Kitty Wilde

Sometimes, Kitty just liked to watch her. Just stand in front of the crib and look at the tiny thing that lay inside. She was so beautiful. The small wisps of thin hair that crowned her head. Her tiny body curled up, wrapped up in the small blanket. Her blue eyes, shut in the peace of sleep. The doctor said that they would probably change from blue to another color, but Kitty didn’t care. Everything about her was perfect.

Kitty couldn’t believe the time it had taken to fall in love with her child. She wasn’t talking about how it had felt when she was pregnant, but how she had felt in the delivery room, when she had held her daughter for the first time. It had taken her the total of fifteen seconds to completely fall in love with the small piece of life that lay in her arms. It had taken thirteen hours. That number still blew her mind. Thirteen hours was more than half a day, and she had spent all that time in what was apparently the most pain a person was able to feel. And it had hurt, she wasn’t going to lie about that. She was lucky that her mother had been there feeding her ice chips or whatever, otherwise she would’ve lost it and punched Clarington in the face.

Tentatively, she reached her arms into the crib, one hand going to rest under her daughter’s tiny head and the other one cradling her body gently. Slowly, she pulled the drowsy infant up to her chest, moving her arm around the small body to hold her more securely.

“Oh, what light through yonder window breaks?” She gently murmured. “It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.” She laughed softly, moving over to a rocking chair, sitting down and gently pushing herself on it, slow enough to relax the infant. “I should probably stop doing that. You’re going to get enough of it later on in life.” Juliet’s eyelids fluttered, but stayed closed.  

A soft smile on her face, Kitty reached over to the small table beside her and picked up the bottle of formula she had already heated. She had decided on bottles instead of breastfeeding. It seemed so much easier, especially since she didn’t know exactly when Juliet would be where, and she didn’t want to be in a situation where she didn’t have anything to eat. Gently, she aimed the bottle down and gently traced the teat over her daughter’s small lips.

“Come on, baby…” She cooed, smiling as Juliet opened her lips, accepting the bottle into her mouth and gently sucking. Almost as if she was just realizing what was happening, one small eye opened and then the other, the tiny infant taking in her mother from where she was lying.

“Good morning to you too.” Kitty said teasingly, propping Juliet up slightly in her arms. Juliet’s eyes closed again as she focused on the bottle in front of her. As always, Kitty was content just to watch her. Every movement her daughter made was so soft, so innocent. She was so small. It had originally scared Kitty, just how defenseless her daughter was at this point, but had put it upon herself to make sure that she would be protected, that no harm would ever come to her. She had tried her best to be the nurturing, caring mother that she had hoped to be from the minute she decided against adoption, but there was a part of her that still felt like a little girl herself, trying to find herself in a maze.

She snapped out of her thoughts as she heard a slurping, empty sound coming from the bottle and laughed at it. “Wow, you finished that quickly! Looks like someone was hungry.” She grinned, pulling the bottle out of the infant’s hands and setting it on the side. Grabbing a cloth, she tossed it over her shoulder, before gently moving her arms up to set Juliet there, and starting to pat her back. There was one burping sound… and another. Perfect.

She smiled, pulling Juliet off her shoulder and holding her up above her. The tiny face stared back at her, a small smile on her face. Kitty had been told so many different things about her daughter, that she looked like Hunter, she looked like Kitty, she had Hunter’s mouth, she had Kitty’s eyes, that she didn’t know what to believe. But it didn’t matter, none of it mattered, because whoever she looked the most like, Juliet was eternally, unchangingly perfect. Everything about her was so incredibly beautiful, from the soft, faded pink of her sculptured fingernails, to the small gurgle she made that Kitty knew would later turn into a laugh.

She brought her daughter back down and gently lay her on her lap, one finger going to softly tickle her little belly. She gave a small smile, and a gurgle escaped her lips. This made Kitty giggle, and she leaned down, pressing a soft kiss to her daughter’s forehead.