A/N: This is approximately two months after the last chapter.
Friday, May 24, 5:20pm
"Emma, don't take this the wrong way, but have you lost your fucking mind?" Regina sighed, exasperated. "You're insane."
"I know."
"No, you're like, legitimately, certifiably insane," Regina reiterated, looking at her girlfriend as if she had completely lost all common sense.
"Regina, I know," she said as she sat down on the couch next to the brunette, absentmindedly petting Adagio, who had taken up residence on the back of the cushion.
"It wasn't even a year ago that you were insisting we weren't ready for kids, and now you want to bring another baby into our lives?"
"I—" Emma stopped herself mid-sentence. She knew it wasn't rational.
"Do not say 'I know' again or I swear to God, Emma…" Regina trailed off, resting a hand on her large baby bump as she closed her eyes and took a deep breath.
"Sorry," the blonde said meekly.
"Please tell me you didn't make any promises," Regina said, shifting her eyes over toward the other woman.
"Of course not," Emma scoffed. "I didn't even say anything. I wouldn't do that without talking with you first. I'm not a complete idiot."
"Well..."
Emma rolled her eyes. "You're funny."
"I wasn't trying to be."
"Fine. But can we talk about this seriously for a minute?" Emma asked tentatively.
"We can try, but it's kind of hard to concentrate. I've had indigestion since breakfast since your daughter insists on pressing on my esophagus when she isn't kicking me in the kidneys, and I'm going to have to pee again in like five minutes," Regina whined.
"That's my girl," Emma smirked. "A little Rockette in the making."
Regina said nothing, but sent her a glare.
"Okay, you're cranky. I get it. Maybe now isn't the best time," she said, standing up and heading out of the room.
"Emma, I'm sorry," Regina apologized. "I'm just super uncomfortable and irritable today. I feel like I gained another ten pounds since yesterday." She had recently entered her third trimester of her pregnancy, and every day she became more and more tired of being pregnant.
Emma frowned as she stopped and turned around. "Is there anything I can do?"
"If you want to give me a foot massage, I wouldn't object to it."
"That I can do," she nodded, plopping back down on the sofa and pulling Regina's swollen feet into her lap.
"Mmm, that feels nice," Regina commented as she closed her eyes.
They sat in silence for a few minutes as Emma continued to work out the cramps in Regina's feet. The brunette occasionally winced and Emma was quick to apologize, but Regina shrugged her off and said it was helping, but admitted that her feet were tender in places.
"Okay," Regina said as Emma kept up her task. "Let's talk."
"Really?" Emma asked.
"Yes. Just don't stop what you're doing. I assume you can talk and massage at the same time, right?"
"You're extra sassy with this surplus of hormones," Emma mumbled.
Regina flipped her off with a perfectly manicured finger as she closed her eyes again and rested her head against the back of the couch. "Talk. Explain to me how you went from 'I don't know if we're ready to have children yet, Regina,' 11 months ago to 'my girlfriend is about to give birth and hey, let's add another newborn to the mix,' because aside from temporary insanity, I'm coming up empty."
The blonde sighed. "I don't know. The idea just kind of hit me today. Paige came into the studio for the first time in a few months this afternoon. I guess she had to go into the high school's district office to take an exam in-person or something so she could officially graduate in June, even though her parents made her finish classes through correspondence school as soon as she started showing. Her grandmother let her stop by to say hello to all of us on her way back out of town."
"How's she doing, aside from the obvious?" Regina asked. She still felt badly for the teen. As predicted, her parents kicked her out of the house when they found out she was pregnant. Since she wasn't yet 18, Paige didn't have any say in where she stayed, so she ended up going to live with her maternal grandmother two hours away. Regina and Emma still weren't sure what excuse her parents gave the school, but with her father running for re-election in Parliament, he had enough political power that the school may not have asked any questions. Publicly, he said his daughter was sick and staying with family who had retired and could better look after her while she received treatment. Somehow, the media didn't dig around for the truth, making Regina believe that he may have paid them off. Regardless, his voters didn't seem to care. His reputation as a conservative, pro-life and pro-family politician was unmarred by his teenage daughter's secret pregnancy.
"It seems her grandmother isn't the worst possible caretaker, so at least she's not miserable. But, she hasn't been able to take dance classes since her parents kicked her out, so she's worried she's going to regress. She's doing what she can on her own, but she is losing a lot of valuable training time. She still wants to try to go on her scholarship convention tour this summer, though. It starts two weeks after her due date, so we'll see if that's even possible."
"I see," Regina said, starting to piece things together. "So, based on the way you came home declaring that you want to adopt Paige's baby, I'm guessing she's not planning on keeping it."
"She can't, Regina," Emma said, her thumbs pausing along the arch of Regina's right foot. "Her parents have said they will not have any role in the baby's life, as that would be 'political suicide' according to her father. Her grandmother is too old to raise a baby, and she doesn't have any close family who could adopt it. And she's only 17. She's not ready to be a mother, especially without any familial support and with her dance career ambitions. She can't take a newborn across the US when she's going from city to city and dancing for eight hours a day."
Regina sighed. "And you think it's a reasonable idea for us to adopt a baby that's due one month before our own? I refer back to my previous question: have you lost your fucking mind?"
"Regina," Emma sighed herself. "I know it's crazy. I know. But, she's definitely not keeping the baby, so it's going to end up in the system. We were talking about adopting someday anyway…"
"I know, and that's something I would still like to do, but that's some day in the future, Emma, not a month before I'm about to give birth."
"Well, still. We're going to be amazing parents, Regina. I don't have any doubts about that anymore. And she wouldn't be able to find a better home for the child than with us."
"Even if I was remotely open to the idea, Emma, it's not possible. Quebec doesn't allow open adoptions, so she can't pick the family her baby goes to. And the waiting list for an infant is miles long. If we applied today it could be years before we get a child here. There's no way we would be able to adopt hers."
"Seriously? She couldn't just say she wants us to adopt her child?"
"No. There's nothing like that in place here. You can only directly adopt children of your relatives or your spouse's kids, like I did with Roland and Henry."
"Oh," Emma frowned. "That's shitty. So she has no say in selecting her baby's family?"
"Not here, no. Since IVF worked, I didn't look too deeply into what that would have entailed for us, but legally, I don't even know if you would be eligible to adopt right now since you're not a permanent resident. I think I would have had to apply as a single mother if we went that route."
"Really?"
"I think so."
"Her father's a politician though…can't he pull some strings?"
Regina looked at Emma incredulously. "Are you kidding? The only thing worse than a conservative politician having a scandal about his pregnant teen daughter would be a conservative politician having a scandal about trying to push through a less-than-legal adoption to a TV celebrity on behalf of his teenage daughter's secret baby. Yeah, I'll pass on getting involved in that one."
"Damn," Emma sighed, defeated.
"I'm sorry, Emma. I know you want to help her, and that's so incredibly noble of you, and it's one of the reasons I love you, but there's nothing we can do here," Regina said. "But, if you're serious about wanting to adopt a child in the near future, I'm not opposed to starting that process so that we can get our names on the list, or at least find out if we're even eligible to adopt here. If we're not, we can always look at adopting from the States, since we're both citizens there."
"That's probably not a bad idea, especially if it'll take as long as you say."
"Okay, then," Regina said. "We can talk to social services and find out what we need to do."
"Her grandmother lives in Ottawa," Emma blurted out.
"What?" Regina asked, confused by Emma's random interjection.
"Paige has been living in Ottawa for the past four months and will have the baby there. Would that solve the open adoption problem? It's not Quebec, then."
"I…I don't know," Regina said, genuinely unsure. "I know enough to know that it's basically considered an international adoption if it crosses over province lines, but I have no idea what the process is for that. Kathryn's cousin lives in Toronto and used open adoption to adopt his son, so it is a thing there, at least. But Paige is a minor, so I don't know if it even matters that she's staying in Ontario if she's not officially living there with a legal guardian. If she's just staying with her grandmother temporarily, I just don't know. Not to mention I don't know what the laws here are about adopting outside of Quebec."
"Can we look into it?"
Regina studied Emma's face. "You're really serious about this, aren't you?" she realized. "This isn't just something you thought of today, is it?"
"I am serious about it. And you're right…I have been thinking about it since Paige told me she was pregnant. I didn't want to say anything because I knew it would sound crazy, and I didn't know if she was going to have an abortion or decide to keep the baby. And I know the timing couldn't be worse since we're going to have our newborn, so having two infants simultaneously would border on insanity, but I don't know. I love the thought of having two kids growing up together like that, so close in age…they could be best friends—"
"Or absolutely hate each other," Regina interjected.
Emma ignored the comment. "And I just feel like we could give her baby a great home, and the thought of her child ending up with some other random family…"
"Emma, her baby will go to a great home regardless…the waiting lists are miles long for a reason. There are more families who want babies than adoptable babies here, so I don't think she needs to worry about her child finding a good home. And we can give another child a good home, too, you know. It doesn't have to be Paige's."
"Yeah, I know."
"And in the long run, with Paige's parents, it's probably better not to do an open adoption for the same reason we didn't want to use an anonymous donor. I was worried what my mother might do and who she might bribe to find out the identity of a donor, and the hell that would cause if it got out. If we were to adopt Paige's baby, especially given the prominence of Paige's father, it could be a hundred times worse. You know Cora could find out and raise hell, even with the restraining order I took out against her. She doesn't have to be near me to write shit online. And Paige's father's political career might collapse in a few years, and he might come after us to exploit us or the baby. And even though I'm sure Paige is a lovely girl, she's still young. She might struggle making a career out of dance and try to write a tell-all book, or blackmail us…it's a bad idea to adopt from anyone we know."
"You're right, you're right," Emma conceded. "I just still feel bad for Paige."
"I do too, dear, but there's nothing we can do to help her in this case. What we could do, though, is help another baby in need of a home….after we get a handle on this one," she said, patting her stomach. "I'm not opposed to the idea of having two kids close in age, but I think we need at least a few months to figure out how to raise a newborn before we start adding to our brood."
Emma chuckled. "Yeah, that's probably wise."
A/N: Guys, Quebec's adoptions laws are crazy convoluted. I gave up researching it after two hours of trying to figure out the rules. I think this is all accurate though, but if anyone out there knows more about it, please tell me. :P
It will be 10 days or so before the next chapter is up, as it's about to get insane in my real life this week and next. But, the next chapter is mostly written, so hopefully I can finish and edit it relatively quickly when I havae some free time. By my approximation, there are only two chapters left (unless something else happens that makes me think "Oh wait, this needs to happen first."). But, I am halfway done with a new fic (it'll be a 20k one shot, I think). I'll post that when this one is done :D