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.

She looked at the clock next to her bed. Noah had just started to fuss – not more than two minutes before she'd set the alarm to get up and give him his feeding. She propped herself up in her bed and ran her hands through her hair, trying to truly wake herself before heading over to her infant son's bassinette.

When she'd first got bring home her baby – she'd had mixed feelings. She had so badly wanted to get him home. But that had been quickly replaced with the terror that she might break him or he might have some sort of emergency and she wouldn't have the NICU nurses there to help or care for him – that she wouldn't know what to do. That hadn't really happened, though. And, the initial trepidation and slowly settled into a routine as she and Noah worked at figuring out a routine for themselves – that revolved around his eating and sleeping schedule.

It really was an easy enough schedule – if a little exhausting. Noah wasn't really a fussy baby. She knew she was lucky with that. He just slept and slept. He'd wake and fuss a little when he wanted to be fed or against his wet diaper. Sometimes he was too cold, as he still worked at building up his weight and body fat – and she'd swaddle him and cuddle him more to warm him against her body.

Though having been home with him a few weeks now – there were moments that she started to notice herself feeling twinges of monotony about the schedule – of the feeding and burping and diaper changes and washing laundry and folding laundry and pumping breast milk and bathing him and babbling nonsense at him and comforting him as he fussed or cried and then doing it all again on an endless repeat. But then there were the moments where she was holding Noah and she just couldn't stop looking at him.

She still couldn't believe he was hers. She loved looking at his little features and letting him hold her finger in his little hand. She kept examining his tiny feet – and smelling him and feeling his soft skin against her when she held him. She loved the little sounds he made and how he'd rubbed his little ear against her chest when she placed him in kangaroo-care position with his ear against her heart – and how he'd root just a little bit at her. Each time she picked him up – she felt herself become more and more attached to him. She could feel it through her whole body – her entire being – in a way she'd never felt anything before. She loved it. It was still so mind-boggling to her that she was actually a mother and this little baby was a piece of her – to have and to hold and watch grow.

She flicked her bedside light to its dimmest position and stumbled a little over to his bassinette. She looked down at him where he was squirming and starting to turn red with small wails to her that he was hungry. She smiled down at him and picked him up, drawing him to her. She bounced him a bit.

"Feeding time already, sweets?" She asked. "It feels like we just went to sleep, doesn't it?"

She carried him out to the living room, already starting to work at hiking up her tank top for him. She settled into what had become their favourite spot on the couch and cradled him. Her son quickly found what he was looking for. She just watched his dark silhouette – listening to his greedy suckling sounds and his little breaths between his gulps. She ran her finger down his one little ear.

"You can slow down, Noah," she whispered to him. "I'm not going anywhere."

Sometimes she felt a little silly how much she talked to him. But she couldn't stop herself – and she wanted him to know her voice even though she knew it'd still be a while before she got much recognition from him that he was even really hearing or processing that she was speaking to him. She didn't care.

Noah was usually a slow feeder. Despite showing interest in feeding and having become an expert rooter, he'd dawdle after he got to it. She knew part of it was that her let-down was slow and he'd have to wait a few minutes even after he got latched on. He'd often get a little uninterested too – and his suck would change even though he wouldn't let go of her nipple. She'd have to slowly get him to let go and bring him to her other side to get him to try again.

"What's the big hurry tonight?" She asked him.

At night he was often a bit more relaxed at how he went at her. But not that night. She knew she'd be up a bit longer than usual, trying to get him to burp after. As she held him too, she could feel him have a poop. His favourite time to have a bowel movement seemed to be while he was feeding. The doctor had joked with her at his last check-up that he was an in-and-out baby.

But he was steadily putting on weight and he seemed like a happy and content baby. His jaundice had improved and his breathing wasn't showing any signs of problems since getting home. Her greatest fear was that something with his lungs might give out and she'd be so far from the hospital and waiting for the medics to arrive. She was slowly learning not to be as paranoid about it all. She knew babies were resilient. She'd seen it before. But it was still hard to look at such a tiny little person – who was hers – and tell herself that. She so desperately wanted to protect him from everything.

She felt him finish nursing and move into his comforting suckle. She knew from experience that if she let him, he'd cuddle against her and stay at her breast for up to an hour. But that wasn't going to happen in the middle of the night. She'd been warned to not let the behaviour go on too long, or the comforting might turn into something he needed and wanted before a nap or bed. She wasn't sure how much it mattered at this point, though – since his whole life seemed to revolve around sleeping, eating and pooping. So she let him continue for a bit. Besides, she kind of liked that he needed her that way and she was able to provide comfort to him – by really not doing anything but being there for him.

He squirmed a little more and brought his open mouth away from her a bit – and she gently replaced her nipple with a finger pushing down on his bottom lip. He seemed a little unimpressed at first but then adjusted to the change and she brought him up to work at burping him. Despite his greedy and gulping nursing that night, he didn't seem much interested in burping. So eventually she stood off the couch and bounced him a bit more.

"You going to burp, sweetheart? Or should we just go and get a fresh nappy on you?"

She kept bouncing him gently and patting his back as she wandered back to the bedroom and he finally did let out a little hiccup of a burp.

She smiled and patted his back some more. "Good job, Noah."

She put him down on the changing table in the corner of her bedroom. The room felt stupidly crowded at the moment – between her bed, his bassinette, the changing table and the piles of baby supplies that had taken up camp in there. She knew that she likely needed to get a bigger place. But she'd looked into it before he was born and the reality was she just couldn't afford it at the moment – not with all the other baby expenses. She'd initially thought having a newborn in a one-bedroom apartment wouldn't be that big of deal. She could wait to upgrade to a two-bedroom when he was a little older. She wanted to keep the baby near here anyways.

But she'd quickly learned that having the extra bedroom just to store the surplus of crap that she'd suddenly accumulated in her life likely should've been a bit bigger priority. Not only did all the baby stuff have her bedroom bursting at the seams, but it had exploded all over her living room and kitchen counter too. She thought it was likely a good thing that she didn't have many friends who were coming over to check in on them.

Really Elliot was the only person who was stopping by. Their first week home, he'd been by every second day – until she'd expressed to him in no uncertain terms that that was too much and he was more than crossing a line. He'd managed to reign it in to stopping by once a week at that point. She appreciated his efforts – and that he was thinking of her and trying to help. It was also nice to have a bit of adult company and conversation – even if it was only a short visit. But it also bothered her. It made her feel like he didn't think she could handle it on her own and that she needed someone checking in on her. She was fine, though, or at least she kept telling herself that. She had years of experience being alone and looking after herself. She could do that and look after a baby.

Though, sometimes as the exhaustion set in, she really could see why people had babies as couples – or they at least had their parents or families nearby to offer some help in those early days. She was still healing from her surgery, she was still getting into a routine with Noah, she was taking care of all his needs, doing all his feedings and also trying to get some food into herself and some sleep. There were definitely some days where it already was feeling overwhelming. But she knew that wasn't likely going to let up anytime soon. She knew it was part of the deal with having the baby and being a single mother. So she told herself again that it was what she wanted – that it was what she had so badly wanted – and she just tried to suck it up and focus on the beautiful little boy that she had out of it.

So the place stayed an absolute disaster and she continued to convince herself that she really had no interest in cleaning it for company. She just stumbled from one feeding to the next and one laundry to the next. She did try to tidy a bit when Noah slept – assuming she didn't need to crash into bed too to try to get a couple hours. But even what she did, it didn't much matter, it all just ended up back all over the place like a baby tornado had hit her living space.

She set him down and gathered the supplies to get him changed – and then worked at getting the diaper off her son.

"Yikes, that was a big one, Noah," she told him, as she worked at cleaning him up.

She wasn't a big fan of diaper duty. She just found it a little tedious. They'd tried to sell it as some extra one-on-one time while she got to participate in it at the NICU. Initially, when that had been some of the first one-on-one contact that she got to have with her son – she'd seen it as special. But she much preferred the cuddle time, play time and feeding time to cleaning up after his bodily functions. Though she was starting to get used to being peed on. Noah seemed to take every opportunity he had when it was all hanging out to take a pee – whether it was changing a diaper or while she gave him a little bath in the sink.

She'd been asked before they released him from NICU if she wanted to get him circumcised. It was something she'd put probably too much thought into after she'd found out she was having a boy. She kind of felt like it was an unfair question for her. What did she know? She didn't have a penis. She didn't feel qualified to make the right decision on what was best for her son in that area. While she'd worked at doing some research and making up her mind – she also hadn't thought about the fact she might be looking at a fragile, little pre-term baby when she had to give them the final answer. Part of her had wanted to say that that was something for her son to decide for himself when he was older. But it also sounded like a crappy decision and procedure for a man to have to endure when he was older – if that's what he wanted or some medical issue cropped up that he needed it. But if it sounded horrible for a grown man – why would she want to put her tiny, infant son through that? Didn't he have enough to deal with in getting through the first hurdles of life without having to have more doctors poking and prodding at him?

She'd felt like she'd gone in endless circular thought before she finally made a choice – and just hoped it was best. That she wasn't making it too much from a woman's point of view or a mother's point of view – but just from a medical or a societal point of view. At least, that's what she tried to tell herself – and told herself that it was another thing she couldn't dwell on. She'd have to make a lot of decisions for him as a parent. Right or wrong – there'd be hard ones and easy ones. She just had to suck it up and not worry that every choice she made was somehow damaging her child.

He didn't seem damaged yet. Of course, he was only just over five weeks old. How much could she really damage him in a month of life? No – that'd be a long-term effort, where he could grow to love her and hate her like all kids eventually did their mothers. She hoped he wouldn't ever hate her too much – and that she'd manage to do right by him.

She patted his belly as she finished. She could see him already starting to drift back to sleep.

"We going to sleep a little more Noah?" She asked him.

She couldn't wait until he got older and she could see his personality start to develop and learn about his interests and his talents. Watch him turn into a little person. She couldn't wait to see bits of her in him – more than his eyes and his hair. She could see that already. As much as she loved holding and cuddling with him now – she couldn't wait until he was able to hug and kiss and cuddle her back. Or that he'd babble at her. That she could have silly conversations with him and sing-song. She just couldn't wait to learn more about who he was and to share that growing experience with him. But that all was going to have to wait. One day at a time.

She rubbed his belly some more – working at soothing him back to sleep as his eyes got heavier and he stirred less and less.

"OK, sweets," she told him softly. "Mommy's going to lay down again for a while too. I'm right over there. Right here."