Chapter 2: Welcome to Parenthood
"WAHHHH! WAHHHH!"
"Urrr….." Monica stirred awake, surfacing up out of the bottom of a dream to what sounded like a bad car alarm. Shifting in the double bed that she shared with her husband, she sat up and squinted at the green light glowing on the top of the baby monitor, which was now blaring. Lying next to her, she heard a grunt and felt her husband start to stir.
"Mon…." Chandler mumbled, the timbre of his voice suggesting he was, at best, half-awake. He might even be mumbling in his sleep.
Monica bent over him. "Ssssh….. I've got it. Go back to sleep, babe." Dipping her face close, she pressed a kiss to his forehead, murmuring, "I love you…."
Chandler rumbled something unintelligible as he rolled over, but did not wake. Shaking her head with a sentimental smile, Monica threw back the coverlet and languidly rose from the bed they shared, tugging her bathrobe tighter around herself. Tiptoeing out onto the second floor landing, she padded across the hall to the nursery. Pushing back the door, she could see in the gloom blankets thrashing as one of her twins kicked and wailed. Monica had to be grateful that it was just the one, but decided not to push her luck, hurrying over to the crib. In the bassinet, Erica was writhing in discomfort, big fat tears clinging to her tiny, cherubic cheeks.
"Hey, baby girl…" Monica cooed, reaching in and grunting as she lifted her squalling daughter up out of the crib. "You wanna take this outside? Go somewhere with Mommy and have a talk? We don't want to wake up brovey…." She checked on Erica's brother, marveling in amazement at how Jack had somehow been left undisturbed. Neither infant may have shared either her or her husband's genes, and yet Jack without a doubt slept like his Daddy.
Drawing Erica close to her breast, Monica slipped back onto the landing and crept down the stairs towards where she had noticed the kitchen upon entering. Aside from adjusting to the darkness that was the middle of the night, it was an adjustment gathering her surroundings, following a whole new floor plan that was the antithesis of what she was used to back in Apartment 20.
Padding into the kitchen and groping about for a light switch, Monica could feel how Erica was almost instinctively turning into her, nuzzling her face into her breast. The poor baby was thirsty, then. The instinct to nurse and suckle was clearly powerful.
As soon as there was illumination, Monica hurried to the refrigerator and opened it, slapping about for a bottle of breast milk – one of many that Erica, the birth mother of her twins and her daughter's namesake had prepared in advance following the labor, and that the Bings had then refrigerated and stored, first in Apartment 20 and now here.
Closing a hand around a bottle, Monica slapped the teat nipple onto the top and brought it to Erica's mouth. The baby fussed, but then latched on and began to drink her milk greedily.
Monica watched the feeding, enraptured. Yet she also couldn't help but feel tears of bitterness pool behind her eyes. Rachel had told her that some of the most meaningful bonding she had experienced with Emma had occurred while Emma was breastfeeding. It was meant to be a carnal, visceral connection between mother and child.
Monica would never have that – at least not in its purest form. Erica was drinking milk from her birth mother, not the mother who now held the baby in her arms. In all likelihood, Monica would never feel her body change during the joys of pregnancy, never feel her breasts grow voluptuous as they filled with a mother's milk. Never would her own child latch on to her for nourishment. It was just one of the many things that wasn't the same, that adoption – though it had been a meaningful alternative and well worth it – would never provide.
The inability to use her own body to feed her child was one of the many insecurities that were now brought forth in Monica's mind. Erica drank her fill, gurgled and a bit of the creamy stuff dribbled out onto her chin. After a moment or two of calm, the baby began to whimper once more, though this time not crescendoing into a full-bore wail. Casting baby Erica over her shoulder, Monica burped her, playing Bouncy Baby to lull her daughter into a state of calm.
Monica found a chair at the table and eased into it, still bouncing and rocking Erica. The baby oofed and began to settle, though there remained a few more warblings. Monica sang a lullaby, softly on the edge of her breath:
"Come, stop your crying, it'll be all right. Just take my hand – hold it tight. I will protect you from all around you. I will be here, don't you cry…."
Erica at last nodded off, turning her tiny body into Monica's chest, her little nose nuzzling her mother's breast through the wool of the bathrobe. Watching her baby, utterly enthralled, Monica felt the feelings of inadequacy, even a kind of imposter syndrome, bubble up inside her again. How could she be the mother that Erica and Jack needed if science and some inconvenient truths – such as that neither baby had come out of her – reminded her that she would never be able to provide every need? It seemed silly and irrational to get hung up on this particular need, given that it would only be a temporary one, but even so…. the thought of nursing her own little ones was a dream Monica could not obtain. A memory she could not make. It made her feel imperfect, that she could not give that special moment to her babies, to herself. That Chandler would never get to see his children nurse at their mother's breast.
Bowing her head so that her chin drooped onto her chest like a bird, Monica began to softly weep. She did her best to turn her face away so that her tears did not fall onto her sleeping daughter's face like sweet rain and risk waking the newborn up again.
Keeping Erica swaddled in her arms and now resting the snoozing baby on the tabletop, Monica put her face down onto the varnished wood of the table, head not quite in her arms, and cried herself back to sleep.
She must have managed to doze off, for when she blearily blinked her way back into the waking world, the gold light of day was streaming in through the kitchen's expansive windows. Groaning, Monica could hear someone moving behind her. Her ears caught one shrill BRIIING!... before the noise was cut off by someone picking up the phone.
"Hello?... This is he….. Oh, hi, Jeffrey…. Actually, Mon is going to be a little late today, if not absent entirely. Not a good night's sleep…."
Monica started to stir, opened her mouth to protest, but she couldn't get her throat to work to voice any objection, for lack of use and also due to sheer exhaustion.
"…. You can get the sous chef to cover? Fantastic! Thanks, Jeff!" Chandler could be heard conferring with Monica's maître d and Head Waiter. "I'll make sure she's rested. Bye!" There was a soft BEEP! as her husband hung up the phone.
"Chandler? Sweetie?..." Monica groaned, still half-awake. "You didn't have to…." She fought through a yawn. "Do that…."
"Yes, I did. Plus, I wanted to…." She felt Chandler curl into her side. "Come here…. Ups-a-daisy…" Monica felt her husband lift her into his arms, bridal-style, as he had done several times before. Had she been more awake, she might have been more appreciative. Snuggling into Chandler's chest, she contented herself with recalling the times he had held or carried her like this: one time, soon after they had first gotten together, and he had declared they owed it to sex to keep their then-secret affair going. He had carried her away grandly out of Apartment 20 and across the hall to 19 to make such ravishing love to her, even though she had just been cleaning the bathroom immediately prior.
Then, of course, there had been the moment after their wedding, when he had carried her across the threshold of their honeymoon suite. Monica had thought her heart was going to burst with happiness yet again on that magical day.
…. He had almost carried her off the beach in Montauk, in a fit of gallantry, after she had been stung by a jellyfish. But they hadn't been romantically involved then, and Monica hadn't exactly fancied being carried off by the man who had just peed on her to take away the pain. Plus, she had been traumatized by the sight she had been frantically working to get out of her head, not because it had necessarily disgusted her, but because the sight had oddly aroused her in a way that had, in that moment, left her terrified: the sight of Chandler's…. well, member.
Not that it would ultimately be the last time she saw his assets, and how… well they kept. But it had been the first time she had seen what was down there, even before she and Chandler had flashed each other naked under the covers in his hotel room in London and Chandler had, red-faced, declared their friendship effectively ruined. Chandler hadn't even intended to flash her that day anyway – he had, blushing with humiliation and apology, pulled his trunks down to perform the necessary but filthy deed, and she had simply turned her face away too late, caught off guard. Of the glimpse of…. him that she had gotten, Monica had been shaken to realize just how much she liked what she….. saw, down there.
Monica kept a grip on Erica, still cocooned in her arms and now asleep. Chandler carried both his girls into the nursery, which had a slight odor to it. Diaper change for Jack, probably. As if reading her thoughts, or maybe her facial expressions, Chandler informed her:
"Poopsplosion emergency around dawn. I took care of it." Had Monica not been scrunching up her nose, she would have reared up to kiss him soundly on the mouth in gratitude. He really was the most perfect husband.
Still carrying his wife, Chandler approached the empty crib. Before the man could set her down, Monica gingerly lowered Erica out of her arms and over the side of the bassinet until the baby girl had reached the soft blankets below. Arms now free, Monica looped them around Chandler's neck. Her eyes were still bleary and unfocused, she was barely able to keep them open, yet she sent her lover the most grateful and adoring look she could anyway. Grinning back at her, Chandler carried her back to the master bedroom and lowered her onto their mattress.
"Chandler?" she murmured. "Don't go…."
"Ssssh. I won't, baby. I'll be working from home today. You just sleep now. Sleep…."
Head lolling, Monica did exactly that, slipping under and back into the world of the dreaming.
"Were you crying earlier?"
It was later that same morning, nearly noon, and a refreshed and better-rested Monica had just awoken not too long ago and was now sitting up in bed beside where her husband was clacking away at his laptop.
Bowing her head, Monica nodded in the affirmative at Chandler's question. Her husband lifted himself out of the blue screen of his processing database and sent her an empathetic grin. "What about?"
Monica wiped at her eyes, smiling almost ruefully. She could never hide anything from Chandler. Between the two of them, she was usually required to do more heavy lifting in bringing him out of his most insecure musings. But these thoughts of hers, these torments…. They were more pervasive than any of the dark thoughts her husband had harbored, with maybe one exception or two.
"It's stupid…."
She stilled when Chandler reached out and took her hand, inlaying his palm over hers. "Tell me…." he murmured.
Eyes filling rapidly again with tears, Monica began to softly cry anew. She could feel Chandler watching her with growing concern, yet she couldn't look at him.
"Mon…?"
"I can't even feed my own baby!" Monica huffed in emotional frustration. "Not the way I always envisioned I would…."
From how he softened, Chandler got the point instantly. "Jack and Erica won't have to nurse forever. Besides, we have plenty of their birth mother's breast milk stored up, and if we have to eventually go to store-bought formula, we'll go to store-bought formula…." Reaching out a palm, he caught the beads of moisture on his thumb. "Just because you can't breastfeed doesn't make you any less their mother, Monica."
"Doesn't it, though?" Monica turned her head to look at him helplessly.
"Of course not! You can't expect to be a failure at something you weren't expected to have mastered anyway! Women can only breastfeed with their own milk if they have been pregnant." Chandler shrugged, smiling at her with sympathy. "I know it's hard, and there will be some things that only their birth mother could have done. But that doesn't mean you're not the mother of our children, Monica – you are. As much as Erica…. Sr…." He frowned. "Is that a thing?" Monica felt her lips tug at a smirk, even as she both shrugged and shook her head, unsure. "Well, we're making it a thing!" This sweet, wonderful man took her face in his hands and gazed deeply into her eyes. "You are Jack and Erica's mother, Mon, as much as Erica Sr. was for a brief moment in time. Erica may have birthed those two little ones, but you're the one who will get to raise them. Really mother them. And that's the sight that I am looking the most forward to seeing – not some physical bonding exercise that is only going to be temporary anyway!" A beat as he glanced down at her cleavage. "Although, I always bemoan when there is not enough excuse to see your…. flowers, if you know what I mean!" He waggled his eyebrows suggestively, eliciting at least one laugh out of her.
Chandler beamed at Monica with adoration. "You're going to be the most amazing mother, Mon, even if you can't do everything. You wanna know how I'm sure…?"
Leaning in, he kissed her, causing Monica to gasp and then whimper as she sagged into the kiss, her eyes fluttering shut as she sank into the embrace, kissing Chandler back. The kiss deepening, Chandler lowered his wife back onto the mattress as he moved to lovingly straddle her….
It was a brief time later, an hour or two, and in that time, the windows of the second floor master bedroom had become fogged over, as if in the early morning following a chilly and stormy night. Except it was neither chilly nor stormy and now the middle of the day.
Suddenly, a sweat-slicked and clammy hand reached up and slapped a palm onto the steamed-up windowpane, the fingers curling before the dreamily fell away from the glass, leaving behind a dewey print.
Arms lazily encircling one another, their sweat-slicked bodies writhing against each other in pleasure, Monica arched her back and pressed against her husband with a dazed and satisfied moan, as she and her lover continued to exert energy making love. Kissing languorously, Monica drew back from the liplock with a small POP!, contemplatively twirling her fingers through her lover's chestnut locks, marveling at how Chandler could still make her feel like the most beautiful woman in the world when he bedded her.
"Are…. are you all right?" Chandler panted, groaning as he rocked against her, working towards his own release.
Monica nodded, her blue eyes clouding over with desire and love. The spouses' gazes locked. Monica swallowed.
"Put your hands on me again, Chandler…." She whispered. Kissing passionately once more, her husband resumed showing her how much he loved her. How much he admired her abilities as a mother to their twins. As a wife to him.
Chandler didn't stop making love to his wife until her nails were digging into the flesh along his shoulder blades and then at last, with a cry, she came. Left nearly speechless by his attentions, Monica could only babble out how she loved him, how grateful she was to have found him and married him. How she adored starting a family with him, even if it hadn't been in the way either imagined.
It didn't matter what she could or couldn't provide as a mother. The fact that she was a mother at all, and Chandler had done more than enough to make that dream real, was what truly counted.
