Title: Beginnings
Author: ZombieJazz
Fandom: Law & Order: SVU
Disclaimer: I don't own them. Law and Order SVU and its characters belong to Dick Wolf. The characters of Will (and his family) and Noah have been created and developed for the sake of this AU series.
Summary: Olivia's baby arrives - but not without complications. Elliot's there to help her through, though. This story is set after Changes and is a prequel to A Complicated State of Happiness and Undeserved.
Author's Notes: This AU series is for SVU fans and readers who want Olivia to have something that resembles a more normal life outside of work and a family of her own - hopefully somewhat realistically within the canon of SVU. Her relationship with Elliot is that of partner and protective older brother and colleague.
Elliot followed her into her apartment after she'd unlocked it and trudged in. She was still favouring her abdomen and walking in a stride that suggested her discomfort. But they'd released her. It was a little surprised they'd managed to get her to leave the hospital, though. He partially suspected she was humouring him in letting him drive her home – and that not long after he was out the door she'd be calling the cab and headed back.
She'd gotten to see Noah again about six hours after he'd been born and gaze at him from a wheelchair that a nurse had snuck her into to take her down to NICU. But she had had to wait for a long 36 hours before she'd even gotten to go in and hold her little boy's hand through the hole in the oxygen tent and warming bed – where a mess of wires was still coming off of him.
The wait and the frustration had been made worse as she was held up in her own hospital bed – worrying and stressing about when she'd get to see her baby, when she'd get to nurse him, what the missed bonding time would mean and if he was really OK. It made the hours seem endless – no matter how many drugs they were pumping into her to deal with the pain she was still experiencing. She just felt like she'd spent the time drifting in and out of agitated consciousness.
It'd only been made harder by the fact that she hadn't yet been allowed to hold him again. It pained her. But he still had too many wire and IVs and feeding tubes and monitors attached to him. Her initial joy at seeing the screaming little baby in the OR had quickly been replaced by the terror of feeling a fragile infant, yellow with jaundice and squeaking as he tried to take in air into his under-developed lungs.
But at least he was there – and he was alive – and she was alive. She'd been kicking herself and cursing herself. She'd had a silent placenta abruption. There hadn't been the rush of blood out of her – creating the telltale shock that something was seriously wrong. Instead the blood had been collecting and building the pressure behind her placenta – and she'd sat there all day convincing herself that it was just Braxton Hicks and she wasn't going to embarrass herself for the third time in less than two weeks by calling her OB-GYN and complaining that she thought she was going into premature labour. If Elliot hadn't noticed she seemed off and hadn't twisted her arm into going to the hospital – her baby could be dead. She could be dead.
They'd sent her home on the fourth day. She'd initially gone and sat in the family waiting room outside the NICU waiting for the times she could go in and hold her baby's little hand and stroke his little face and belly and arms and legs and feet. But the chairs in there were so uncomfortable with her still healing abdominal and pelvic surgery. And times she was allowed to go in were so few and far between as the other families shuffled through too. The number of people inside and the actual visits were all too brief as the neonatologist and the nurses in the unit enforced a calm and quiet environment for the over-sensitive babies. They couldn't be over-stimulated. Their little, fragile bodies – ears, skin and eyes - couldn't handle it.
So, she was having to accept that it was the nurses who were providing the best care possible for her tiny son at the moment. They were the ones watching over him and making sure he was warm and changed and fed – by feeding tube or sometimes with a syringe. She'd been told that they'd got him to latch onto a bottle a couple times so far to get some formula but he was struggling.
She'd told the doctors she had planned to breastfeed. But with the early delivery and her not getting to be near the baby – she wasn't even producing enough milk when they had tried to pump. She was having a breastfeeding failure. They'd said that she could talk to a lactation consultant as Noah improved and see if they could coax him into breastfeeding and see if she'd begin lactating better. But they'd also warned that pre-term babies – no matter how late pre-term they were – often struggled with latching on and would tired quickly when they did. With Noah it was likely going to be a larger challenge because his lung development wasn't up to par and he would struggle with the suck, swallow, breath reflex. They'd stressed it was important to get the food and nutrients into him for his hydration and development – they didn't want him to fail to thrive. So she might just have to accept that she wasn't going to get to breastfeed her baby. It was another aspect of the motherhood experience that she just wasn't going to get to have.
It was hard. It felt like everything she'd planned in terms of how she wanted to have her baby and how she planned to spend those first days, weeks and months with him was being compromised. It was made worse with all the morphine and hormones churning through her system. She felt herself teetering on the edge of becoming a weepy post-partum mess more than once and it was taking all she had to keep it together. She thought if Elliot hadn't been checking in on her at the hospital so much – she likely would just be a huddled ball of tears and snot blubbering at the hospital staff.
But she'd had remind herself too that it could be far worse. The doctors had told her she'd be taking her son home likely in a matter of weeks, if not days. There were other parents there who'd been standing guard over their small babies for months. She'd seen the babies who were 1 lbs and ones born at 28 weeks. She'd seen the triplets who were smaller than her son even though they'd been born at 37 weeks. Then there were the babies who looked so incredibly fragile that she wondered how all this medical technology would guide them through – and if the child would actually grow up to be healthy after enduring all of this.
She knew her and her little boy were doing far better than many of the families in the NICU. Still, she had to admit that she'd thought of already – and begun asking questions about what this would mean for her boy in the long-term – his respiration, his eye sight, his weight and growth, his ability to thrive, his immune system and his cognitive development. Would he really be OK? They told her, yes, he likely should be. That most babies born in the 35th and 36th week of gestation really are so late-term, that they usually end up as normal, healthy, happy children. They just need some help getting through the first hurdles in the early days. So she tried to calm herself and reluctantly allowed Elliot to drive her home – to sit somewhere that wasn't quite as hard and as sterile for a few hours at least.
It felt strange stepping into her apartment, though. She was a mother now – and she was supposed to be bringing home her baby. Instead she was alone – expect for her partner trailing in quietly behind her. The quietness of the space somehow made it feel even more lonely and depressing than before. It wasn't how it was supposed to be. She was supposed to have Noah with her.
"You want me to put your bag in the bedroom for you?" Elliot offered, slinging the small duffle off his shoulder.
She rubbed at her eyebrow and examined the floor. "Ah, no, it's OK. You can just leave it there," she offered, gesturing to the floor near the kitchen counter where he was standing.
He nodded reluctantly. She knew it wasn't a big deal for him to walk a few more feet to her bedroom door to put the bag there – but she really just wanted him to leave. She knew he had been trying to be helpful over the last several days but the reality was she was already feeling like a failure as a mother and had so many emotions and thoughts about everything that was going on spinning through her head. She just wanted to be alone for a while.
She didn't want to have a chat with Elliot. She didn't want him to give her those 'It's OK' looks or for him to try to be her older brother or whatever the fuck he tried to be to her. She didn't want him to keep offering his help. She just wanted him to leave her in peace for a while.
"We put the bassinet together in the bedroom for you," he said.
Olivia had reluctantly let him take the keys to her apartment so he could retrieve some things for her to bring to the hospital and so he could put together the crib she'd been stressing about not being ready and waiting at home. But that had been when she still thought she'd be walking out of the hospital with her baby – not empty handed.
She nodded. "Thanks."
"If you'll be sleeping in here so you can sit upright for the next while, though, I can move it out here for you," he offered.
She glanced at her couch and chair. She hadn't even really thought about any of that. It was strange to her that it was something her male partner had. But getting up and down from a laying position was still hard in her recovery from the c-section. She just hadn't processed how she'd be managing that on her own yet – or if it would still be an issue by the time she got to bring Noah home.
"It's OK," she said. "Just leave it for now."
He nodded again and pointed at the counter. "Ah, Kathy picked up some preemie diapers for you and a few smaller onesies. We thought you might need them. Some formula."
She hung her head a bit. They were right. She probably did need them now. But it was still hard to know that someone else had to think of that for her too – and that the someone else had to be Kathy.
Her and Kathy had managed to smooth some of whatever their relationship was after she'd been there for Eli's birth. Still, she knew their relationship would always be strange and one of some sort of tension. They both just had to put up with each other. They had nothing in common but Elliot and neither of them particularly liked the other, she didn't think. But they'd slowly learned to just respect the other's existence. They both played very real roles – but very different roles – in Elliot's life. It just was what it was. There was no defining it. Yet, it was now Kathy's turn to try to help her and do something nice for her. It was just something that she wasn't in the mindset to properly wrap her head around at the moment.
"Thanks," she said instead. "Tell Kathy too. That was nice of her."
Elliot watched her. She was still holding her arm, guarding across her middle – and just looked so exhausted. "Are you sure you don't want me to go out and grab you some groceries? The other night when we were here, you fridge looked like you don't eat."
She allowed him a small smile – even though she wasn't that impressed that they'd been poking around her kitchen and wondered what else they'd stuck their noses into.
"It's OK," she said. "It will give me something to do."
"You shouldn't be carrying grocery bags right now," Elliot said.
"El," she snapped, growing impatient, but held up her hand in apology and to reel herself back in. "I'm sorry. I'm fine. I don't need groceries. I just want to be alone right now."
He moved back towards the door a bit. "You know if you need anything …"
She shook her head a bit and rolled her eyes – but sighed. "I'll call."
He nodded. "OK. I'll check in on you later."
He left her and pulled the door shut behind him. She heard him – and watched – as he locked the door from the outside with the key he'd now copied, without permission, she thought.
She sighed and looked around. It didn't look or feel like home anymore. She hobbled over to the couch and worked at lowering herself down. It was uncomfortable. She winced a bit in the process. But as she settled she glanced around again – and wondered what she was supposed to be doing now.
