As I promised, something more lighthearted today :-)

The next days and weeks, while taking care of her daughter, Amy was pondering a lot over the recent events. Why had things been the way they were? Why had everything taken so awfully long? Why had she had the awfully heavy contractions, why had the baby's heart sounds been so bad? And why hadn't she felt any kind of happiness? Nobody at the hospital had been able to give her a proper answer. The baby was perfectly healthy (at least she didn't have to worry about that!), the doctors had checked her thoroughly, so maybe something had been wrong with Amy herself? Or maybe the opening in her beck bone had been too small for the baby's head? They hadn't checked that in hospital... But if she ever would be pregnant again (and she really wasn't sure anymore if she ever would want to have another child) she would get that measured, that was for sure!

She had asked her friends for advice how to deal with that experience. Howard had suggested to forget it and just look forward, as he had done it when his father had left the family. Penny and Leonard had said, it could be helpful to see a therapist, after all, they both had had a very good talk with Dr. Gallo.
Her mum had said she should not complain, in the Bible it was written "with pain thou shalt bear children". Mary had said she didn't understand how that could have happened. Some weeks ago, she had called the worship team of her church, and they all had prayed together for her having an easy birth giving and for the health of the baby.
Sheldon's idea had been the best of course, he had promised trying to invent a time machine and travel back in time to ask for a planned C-section even before the laboring would have started.

The baby… she still referred to her like that. But they finally had found a name.

„Do you think she looks similar to one of us?" Amy asked Sheldon after some days.

"Hm, I don't know… But somehow I think she looks familiar, as if I have seen her face before somewhere…"

"Really?"

„Yeah, I just don't know anymore – Oh, I remember now! It was a picture frame in Robert's house. On the picture, it was black and white, there was an old lady, sitting on a chair, dressed in clothes that looked like from the beginning of the last century. She had a serious expression on her face and behind her was standing a man in a black suit, who had laid one of his hands on her shoulder."

"Oh, that must have been Robert's grandmother, my great grandmother. She was called Rosalind."

"Like Rosalind Franklin! Who sadly never got a Nobel and who was accused from her colleagues as being unattractive because of never wearing make-up and fancy dresses…"

„Or like Rosalind in Shakespeare's „as you like it" who found love although she was dressed like a man."

"I like that name…"

"I like it, too!"

They looked at each other.

„Do you think the kids on the schoolyard could bully her fort hat name? I mean, it's pretty old fashioned?" Amy asked worried.

"If she wants to, her friends could use an abbreviation like "Rose" or "Linda". I mean, "Penny" is also an abbreviation, don't you think so? I'm sure her real name is Penelope."

"Maybe. Heck, why don't we know that? We even don't know her maiden name!" Amy was shaking her head in disbelief.

"So, we call her Rosalind?"

"Rosalind!"

"Ok, one moment please..." Sheldon took out his phone and typed in something.

"What are you doing?"

At that moment there was the sound of an incoming E-Mail on Amy's phone. She shot a glance on it. It was an Outlook-invitation for an annually recurring appointment: "Rosalind's birthday (2018)".

Rosalind war a lovely child and she seemed to be intelligent, too. At least she used to observe her surroundings attentively. But when she started crying, and unfortunately, she did not cry very seldom, Amy was at a loss. She never knew with certainty, what was wrong! "You are the mother, you have to know it!" God, how much she hated that stupid sentence! How could she always know what her baby wanted or needed? So, when Rosalind was crying, Amy was always following the same routine: first, she took her on her arms and talked to her. When she still was crying then, she tried to find out if she could feel too warm or too cold or if her clothes were uncomfortable. When she still was crying then, she had a look at her diaper. And when she was still crying then, and most of the times she was, Amy tried it with breastfeeding. That always helped. Even if Rosalind was not hungry at all. But it calmed her and often she fell asleep while she was drinking.
Amy and Sheldon had a lot of discussions because of that. Sheldon wanted her to adhere to a strict time schedule and breastfeed only once in three hours, because he wanted to be able to plan the day in advance, he hated when she had to breastfeed in public (well, honestly, she didn't like that, too), he didn't like to get disturbed every two hours or even more in the night and furthermore, Beverly had said that she would spoil the child. But Amy didn't want to hear what Beverly said about raising kids.
Actually, she read a lot of books about raising children. But they all were constantly contradicting each other. At least most of them agreed, that in case of doubt a mother should listen to her instinct, and although Amy's instinct often just didn't seem to exist, she was sure of one thing: she would rather breastfeed her daughter all day without any pause then hearing her crying. Because that surely ripped her heart into pieces, even without having developed strong maternal feelings yet .

Sheldon tried to help as good as he could, even if his instincts seemed to be even less developed than her's. He did the groceries, the laundry, checked the safety of the car seat and the buggy every week und purelled everything that approached Rosalind to a distance of three meters. But somehow he had always managed to avoid to change Rosalind's diapers. Until now.

"Sheldon, please, I'm really exhausted. Do you know how often I have cleaned her? It's not as awful as you think. "

Reluctantly, Sheldon put a clean cloth on his shoulder, took Rosalind cautiously from Amy's arms and laid her on his chest, her head above his shoulder.

"Just to make this clear: I will use rubber gloves!"

"Don't be silly, you don't need them, you also don't use them when you clean your own butt!"

Sheldon didn't look at Amy, he just stared awkwardly at his feet.

"Sheldon?"

There was still only silence.

"You really wear rubber gloves while cleaning your own – I can't believe that! I always thought the box of rubber gloves next to the toilet was for cleaning the bathroom!"

"Now you know better!" Sheldon answered uppish and with a high raised head he swaggered into the bathroom.

Amy stayed in the living room for a while, shaking her head in disbelief. Then she sighed. Quirks and all! Well, in the end, that was one of the reasons she loved him so much.

She got up to the bathroom to apologize and to see if he got along with this new task. But when she opened the door he didn't hear her. So she watched him thoroughly cleaning Rosalind's butt, throwing the rubber gloves into the trash bin, putting on a fresh diaper (oh, it was the other way around, she would have to tell him later) and cleaning his hands afterwards.

"Ok, Rosy, you're fresh again!" He closed the onesie and put on her tiny pants and socks again. Then he laid his elbows on the changing table, took her head in his hands and lifted her upper body, so that she could have a better look at him.

"You know, I'm working on it. The rubber gloves and all. But your Mummy has no idea how hard that is for me. And she is the one who knows me best!" He sighed. "I just hope, I have not passed all those problems of mine on you. It's not easy growing up and living with all those fears."

He paused. "But even if you should turn out as a genius or at least a very intelligent girl, and I'm counting on that, I know you're too small for understanding me. Maybe next year we'll talk again…" He briefly considered what to do next. Then he smiled. "My mum always used to do this to me and my siblings, do you like it, too?" He tenderly rubbed his nose against Rosalind's. She just looked at him with big eyes. He rubbed their noses against each other again and suddenly a huge smile appeared on her face.

In that moment, Amy finally felt it. Like a ray of sunlight breaking through thick grey clouds, encasing the ground below in a warm and joyful glow, like a wave on the ocean building up higher and higher and then collapsing on her in all its sparkling and roaring glory: the love for her child. Here it was, overwhelming her completely with its force. In this moment she felt that everything she had suffered from in her pregnancy and while giving birth, had been worth it. This was her daughter, her Rosalind, a person that was unique in the whole universe and that only existed because Sheldon and herself loved each other. She would do anything for this child, who gave a new, additional sense to her life that she had not considered possible until now. She thought of the night when Sheldon and she had tried making a baby for the first time. What an unbearable thought it was if they had been successful that day. Because that meant Rosalind would not exist now. And a life with her was simply not thinkable anymore.