Thursday 2nd July 2015, 5:59am
At 31 weeks pregnant, Sam always ended up sleeping in the middle of the bed and because she went to bed earlier than Tom, she left him to get into bed and cuddle her from either the front or the back - whichever side had more room each night. They were still in the midst of a scorching hot summer so they never slept with a duvet on anymore, and Tom laid as the morning sun crept through the curtains with his arms around Sam's bare bump as she had resorted to sleeping in a sports bra and shorts. He too was only in his boxer shorts as he felt his wife begin to stir.
"What time is-" Sam croaked but she was interrupted by a loud buzz and Tom reached behind him and smacked the alarm off. "Nevermind." Sam grumbled as she knew that it was 6am. She had a good stretch before she curled up with her knees up to her bump and her fingers entwined with Tom's fingers on her bump. "I actually slept like a baby for once." Sam admitted.
"Well our baby didn't sleep like a baby." Tom said sleepily into Sam's ear. "I got into bed not long after you and he was kicking away like there was no tomorrow." Tom stated proudly.
"I don't suppose you've got morning wood have you?" Sam asked curiously.
"I have it every morning. Why?" Tom smirked.
"Well I blame the hormones but y'know... I've heard that morning sex is the best because-"
"Trust me, you don't need to give me a reason." Tom smirked. "Tender this morning?" Tom queried as he gently rested his hands on her black sports bra that she favoured over wearing normal bras as it gave more support and covered more up so that she didn't have to wear a shirt.
"Nope. Knock yourself out." Sam replied bluntly
"Well it wouldn't exactly be hard to get knocked out by these would it?" He smirked as he smoothed his hands over her breasts, around her bump and then he pulled her shorts and underwear down.
"Can you make sure you only go gentle, and not too deep, please?" Sam asked timidly whilst Tom pulled down his boxers.
"Course I will." He whispered before they had a short but pleasurable session of making love together to put them in a good mood to get ready for work that day.
6pm
"Oi!" Tom playfully swatted Sam's hand away from yet another coriander plant that he had been requested to buy as Sam like eating the leaves so much and so she had fallen in love with curry with fresh coriander in it - but not too spicy of course, otherwise that would give her heartburn in the night so Tom was cooking them a low fat chicken korma for dinner.
"I'm just gonna take Shadow up to the park for a walk, okay?" Sam said as she slid her feet into her flip flops - she hated wearing shoes with laces or any kind of trainers because they required Sam to bend down and pull them on, and with a massive bump, that didn't happen easily.
"Be careful, don't go too far." Tom warned to which Sam rolled her eyes. "Have you got your phone?"
"Yes." Sam huffed as she picked up Shadow's black lead, and upon hearing the chink of the metal clip, Shadow bounded in from the garden and sat at her owner's feet. "Good girl." Sam praised as she attached the lead to Shadow's collar and then she groaned slightly as she stood up properly.
"Are you sure you don't want to wait until after we've had dinner so that I can come with you?" Tom asked, as he wasn't particularly happy with letting Sam out of his sight when she was so heavily pregnant, but he didn't want to suffocate her and give her no freedom; it wouldn't be fair.
"No because if I take Shadow out, then she will be too worn out to even attempt to eat my dinner." Sam retorted as the dog was always after scraps and she would sometimes jump up at the table when Sam went to the toilet during a meal. "Right, bye." She pecked Tom on the cheek and then followed Shadow who was eagerly heading towards the park - but thankfully, she was well behaved and she wasn't pulling Sam to the park.
Tom had just put the warmed plates at the small table for two ready to serve up dinner when the front door opened and his wife and dog had returned home.
"You're just in time, dinner's done." Tom announced.
"'Kay." Sam shouted eyesore she locked the door, kicked her flip flops off and took Shadow's lead off of her. She quickly washed her hands and then sat at the table where Tom had served up two generous portions of chicken korma sprinkled with fresh coriander, pilau rice and half a naan bread each. "Um Tom..." Sam began as she played about with her fork.
"Yes." Tom replied slowly.
"You know that, we didn't get her spayed so that she didn't have behavioural problems?"
"Yes." Tom replied confusedly.
"Well she kind of got a little bit too friendly with another border collie in the park." Sam admitted.
"What?!"
"Well I let her off of her lead, sat down on a bench to catch my breath back and she just kind of... You know! But it was literally as soon as I saw her, the other dog pulled away from her and then the owner took his dog disappeared so I didn't get the chance to ask if his dog was neutered or not." Sam explained.
"What were you paying attention to that you wasn't watching Shadow?"
"I was watching the parents pushing their kids on the swings in the park." Sam admitted quietly and Tom couldn't help but lose the slight tone of anger in his voice at his wife's maternal side coming out.
"Well if it was only quick then she's probably fine."
"And what if she is pregnant?"
"Then we'll be having puppies. I'm sure she's fine because she hasn't even started her heats yet." Tom stated bluntly. "And the chances are, that that other dog was neutered already. C'mon, don't get stressed about it, enjoy your dinner and I'll run you a bath after this yeah? We can finally get around to talking about names."
"Not this again." Sam moaned.
"Sam, our son is due in 9 weeks; we need to start thinking about names."
"But how can we chose a name if we don't know what he looks like?" Sam protested.
"Well we're not gonna chose a name for definite but it's good to have a top ten list or something, isn't it? It'll make it easier if we've chosen before hand what names we like, and if we chose a name while we're in hospital, we won't have to go to the town hall to register the birth."
"Fine." Sam huffed before she shoved a bit of naan bread in her mouth.
Sam was laying in warm, soapy water with her wet hair that had gotten longer and thicker during pregnancy, hanging over her shoulders and covering her breasts to stop Tom from looking whilst he sat besides her on the bathroom mat. The water was full to the brim of the bath and yet Sam's navel was still sticking out of the water was her bump was too big to be concealed anymore.
"Right, is there anything in particular that you want to go for?" Tom asked curiously.
"Like what?"
"Well do you prefer old names, popular names, unique names, or do you want to chose a name with a meaning?"
"To be perfectly honest I don't care about any of that. I just want us to chose a name that we both like, and I'll be happy with that." Sam replied.
"Okay, so let's brainstorm names that we like, and then we can narrow it down to a top ten." Tom stated as he picked up his notepad and pen. He drew a bubble in the middle of a page and wrote 'Name Ideas' before he drew a line off of the bubble and looked at Sam. "Well don't give me too many names at once will you?" Tom joked sarcastically.
"I don't know." Sam admitted. "I keep on trying to think of names that go with Kent but the only name I can think of that goes, is Tom."
"Well maybe he could be Tom Kent Junior." Tom joked.
"Mm, and maybe we should call him North West Kent too." Sam retorted. "Remember when the woman who sold us Shadow gave us a tip on naming her? She said remember that whatever you chose, you've got to be comfortable shouting it across the park without sounding stupid. So maybe we should go on that rule for naming him."
"You want us to use the same rule for a dog, for our son?" Tom laughed.
"Well I can imagine that he's going to be as cheeky as you are, and if he is that means that as soon as he learns to run he's going to be running away from us everywhere we go. I can just imagine it now, he'll be hiding from us when we go shopping and then he'll knock over a massive, expensive display and he'll just pull a little innocent face like you always do."
"Hey stop changing the subject woman, now give me names." Tom ordered.
"Ethan, Caleb, Charlie, Martin, Guy, Lofty-"
"Stop naming people at work."
"Jack? Michael, James, Jonathan, Connor, Matthew, Luke, Daniel, Adam, Jake, Ryan, Harry, Ben." Sam listed slowly whilst Tom wrote the names down around the brainstorm. "Haven't you got any names that you'd like to contribute?"
"I quite like Max, and Andrew, Josh maybe. Alex, Liam, Evan, Chris, David or William?" Tom said questioningly as he wrote the names down.
"William? I don't think so." Sam remarked sternly.
"Okay, no William." Tom corrected as he crossed the name off of the brainstorm. "Right, let's try and cut this down to the top ten." Tom said as he showed Sam the brainstorm and held it up.
"I don't think Evan Kent sounds right." Sam admitted.
"Yeah I agree. But I'm not too sure about Connor Kent either." Tom admitted cautiously because it hadn't been he who had suggested the name.
"Tom I'm not gonna cry if you don't like one of the names I said, just cross it off." Sam said bluntly and Tom chuckled before he did so. "Wouldn't it be easier to choose the top ten rather than end up with ten names by elimination?" Sam suggested.
"Yeah okay." Tom drew a small box in the corner of the page where there was some space and he wrote the numbers one to ten. "But these aren't ranked as in number one is our favourite, it's just the ten that we like."
"Okay."
Soon, they ended up with their top ten names: Michael, Ben, Daniel, Liam, Harry, Adam, David, Andrew, Jonathan and Alex. But what name would they choose for their son? And would there be repercussions of Shadow's trip to the park?
Coming up: Sam and Tom discuss their worries about becoming new parents.
Thanks for reading, please review :)