"I was surprised too…"
"H-how long have you known?" Spencer asked nervously.
"I just found out for sure the day before yesterday…I didn't want to tell you over the phone…I wanted to wait until you were here with me…"
He smiled.
"You know what this means right? We should start making plans to turn one of the spare bedrooms into a nursery…and there's something else you and I need to talk about…" She said, but Spencer wasn't listening anymore.
He was too busy stalking around the house like a whirlwind, reading the ingredients on the packaging of just about every household chemical, cleaner, and medication they owned, if it contained anything that could hurt Maeve or the baby before or after he or she was born, he threw it into a black garbage bag. When he was done, there wasn't much left in terms of cleaning supplies.
"What…are you doing?" She asked.
"I'm gathering up all the teratogens and getting them out of this house…"
"OK, did you hear what I said earlier…?"
"Which part? That we needed to start planning things out or that there's something else you want to discuss?"
"Either…both…apparently you did hear both… We need to deal with the second part first…"
Sensing that it was something important, he stopped what he was doing and turned to face her.
"What is it…?"
"Actually it has to do with what you're doing right now… I can't be in my lab… not until the baby comes, probably not even while I'm nursing… there's literally at least a hundred different substances in there that could cause anything from congenital heart defects to missing organs to immune deficiency to limb hypoplasia and after birth could put them at risk for developmental problems… I can't be in there… So we have to decide where I will be for the next probably at least two years…"
"As in…?"
"As in do I just take extended maternity leave as of now? Or do I keep working, just in a different capacity? I could work down in the hospital or I could teach the non-lab genetics and biology classes as a professor…or maybe even both…but we have to decide before Monday so I can tell my department head before I'm expected in the lab…"
"What do you want to do?" He asked her.
"Honestly, if I'm stuck at home for eight to nine months I think I'll lose it… So think I'll work in the hospital until the semester ends in a month, then I'll teach the next two terms and still be available to the hospital when they need me…"
"That sounds like a plan to me…I just have one question…"
"Which would be…?"
"Are you sure there aren't any teratogens in the hospital?" He said, in that serious and yet subdued tone of his that usually signaled worry.
"Well I wouldn't say none… but not the kind that can be harmful just by incidental exposure…it'll be fine…"
"Are you sure…?" he asked.
"Yes."
"You're absolutely certain…?"
"Yes, Spencer…what are you going to do…follow me around puppy guarding me for nine months?"
"No…" he replied, but by the way he said it she could tell that in all honesty he didn't actually think that was such a bad idea. This was going to be a long nine months.
By the end of the day, he had just about the whole place childproofed to the point where it was about as safe as a much cleaner version of the bouncy play-lands that were sometimes found inside fast food restaurants. Soft covers were on every single sharp edged table and counter in the house, all unused outlets had little, plastic covers on them, and he'd wrapped thick layers of soft foam around chair and table legs and tied it in place with twine.
"You do know that we have about eight and a half months to get all that done right?"
"Why wait? With my work schedule I need to start getting this stuff done while we have the time. Speaking of which…how do we want to do the nursery? Do we do it neutral and wait until he/she is born? Or do we find out beforehand if it's a boy or a girl and decorate accordingly?"
"Well considering that short of a DNA test we can't know for at least another couple of months…"
He eyed her with a pleading look.
"Ok, we can start picking out the basic furniture this weekend, we'll find out at the four month mark and then we can finish decorating…" she told him.
"Alright…" he said, then he took a tape-measure out of the garage and set about measuring the spare room nearest to where he and Maeve slept. Then, on a few sheets of graph paper he drew out maps of several different possible layouts of how much space they could afford to let a given item take up and where to place it. Once he was satisfied that he'd chosen their most sensible option, he put it up on the fridge where either of them could find it easily.