This has nothing to do with you."
"I put myself into labor by falling." Beca argues, completely convinced.
"Beca, this is not your fault. There's nothing you could have done differently because it's more common than you want to believe that multiples are born early."
"But Jess-" She begins again before being cut of.
"Do you realize how amazing this is?" Jess begins, receiving an estranged look from Beca. "You have defied the odds of us being pregnant, you carried all four of them to what is considered "term" for quads, and now they're having a few difficulties."
"What's your point? It was selfish for me to even implant more than one egg, and put them at risk."
"No, it wasn't. Because you couldn't have possibly predicted that they would both conceive, let alone both split. This is truly a miracle Beca. God knew you could handle the battle, and he still believes in you. You're the strongest person I know. Whatever happens, you're going to be alright."
Jesse reassuringly smiles at Beca, offering Beca his hand and she gingerly takes it, disdainfully looking at her IV covered hand with disgust, as well as her ankle. If Beca hadn't been hospitalized so early, her wrinkled, dry, and sore hand would not look the way it did. It looked dry and tired, swollen from the needle that took refuge in her arm. She secretly believed it was her fault, but she was too tired to keep arguing.
But what she didn't realize was how her body had done an amazing thing, and because of all the stigma following how C-sections weren't technically giving birth, she felt like she had failed as a mom, no matter how far that really was from the truth. But because she had been told by her mom that simply "removing" the baby from your stomach wasn't actually giving birth, and that she wasn't a real woman. Needless to say, Beca and her mom never had the greatest relationship.
"Mrs. Swanson?" She was interrupted from her talk by Julie, waiting in the door with a wheelchair. "If you'd like to visit the other babies, we can take you and your husband down."
But Beca wasn't interested with seeing the others because she felt as if she was a two-legged black cat that carried a ladder everywhere on its back. It felt that every time she did something she wasn't supposed to, or when she was around the babies, something went wrong. And she could tell Julie could see that when she was hesitant to answer.
"Mrs. Swanson, Nina will be out of surgery soon. I don't know if you realize this, but you've birthed quite a fighter. Just like you. She is tough and driven to survive, just like you were to take care of them while they were inside you. Everything is out of your hands; You did your part to take care of them on the inside, and you did nothing to cause this."
"But it was up to me to nourish and take care of myself so that the babies were healthy while I was pregnant, and I selfishless chose to go out and do things that I knew I shouldn't have."
"She had a pre-existing heart-condition that we didn't catch sooner. Did you know that this condition ran in your family?" Julie adds, seeing Beca's hesitance to buy what she was saying. "I promise it wasn't anything you did. And as a new mom it might be easy to blame yourself. Beca honestly though, I can't blame you for wanting to have one last fun night before they came. Even if it didn't go a little unexpectedly."
Beca began crying when Julie came over, pulling her phone out of her scrubs and scrolling through it. She saw a picture of a tiny child, one that nearly fit in the palm of a hand. It was bluish, it's paper skin see-through ish, its bones like glass.
"This was my son; This is my son. He was born at twenty-two weeks and we had an amazing two hours with him. It was a heartbreaking feeling when I was told there was nothing more they could do because I felt like it was my fault. Like, if I had taken better care of myself, they would have somehow been able to help him."
Julie looks to Beca, putting an arm around her patient even though she was instructed not to get too involved with them. Nurses were trained to have and maintain a business like, professional relationship, to show they cared without really getting too personal. But there was something about having a patient that was in the same boat that she once was that made it difficult for Julie to separate her personal life from her work.
"My point is, there was a long period of time that I blamed myself. But no matter how much I wanted to believe it was my fault, I eventually came to realize that blaming myself, wishing that I could have done things differently didn't change the fact that it wasn't my fault, and that it wasn't going to bring him back. So it's okay to mourn, it's okay to feel, but blaming yourself isn't the right way to handle it."
Julie side hugs Beca before checking her pager, realizing that she had been called back to the NICU to take care of a premature baby born ten days ago, just eight weeks earlier than expected, but was struggling to breathe on his own.
"I'll pray for you." Julie whispered on her way out, not caring if she wasn't supposed to say that to patients or not.
-XXX-
Beca was released four short days after giving birth, and when she thought that having the babies was hard, she hadn't been prepared for after the birth, when she would be sore from delivery, and emotionally drained. It was hard enough seeing the babies all taped up in the NICU, but leaving them was even harder. She could hardly move and was sore all across her torso, the weight of the babies so light that it was only thing that could keep her mind off of everything else.
When she had come home she slept through the day, requesting that Jesse shut the nursery door because she wasn't ready to look in the empty nursery yet. Jesse was bummed that she didn't see the hard work put into it, but respected his wife's feelings. So he held her waist with his arm, helping her waddle to their bed where she would spend the next six weeks, curled up as she recovered.
Sunday's were spent with brunch, church, then trips to the hospital to visit, but when she couldn't take not seeing them anymore, or the pain of wondering how they were she'd sneak out from where ever she was, wanting constant reassurance that they were okay. She had even snuck out in the middle of the night once in those weeks, the pain of wondering about them so unbearable the only solution was to leave.
So she slipped into her pajama pants, fleece and Jesse's slippers, and made off with their minivan to go visit the babies. She would stick her hand into their incubators on the nights the nurse's told her she couldn't move them, holding their hand contently for hours before Jesse would wake up to find her gone. He knew immediately where to find her, but getting her to leave was an unhealthy and difficult battle, because he knew he couldn't reason with her.
She would sing to them (that she did in private because she would die if anyone knew or let alone saw her soft side) sometimes being able to rock them back and forth as she did so. Luna was the one who seemed to react to it the most, and Beca loved watching her as she did so. Luna would gurgle and smile with happy, content, and fulfilling gas bubbles, being well fed, drowsy, and comforted by her mommy.
Mila simply loved just being kept company. If Beca did so much as anything more than sing to her she would cry, practically inconsolable. The nurses reassured that she had sensitive skin, and that skin to skin pained the little girl's under-developed body. Beca had felt like there was nothing she could do to comfort her, until one of the nurses suggested that Beca recorded her heartbeat for the girls.
Nina's temperature would drop, her body unable to regulate her heartbeat and temp, and she was hooked up to so many wires that Beca felt guilty for not being able to hold her. She was freezing despite the warm light and blankets on her, and it wasn't until they discovered that placing Mila in with her was what was keeping her alive, and it was quite strange at the same time it made sense that her sister, the one she shared the womb with, would help.
The warmth and comfort of her twin sister in the womb and now connecting with her inside was helping her. Nina spent so much time sharing the embryo with Mila that being separated was putting her in distress. Her sister, her womb-mate, they didn't share a heartbeat, but it felt pretty darn close.
"I love you." She would whisper, remembering how her own mother would sound when she tucked Beca into bed at night.
Beca's mother and herself did not have the greatest relationship, but neither did Beca and her dad until Beca started college and joined the Bella's. Sheila was just another obstacle in Beca's life that she would ignore, even though as a child she was always around. Sheila was the mother that Beca never truly had, and as much as Beca hated to admit it, she loved the step-monster. That was until she hit her teenage rebellion years and started throwing up walls to protect herself from the cruel world.
"I love you like Peanut butter loves Jelly." Sheila would kiss three-year-old Beca goodnight, flicking off the lights and leaving the door open just a crack.
"Love you, She-wah." She would giggle in her small, toddler voice.
Beca longed for the same connection with her babies, being able to read to them and individually tuck them into bed, even when life felt like it was out of control. She knew that life was about to get more hectic, crazier as the eventually would begin to be able to take home the babies. But she longed for that family life, to be home and settled in with her husband, and four babies at once didn't seem so bad anymore.
"Jess, can we please consider a new home?" Beca had begged him, the day the doctor had mentioned bringing Lettie and Luna home soon.
Jesse had known about the nursery and wanted to so badly tell her to hang on, that there was something amazing in store for when they came, but instead, much to his wife's annoyance, shrugged it off and tried to distract her with the fact that they had more time to consider moving, preferably when the babies weren't so little.
It was 2:04 a.m. and Beca was contently rocking her babies, Luna and Lettie propped up on her bare, open chest. She loved the warm feeling of their skins touching, and the sound of their tiny hearts beating and quiet breaths as a sign of life. A sign that they were here and they were fighting, despite being hooked up to a machine that helped make it easier.
The night nurse eventually would pop in, at 4:10 precisely. She knew because every morning she came to help with and watch to learn about their feedings, and would slip away sneakily back into bed after she finished. She didn't know if Jesse knew of her slipping away at night, but if he knew, certainly he didn't care.
This morning was different though, because she had been involved with feedings and she longed for Jesse to be there so that he could help too. Once the babies began eating more and breathing on their own they could leave, and she hoped to be there when the nurse finally decided that. They first had to also pass a car seat test, and imagined and replayed in her head the moment they would tell her she could leave with the babies.
"I've brought some of my own milk again." Beca informs the night nurse.
They had been adding in breast milk a little bit to see if the babies would take it, and to wean them off of formula. Beca knew it would be expensive to formula feed them, but she didn't realize how much harder it would be to breast feed them, especially if she had hoped to build and work in her own studio one day. Breast feeding four babies was harder than she thought, even if she thought she knew what was best.
Beca struggled at first getting them to latch. She had been so dependant on her breast pump and the babies weren't used to this that when they never did get the hang of it, she began to bawl, feeling as if she had failed as a mom. It was then that the nurse smiled, grabbing Lettie from Beca and offering her the bottle with Beca's gentle head nod as permission.
"Beca, you don't have to feed them with your milk because that's what everyone else says you should. Lots of women don't, just because it's not what's best for them. So don't stretch yourself thin thinking you have to feed them that way because you are entitled you raise your babies how you see fit."
"I'm trying to do what's beneficial for them and their health."
"And that may not be what's best for all of you. Stress can actually affect the milk production and quality more than you may think. It's not for everyone, and lots of mom's who plan on going back to work and don't want to pump choose it. This is something that needs to be beneficial for all of you. It's not fair to you or the babies to stretch yourself this thin."
Beca knew the nurse was right: She couldn't handle pumping, feeding and taking care of all four babies at the same time. She of course wasn't alone in this, but Jesse couldn't pump and if they both hoped to go back to work, it would be a real inconvenience.
She eventually agreed it wasn't best for the whole family for Beca to have to constantly stop and pump for the babies at home or for daycare. Sure, it was cheaper and more accessible at times, but Beca, who was much more reserved, didn't like the idea of having to pump in public, no matter if it was natural or not.
"I'm going to do what's best for the babies, because they're my priorities. And I don't think it'll be easy to breastfeed them all. Formula may be a convenience. I may not be able to provide them natural milk, but at least I know I'm making the decision on how I want my babies raised, and not how society says I should." Beca states, feeling bold for taking the reigns and deciding not to go into the social stigma against not breastfeeding.
