A/N: In which Chloe goes into labour and Beca handles it...well she handles it.
This is probably my favourite because it is quite possibly the single fluffiest thing I've ever written, or it's up there at least. Turns out there is heavy correlation between the amount of stress happening around me and how fluffy things turn out. Case in point I wrote this yesterday when on top of all other stress one of our dogs was rushed to the vets. I mean he's fine now but this happened. Anyway you didn't come here to hear about my crap you came here to read about some Bechloe baby fluff so let's get to it
"Chlo!" Beca hissed at her wife. "Chloe! Come on you have to get up."
"Becs? What?" Chloe replied groggily, fighting to open her sleep heavy eyes. "What is it?"
"You have to get up, you're in labour!" Beca replied hurriedly.
"What?" The redhead's eye snapped open and she sat up in the bed a look of panic briefly crossing her face before being replaced with confusion. "No I'm not."
"No, well I know you're not but this is practise," she explained, moving quickly around the bed to grab Chloe's pre packed hospital bag. Chloe was still sitting on the bed looking at her wife as if she had finally lost the plot. "Come on, you promised!"
Chloe groaned and reluctantly threw the covers back. This was entirely ridiculous but Beca had been stressing out as their due date loomed so Chloe had agreed to do a practise run with her in order to try to settle some of her nerves; although this wasn't exactly what she'd had in mind when she agreed. "You're ridiculous, you know that don't you?"
"You knew that when you married me so," Beca shrugged and gave a shy smile. She knew she was a little neurotic but wasn't that part of the whole for better or worse deal. It was then that Chloe noticed that Beca had an honest to god stopwatch hanging around her neck. She bit back her laugh and swung her legs out of bed. She should just get this over with so they could get back to bed. Beca wrapped her arm around her incredibly pregnant wife and led her down the stairs.
"Wait stop!" She called out halfway down the stairs.
"What?"
"You're having a contraction," Beca explained as if it should have been obvious. She wanted this to be realistic and realistically it wouldn't be as simple as jumping out of bed and running out to the car. After a few minutes they started moving again, Beca grabbed her keys from the bowl by the door and ushered Chloe out to the car. Opening the back door of her Jeep she threw the hospital bag into the back seat then opened the passenger door and helped Chloe inside. She raced round to the driver's side and clambered ungracefully inside.
"That was a little over 10 minutes," she announced, looking at the stopwatch round her neck. "Not bad with a 20 minute drive to the hospital, less if there's no traffic and we push the speed limit we can be there in half an hour. That good time, right?"
"It's great!" Chloe nodded unenthusiastically. "Are we done now?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry!" Beca reached out and grabbed her wife's hand. She had been so caught up in running a labour practise she hadn't considered the fact she was waking Chloe from her much needed sleep. "I just want to be ready, you know?"
"I know, but I'm confident you'll do just fine when the time comes," she smiled sleepily at the younger woman.
"Come on, let's get you two back to bed!"
"Chlo!" Beca's voice pulled her from her sleep again.
"You cannot be serious!" She groaned, pushing herself up off the bed to glare tiredly at her wife. "Again, really?"
"This is the last one I promise!" She replied sheepishly, fidgeting with the stopwatch around her neck.
"You are so lucky you're cute Mitchell!" Chloe rolled her eyes but got out of bed. "And I expect breakfast in bed tomorrow as compensation for my broken sleep!"
"You got it Red!" Beca smiled gratefully at her wife.
"Beca!" Chloe screeched urgently, nudging her sleeping wife. The brunette grunted but didn't actually wake. "Beca, get up!"
"What? What's happening?" The DJ jumped up in the bed, eyes darting around the room in confusion.
"My water just broke!" Chloe announced with shock and a mild amount of panic. "We need to get to the hospital."
"Your what?" Beca's sleep addled brain struggled to get into gear. Her eyes widened and panic set in once the words registered. "Oh my god!"
The brunette jumped out of bed immediately. It wasn't so much of a shock Chloe was 2 days passed her due date and had been having mild contractions earlier that day but their doctor had advised them it wasn't necessary to come to the hospital until her water broke and she was in active labour. Given that this was Chloe's first baby they warned that she could be in early labour for a while before things really started. Beca began pulling open drawers looking for something to pull on to drive to the hospital.
"Oh my god! Oh my god. Ok it's happening. Oh my god!" Beca mumbled to herself as she pulled on her sweatpants and a clean tank top. She hurried round the room looking for a suitably clean flannel to pull on while Chloe sat on the bed watching her wife do a stunningly good impression of a headless chicken.
"Alright! Ok we need to get to the hospital!" she said decidedly in a moment of clarity amidst the panic. Chloe nodded her agreement as she climbed out of bed and headed to the en suite bathroom.
"Where are you going?" Beca asked, once again panic stricken. "We need to get to the hospital!"
"My water just broke Beca," she explained plainly, "I'm going to change because I don't much feel like going to the hospital in wet pyjamas!"
"Oh yeah, right, right of course!" the brunette winced at her own stupidity. So far this was not going as well as the practise runs had led her to believe it would.
She hurried to the drawers and grabbed Chloe's hospital pyjamas. The changing process was momentarily interrupted by a contraction that saw Chloe doubled over the sink. Beca looked wide eyed and utterly terrified as she held her wife's hand until it passed.
"Oh damn the stopwatch!" she left Chloe to finish changing and ran to grab the watch from the side if her bed, hitting start as soon as her fingers closed around it.
"You good?" She asked breathlessly when Chloe emerged from the bathroom in her fresh nightwear. "We ready? Hospital? Baby time!"
She was rambling, she never did have full control of her mouth in stressful situations. She quickly slung the hospital bag over her shoulder and rushed to her wife's side. Chloe just nodded, ignoring Beca's freaking out in favour of her own concerns about the fact that very soon she would be giving birth. Beca wrapped her arm around Chloe's waist, encouraging her to lean on her as they made their way down the stairs.
"Alright. Keys...keys," Beca muttered to herself as she grabbed her keys and opened the front door rushing ahead to toss the bag into the backseat. She slammed the door shut and raced to the driver's seat and jumped in, trying to start the car and put her seatbelt on at the same time; time was of the essence here.
Chloe watched from the porch as Beca started the car and began to reverse out of the driveway, highly amused by her wife's panic stricken incompetence. She could see by the dim street light the exact moment the DJ realised her mistake, her eyes flying open wider than she'd ever seen them as she put the car in drive again. The Jeep had barely stopped moving when she threw the door open and jumped out.
"Oh my god! Oh my god! I am an actual idiot," she groaned, hurrying to Chloe's side.
"It's fine, you figured it out eventually," Chloe laughed but it quickly changed to a groan as another contraction hit. Beca restarted the stopwatch and tried her best to coach Chloe through it.
When the contraction had passed Beca successfully got Chloe into the car and returned to the driver seat. She reached to buckle her seatbelt and caught sight of Chloe beaming at her with tears in her eyes.
"She's coming Becs!" she spoke the words with awe and reverence, her hand resting on her greatly protruding belly. "We're about to meet our daughter."
"I know," was all Beca could reply, reaching out to cover Chloe's hand with her own.
The couple shared a loving kiss in the driveway before Beca suddenly remembered her wife was in labour and shifted the car into gear.
Beca stood by Chloe's side as the lay in the hospital bed panting her way through another contraction. She grimaced as Chloe squeezed her hand, the platinum band on her ring finger biting into the skin. She hated this; Chloe was in pain and she had absolutely no idea what she was supposed to be doing or how to help and she couldn't stand it.
"Oh my god," she muttered over and over until the contraction finally abated. Chloe gave her wife some serious side eye as she caught her breath.
"That was a big one," she panted, finally releasing Beca's hand from her vice grip.
"You're telling me," the brunette scoffed, shaking her hand to help the blood return to her fingers. Chloe glared at her wife and the midwife who had been doing Chloe's exam winced at the DJ's mistake. It seemed Beca caught it too as she quickly turned her attention to the midwife. "She's in pain! Can't you do something to help her?" She demanded.
"Soon," the midwife nodded sympathetically. "It's too early for pain relief but it won't be much longer now until you're brought down to delivery. You're actually progressing pretty quickly for your first time in labour."
Chloe gave the best version of a smile that she could manage to the older woman while Beca paced by her bed side.
The words "Ridiculous!" and something along the lines of "call this advancement in modern medicine" heard muttered under her breath.
"Do you have anything you can give her?" Chloe asked in a harassed tone, her patience for Beca's panicking was waining as the frequency of her contractions increased.
"I'm afraid not," the midwife laughed. "She's not the worst spouse I've seen in here though. Not exactly the best either but definitely not the worst."
Beca, seemingly realising she was being discussed by the other women in the room, halted her pacing. A guilty look crossed her face as the midwife excused herself for a few moments.
"I'm sorry Chlo!" she sighed, approaching her wife's bedside and taking her hand. "I just...don't know what to do. Like what am I supposed to be doing."
"I don't know either Beca, this is a first for me too, you know!" She replied with a bit more bite than she had intended.
"I should have let Aubrey fly out to be your birth partner," she said, not out of self pity but of the knowledge that the blonde would undoubtedly do better in this situation.
"I don't want Aubrey here, I want you here," Chloe assured her. She reached out to tilt Beca's chin up, forcing the brunette to look her in the eye. She smiled warmly at her bashful wife. "But I am about to push an actual human being out of my vagina here so I'm going to need you to sack up Mitchell!"
"Of course! You're right," she nodded. "I can do this. I can!" She sounded like she was trying to convince herself as much as anything else.
"Besides I think the last thing we'd need in the middle of delivery is Aubrey puking all over the place," Chloe chuckled.
Beca couldn't tell you how long Chloe was in labour for, she couldn't tell you how many times Chloe had almost fractured her hand during contractions or how many times the redhead had cursed her out during the actual birth. What she could tell you though was that it was all worth it. The second the doctor had placed the newborn baby in her arms she felt like her heart was about to explode, or implode, or something with the sheer magnitude of the love she felt for this little girl. She walked with shaky legs to Chloe's side cradling the bundle into her body.
"Here she is," she whispered, gently handing the baby over to her wife. She had just gone through the pain of bringing her into the world she definitely deserved the first cuddles.
"She's so tiny and perfect," Chloe gasped, giving Beca a watery smile.
Chloe's face was tear stained, the strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail stuck to her sweat damp skin but to Beca, in this moment, she had never looked more beautiful. Beca perched herself on the side of Chloe's bed, wrapping her arm around her wife and kissing her temple. She gingerly reached out to strike the wisps of red-blonde hair of the baby's head. It was too early to tell given that the infant in Chloe's arms was merely minutes old but Beca hoped she would be a mini-Chloe and she had a feeling she would get her wish.
"So you're the little jellybean that's been living inside my wife huh?" She chuckled, tears running freely down her face.
"I think it's time she had a real name, don't you?" Chloe smiled, tears falling from her eyes as well. Beca nodded silently agreeing to the name they had discussed. "Welcome to the world Charlotte May Beale-Mitchell!"