The Rhythm Method (Stage Dive 4.80)

Life could sure come at you fast.

“I have no idea how you managed two at the same time, Lena.” Anne relaxed on the couch with a bottle of water in her hand.

“The girls ran Jimmy and me ragged for the first year,” said Lena, rubbing my still unnamed son’s back. He lay on his stomach across one of her thighs. The child was outraged. Again. Little fists waved, and even his tuft of dark hair seemed to be standing to attention. For someone so small, he sure did give being cranky his everything.

“He’s tearing my heart apart,” I said.

“Yeah. They’re manipulative little suckers,” said Lena. “But he’ll wear himself out eventually.”

Anne just smiled. “They learn how to go to sleep in the womb with all of the movement and the sound of your heart beating. Then they get out, and it’s all different, and they don’t know how to chill. There wasn’t much room in there by the end, so he’s used to being contained. All of a sudden he can fling a limb around and startle himself awake.”

David and the rest of the band were at a business meeting at Ben and Lizzy’s place, a sprawling mansion just outside of the city. They’d even built a recording studio on the property. And their son, Gibson, loved to play in the pool during the summer. Maybe one day we’d move into a house to give us more room. To give our child a backyard to play in and so on. Though I’d miss being in the heart of the Pearl District and so close to work. Not that I’d even managed to get back to the coffee shop since giving birth. Another thing to feel guilty about. Ugh. Women really tended to heap expectations on themselves. Trying to be everything for everyone, all of the time. It was crazy.

On the other hand, I’d never felt such love. I loved my husband. David was the love of my life. But my heart seemed to have doubled to make room for our son. My sweet precious boy. It was nothing short of amazing how much I felt for him. The lengths I would go to for him. Being a mother was wild.

Lena rubbed the palm of her hand in round motions against his tiny back, and ever so slowly, the caterwauling eased and then gradually stopped. The quiet was nothing less than magical. For a moment, all I could hear was our breathing. And all I could feel was a sense of relief.

“He’s asleep?” I whispered.

“For now.” Lena nodded. “Try not to lower the volume around him too much or he’ll never go to sleep unless everything is perfectly silent. And you don’t want that. He needs to adapt to your lifestyle a little. Learn to handle the outside world.”

“That’s true,” said Anne. “I hope you don’t mind us shoving advice at you.”

“Have at it. I need all the help I can get.” I rested my head on the back of the sofa. Because the nursery was now the place in the apartment to be.

It had a three-seater sofa in a charcoal material along with a super comfortable rocking chair. The walls were decorated with a vintage-style pale blue sky and fluffy white clouds. And the white antique-looking metal crib was just dreamy. If only my boy would sleep for longer than an hour and a half at a time. That would be amazing. We’d been home for a week now, and life with our pride and joy was not getting any easier. We sort of had a routine, but not really. Not that we didn’t have it better than some people. Not that we weren’t blessed just by us all being healthy. It was, however, still damn hard.

You’d think that the difficulty of it all would have been less of a surprise to me since I’d watched so many of our friends go through it. But no. Guess it was one of those things I had to experience to understand. Parenthood was no joke.

“You guys did such an amazing job with this room,” I said, for not the first time.

“That was mostly Anne.” Lena smiled. “She’s got the mad decorating and organizing skills.”

“It was fun.” Anne smiled back at her. “Any luck with the baby names?”

“Nothing seems to quite fit him.” I frowned. “We were thinking about Cash and Angus and Reed. But we can’t decide on one. We even tried calling him Malcolm. He yawned at us, then he spit up some milk.”

“Harsh, but fair,” said Lena.

“If it’s not right…” Anne just shrugged. “Something will come to you. There’s no rush.”

I snorted. “With the way we’re going, he’ll be applying to college as Baby Ferris.”

Lena laughed. The baby flinched but stayed asleep. Thank God.

“All of these things people spend their pregnancy thinking about,” said Anne. “You didn’t get any of that time. Extend yourself some grace, Ev.”