They say a woman becomes a mother when she finds out that she is pregnant

Happy mother's day!

Content warnings: pregnancy mentions, infertility discussions

Don't forget that you can find me on tumblr: we - are - all - of - legend - now and that my ao3 account is wearealloflegendnow (even though I haven't posted there yet)!

~TLL~

Rose sat on her sister's living room floor, watching her nieces run around her in circles. She was happy to have them place crowns on her head and swipe blue eye shadow across her face. The twins, Earleen and Eleanor, were still a few months shy of their third birthday, and they moved on quickly when their mother announced that it was snack time. Rose helped her twin, Emma, strap the two girls into their seats and serve them cheese, crackers, and carefully cut up strawberries and left them chewing away at the dining room table while they moved a few steps away to sit around the kitchen island. Emma kept an eye on them as she poured freshly made lemonade into glasses. It was a beautiful, warm day and Rose knew that she should be happy, sitting with her family, but, instead she was just jealous.

"El!" Emma snapped. "Stop stealing Er's crackers!"

The children both startled, snapping their little hands back into their chests and looking around furtively. Earleen stuck her fingers in her mouth while Eleanor went back to stealing her sister's crackers, even though she hadn't touched her own.

Emma sighed.

"Do you ever regret their names?" Rose asked. "Em, Ed, El, Er …"

"Eddie and I thought 'E' names were cute!" Emma said defensively. "Plus, Earleen is a family name for him; I had no choice. At least 'Eleanor' I got to pick."

"What happened to naming your firstborn 'Brittany'?"

Emma smiled to herself. "I still love that name and maybe if I ever get my singleton, that's what her name will be."

"So singleton can be singled out?"

Emma swirled her straw in her glass. "When are you having one so I can harass you and Jake about your choices?"

Rose took a sip of her lemonade. "We're almost thirty-six, Em. I don't know if we're ever going to get one. It's been ten years of trying and you know we spent all that time and money with the doctors and I still …"

Emma's hand covered Rose's and Rose felt comforted, that someone else understood. Jake tried to understand and, she knew, that he did up to a point. They both wanted a child with each other and they didn't have their child. But, it felt different, more of a failure, to know that she was supposed to grow that child, and her body was failing her. She looked away from Emma's understanding gaze and back over at the twins. She'd been overjoyed when Emma had announced her pregnancy but every day she had spent picking out outfits for her new nieces was another day where she went home and cried in Jake's arms that she had never been able to buy a single thing for their baby.

"I'm still not pregnant," Rose said miserably. "And I've always wanted to be. And, I feel like I might be out of chances for that specific dream."

"Rose, you know, there's more than one dream –"

"Almost out of chances," Rose whispered, more to herself, caught in her own world, barely aware that Emma was speaking to her.

"Almost?"

Rose looked up at her sister's face and confessed something that she hadn't even been able to bring herself to tell Jake. "I'm late. Like, really late. And I brought a pregnancy test and I've been carrying it around in my purse for weeks because I want to bad for it to be positive that I can't bring myself to take it."

"Rose, you need to," Emma said, as gently as possible. "No, don't cry. But, you need to know, because if you are pregnant, you need to be on prenatal vitamins and see a doctor and tell Jake and –"

"And worry it'll be taken away from me."

"Whether or not you take that test what is true will still be true," Emma said.

"MAMA!" Eleanor started crying. "Out! Out! Out!"

Rose drained her lemonade and went to help with Earleen. She drank another glass of lemonade and when she had to use the bathroom, she went to her purse and took out the pregnancy test. Emma put the kids in their beds for their naps and then she came in to sit with Rose on the bathroom floor, waiting out the last sixty seconds.

"Time to look."

Rose felt like she was going to be sick. She crossed her fingers behind her back and chanted in her mind over and over again: two pink lines, two pink lines, two pink lines. What she wouldn't give to see them and be able to go home and tell Jake and cry together, those tears being ones of happiness this time, rather than the overwhelming sadness they had gone through time and time again.

"You look," Rose whispered, closing her eyes. "I can't."

"You need to be the one to look."

Rose took a deep breath, opened her eyes, and stood up, feeling like her knees were going to give out on her. Rose picked up the pregnancy test and promptly burst into tears, sinking back down to the floor.

"Rose," Emma said, but Rose shook her head.

"I'm pregnant," she sobbed, all of the years of trying and wondering and trying to come to terms with the dream she wanted and the life she was living combined with the joy that for the very first time, after all of these tests that she had been taken and been so sure of only to be let down, that she had a positive. "I'm gonna have a baby!"

Emma threw her arms around her and Rose cried into her sister's shoulder.

"I'm so happy for you," Emma said, and Rose could tell her sister was crying too.

"I'm gonna have a baby," Rose said in disbelief and she felt like her face was going to burst from her smile. "I need to get home. I have to be home when Jake gets home!"

Emma kissed Rose's temple. "Call me in the morning, okay? Tell me how he reacts."

"You know he's going to cry," Rose said.

"That's because Jake always cries. I remember him bawling like a baby at your wedding."

"Love you," Rose said.

"I love you too," Emma said. "And congratulations, Mama."

Rose grinned and squealed, placing a hand on her abdomen.

Mama.

Well, she liked the sound of that.

(-.-)

Rose wasn't a housewife. She wasn't anything close to a housewife. She was a CPA; she spent a good chunk of her time at a cushy corporate job that paid that bills so that she could spend her weekends stage acting with a local troupe and taking Jake to Bali for their anniversary. Jake spent some of his time saving the city, some of his time patrolling, and a good portion of his week making her increasingly fancy meals. The only time Rose wandered into the kitchen was to make herself fancy espressos in the morning and to get a muffin he had made for her for her morning commute.

Now, Rose stood in their condo's kitchen, wearing one of Jake's cringy kitchen aprons, this one in black with a whisk on the front in white, circled by large print reading 'DON'T BE AFRAID TO TAKE WHISKS'. She was staring impatiently at her pesto sauce in the blender, a package of gnocchi at her side, absentmindedly thinking about how she wouldn't be having one of her fancy espressos for a while.

"That's okay," Rose said, speaking to her baby. Her baby! "I have one chance for you. I can have espressos later."

What would it feel like, when her baby could kick? She wondered how far along she was and she wondered when her baby could hear her.

"Rose? You're home?"

Rose's heart leapt. Jake was early. She'd had a whole plan in her head: he would come home and dinner would already be done, she'd have candles lit, and she'd have lipstick on.

"Kitchen," she answered.

"I thought you were with Emma today. That's usually a marathon thing." Jake moved into the kitchen. "And you're cooking? I had steaks in the fridge!"

"We can have steaks tomorrow," Rose said, "I was craving some pesto and I wanted to do something for you. Come help?"

"Anything for you." He kissed Rose in greeting. "That apron looks good on you."

"I thought so," Rose said, preening, even though she never put lipstick on.

They settled into a comfortable silence, Jake finishing off the garlic chicken that would go on top of the pesto gnocchi, while Rose made the gnocchi and fed him taster bites of the pesto. Rose did manage to light her candles, though, and she put together their place settings with a little more sophistication than usual.

"At home date night?" Jake asked. "Should I get some wine?"

"Um, no, not really feeling like drinking tonight."

It wasn't unusual for her and there was no flicker of suspicion in Jake's eyes as he poured them sparkling water instead. They took their seats next to each other, and, as they usually did, their feet touched under the table.

"So, how's Earl and Eleanor?"

"Emma hates that you call her 'Earl'."

"Everyone is going to call her 'Earl'," Jake scoffed. "That's her life."

"That's true," Rose agreed. "The chicken's really good."

"And you did a good job on the pesto."

Rose grinned at him over the table. Soon, it wouldn't be just them at this dinner table, talking quietly over candlelight with music playing softly in the background. They would have their own messy, squealing baby to hold and feed and keep them up and away from enjoying this, and Rose couldn't wait. She hadn't quite decided on a speech yet but one popped into her head and she knew that she couldn't wait to tell him. Rose didn't keep secrets from Jake.

"They're getting a new cousin, you know."

"Oh? Sam's pregnant again? Good. Riley's been so jealous of Earl and Eleanor having a sister."

Ed's sister and son. Rose shook her head.

"Really? Josh and … what's her name? They just started dating, didn't they?"

"Ashley, three months ago, and no, she's not pregnant."

"Ed doesn't have any other siblings," Jake said, his fork stilling over his plate as he looked up at Rose.

Rose could see him starting to put the pieces together but she couldn't wait for him to get there on his own. She blurted, "but Emma does!"

"Emma's just got you," Jake said, and he dropped his fork with a clatter. "Rose?"

"I took a pregnancy test at Emma's today and I have a doctor's appointment set up for tomorrow morning," Rose said, feeling herself start to tear up again.

"Are we pregnant?"

"We're pregnant!"

Jake threw himself across the table to seize Rose out of her chair. She grabbed onto him as he spun her around and then kissed her. Rose locked her arm around his neck as his hand slid down the line of her side. He knew her so well; he knew every inch of her. And all of that was about to touch. Jake's hand crossed her abdomen and Rose met his eyes. She could see from his expression that he was thinking of everything that she was: the late nights, wrapped in each other's arms, talking about what they would name a boy or a girl or how they would decorate a nursery or if they would have a gender reveal, especially for the first one. At the beginning, they had also talked if they were going to have five or six kids and how the conversation about what they were going to do for each baby was going to change. As they years went by, they talked of two or three children. In the last few years, they had stared at the ceiling and prayed for one.

"I love you," Jake said.

"I love you too."

Jake knelt in front of her, lifted her baggy grey tee that had once belonged to him and kissed her stomach, tears of joy on his cheeks. "And I love you, baby, so much. Welcome to the family."