Chapter 12: Baby Bump

"I feel like a whale," Emma said as she turned her body side to side looking at it in the mirror behind the bedroom door.

She was wearing some maternity jeans and a bra leaving her belly bare.

Neal came up behind her, resting a hand on her tired back and his right hand over her belly.

"A very attractive whale," Neal said.

"I'm serious how can you even find this appealing?"

Emma continued to look at her body. Her breasts and belly had grown quickly in the past five weeks. She was now in her eighteenth week.

It was only yesterday that she had felt the baby kick for the first time. Neal was out in the field working on a case which was something Emma couldn't do when she had reached her seventeenth week as her growing belly was starting to slow her down so she was confined to office work and answering phones.

Mary Margaret and David had taken Emma out to lunch thinking it was probably a good idea to get her out of the office for a bit.

Before they had even ordered Emma had felt a strange flutter in her belly, soft at first and then slightly stronger. It was a strange feeling that she hadn't yet experienced.

Mary Margaret was quick to Emma's side. "Emma what is it?"

"I think it's the baby," said Emma, "He's kicking," she said with a smile.

Without even pausing to think about what she was doing Emma reached for Mary Margaret's hand and placed it on the spot where the baby was moving.

"Do you feel that?"

Mary Margaret smiled at Emma, "That's amazing."

Emma looked over at David, "Want to feel?"

David's eyes widened a little, "You sure you want me to?"

"You've held my hair on several occasions during some of the morning sickness, I'm pretty sure letting you touch the baby bump isn't that far of a leap."

David got up from his seat and crouched down placing a hand on the belly, feeling the fluttering from the outside while Emma felt it from within.

"Wow," David said smiling first at Mary Margaret and then at Emma.

It was strange at how things seemed to be progressing, how in an odd way the three of them were becoming a family. About a week after David got out of the hospital and moved in with Mary Margaret he had asked her out on a date and they'd been together ever since even when circumstances it seemed tried to pull them apart, what they had was stronger much like Emma's bond with Neal.

And it had been within these past few weeks that the closer Emma got to them the more she believed that Neal was right about everything, who she was, where they were from, the magic of all things.

Neal had come up with a theory in bed one night believing that there could be only two possible theories.

The first was that maybe the baby within Emma had more magic in him than they thought and so as the baby grew so did Emma's relationship to David and Mary Margaret as they all shared a biological connection. With that theory in mind Emma wondered why that wasn't the case whenever Gold was around since the baby did have Neal's genetics too. Neal figured that the baby had a way of sensing darkness and that because Emma was the product of true love and the savior that the baby had more good in him than the darkness that weighed heavily on Neal's family.

The second theory was that the longer they stayed in Storybrooke, the longer Emma was around, the more the people of the town no longer acted with the opposite personalities of their cursed selves that they were given in this world without magic but instead acted with the personalities they had before the curse.

Both seemed like very good theories but it was hard to determine which was the most likely.

Emma was taken out of her thoughts as she felt the baby move and felt the sensation of Neal caressing her skin where the baby had kicked.

"I find it appealing because it's true," said Neal.

He got in front of Emma and kneeled down cupping her under belly in his hands as if to cradle the unborn life nestled within her womb.

"This right here is real magic," he said to her. "I sometimes think people take this kind of thing for granted but with people like us, how can we not take advantage of how precious it is?"

"I'm only gonna get fatter," Emma complained.

Neal kissed Emma's belly and then stood up to face her. "I don't care."

"You're becoming a sap," Emma teased.

Neal leaned over and placed a kiss on his girlfriend's forehead.

"Yeah well the pregnancy changes your physical appearance and it changes me on the inside. You sure you don't need me today?"

"No Graham needs you at the office. Mary Margaret offered to come with me."

"Okay love you." Neal ran his left fingers over Emma's belly as if to tickle the fetus within. "Love you buddy."

"We love you too," Emma said speaking for herself and their baby.

Once Neal was gone Emma took the time to look at her bare belly again. As uncomfortable as it made her feel, as much as her back hurt and the pregnancy symptoms were bound to get worse from leg cramps, swollen feet, among other discomforting bodily changes, she had done the research, had been reading the pregnancy books, she had to admit that Neal was right about one thing: it was magical. No matter what magic may exist nothing could compare to how two invisible microorganism sex cells could come together, fertilize, set up a home in the uterus and within a matter of ten months, as most pregnancies could last up to forty weeks or a bit longer, create another human being.

Emma smiled in spite of herself and cradled her baby bump and whispered, "You're worth it," and then got ready for her day and her afternoon doctor's appointment.

Author's Note: I have no experience with babies or pregnancy. I'm just doing research so if I get some of the details correct then great if not then oh well like I said I don't know these things so the only thing I can go on is research.