#newparents

“I’m so glad she’s here, baby.” You said, suddenly exhausted from the immediate fluctuation in hormones since your daughter had been removed from your body. You were tired, but no less excited that your daughter was safely here.

David was secretly thankful you were not a woman diehard set on one specific way of giving birth. He never understood how people tried to dictate one of the most unpredictable times in any human’s life. That was why when your doctor told the two of you that your daughter was still breech, you had no problems scheduling your c-section. Other means of trying to get her to flip were too risky for the two of you. You were glad to have an operation if meant your baby arrived safely.

David walked over to the warmer to watch the nursing staff take care of his baby. She had started crying and getting fussy with the stimulation. He couldn’t help but cry as he watched this tiny new life. He got to cut the rest of the umbilical cord. He put his finger in her palm and she instinctively grabbed it.

“You are so beautiful, just like your mama, baby girl.” He said to her, “Your daddy loves you more than anything.” He leaned down and kissed her head before the nursing staff took her to be weighed.

David walked back over to your side and sat down.

“How is she?” You asked tiredly.

“So beautiful.” David kissed your forehead, “I’m so proud of you.”

A short time later, you were sewn up, abdominal binder in place, and in the recovery room. Your baby was wheeled in shortly after you were settled. A lactation nurse came in as well to help you with breastfeeding.

You were thankful that Eleanor seemed to latch well and she didn’t lack in appetite. The lactation nurse made sure neither you or David had anymore questions and left the three of you alone to bond.

“I didn’t know I could love you anymore than I did,” David spoke softly as he sat next to the bed by your legs, facing you and propped up on the edge of the bed on his elbow.

You smiled at him, “I didn’t know I could love someone that I have never met before so immensely.”

He hesitated, but you could feel his gaze on you while you stared down at your baby nursing.

“You are so beautiful, baby.”

You grinned, looking up at him.

“I love you so much, David.”

You puckered your lips at him, signaling that you wanted a kiss and he complied. He pressed his lips tenderly on yours with nothing but love.

Once Eleanor was done eating, you gave her to your husband so that he could love on his daughter. You laid your head back on the pillow once she was safely in his arms. You smiled, thankful that your daughter was here and you were both safe and that Deacon was by your side. You drifted off to sleep with a smile.

You weren’t sure how long you slept, but when you woke up, you looked over to see your shirtless husband, still in the recliner beside of you with your daughter, in nothing but a diaper, laying on his chest, curled up on his sternum. He had a blanket over her and was gently rubbing circles into her back.

“Oh, baby,” you cried quietly. The sight of your husband as a new daddy, doing skin to skin with his your daughter too, loving on your tiny new life was enough for your emotions and you began to cry.

David chuckled and reached a hand out to you. You grabbed it and intertwined your fingers with his.

You sat there in silence with your family until the nursing staff came to transfer back to your regular room where you would be until you were discharged. Eleanor went to the nursery while you got settled. You were on bed rest until the following morning - not that your body was quickly metabolizing your spinal block. You had gained feeling back, but could only still move your feet. You laughed at yourself every time you tried to move. It was odd telling your body to do something that it was not physically able to do.

Throughout the night, the nursing staff kept Eleanor in the nursery unless it was time for her to eat. You would breastfeed your daughter and send her back to be cared for while you tried to sleep as much as you could. You were the most exhausted you had ever been. Delivery itself had been a breeze, but the hormone fluctuations were truly whooping your ass.

The next morning, you found you had regained all feeling and movement in your lower body. Once the nurse removed your catheter and gave you some pain medication, you were beyond ready to get out of bed. David and the nurse helped you as you got your legs over the side of the bed, sitting there to adjust to the change in position for a few moments. Once you felt okay, you stood up with your support on either side of you.

“My god, it feels good to be out of bed!”

“You look great, baby.” David said with a kiss to your head.

The first few steps were uncomfortable. It felt like one side of the incision in your abdominal muscles was being tugged on, which was uncomfortable, even though you knew nothing was actually being pulled. As you grew more steady on your feet, your nurse allowed David to be the sole one to accompany you around the hallways.

You were holding onto the inside of his elbow for support as he kept his arm folded across his torso to give you support.

“It feels so good to be out of bed,” you told him quietly as you slowly walked.

“I can only imagine, babe. But you? You my dear are phenomenal. You did so good during delivery, you have been a champ with Eleanor, and you’re up walking 12 hours after a major surgery….” You glanced up at him and saw his wheels turning. “You’re superwoman.”

You smiled up at him and finished a couple of laps before returning to your room and getting back into bed.

That evening, you decided you needed a shower. It had been over 24 hours, post-partum hormones left you in horrid hot flashes and pouring sweat and you wanted to get some of your own clothes on. Deacon helped you up and to the bathroom. He helped you take your gown off and disposed of it in the linen bag before making sure you had all of your personal shower items ready to go. You wanted to pee first so you made your way over to the toilet and quickly found yourself unable to sit down on the toilet without some grounded support.

“Here, baby.” Deacon said softly once he noticed you trying to figure out your predicament and how to lower yourself the short distance to the toilet. He held out his hands and helped you slowly lower yourself down. “You know, it’s okay to ask for help, right?” Your husband asked you with a teasing tone.

He knew that you didn’t like being dependent on anyone unless it was allowing him to show his chivalrous side.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah…” you laughed.

You begin to unvelcro the abdominal binder around you.

You were uncomfortable, even with the binder, however, you didn’t realize how much support that it gave you until it was laying on the sink next to you.

“You okay, honey?” Deacon asked, studying your face.

“That binder is nice…” you grimaced.

You were finished peeing so you took toilet paper and attempted to wipe yourself, however, your newly incised abdominal muscles didn’t allow you to even get your hand between your legs. An intense burning pain shot up the right side of the muscles in your belly. You knew nothing was tearing inside of you, but damn, it felt like it.

Deacon didn’t let you struggle for another second. He took the toilet paper from you and wiped you while you held onto his shoulder.

He squatted down and pulled your oh so glorious post-partum panties down and got your feet out of them. He threw them away and helped you stand back up. He had the water running and adjusted for you. He helped you step in and then stood at the edge of the shower to make sure you didn’t need to call for his help. His presence apart from you in the shower lasted less than 60 seconds when he noticed that you were unable to even lift your hands up to wet your hair thoroughly because of the pain in your abdomen.

He quickly discarded his own clothes and stepped into the surprisingly room-y shower with you.

You were standing underneath of the water with your back to the shower-head. Deacon reached around you and began massaging your scalp, ensuring that all of your hair was wet. You stood there, arms folded gently in front of you, feeling as helpless as ever. You were grateful for your husband taking care of you but that didn’t change the fact that you were absolutely helpless. This was new to you and you didn’t like it.

David was massaging shampoo into your scalp when he noticed the tears in your red eyes.

“Hey, hey,” he said softly as he rinsed his hands of shampoo and cradled your face. “What’s wrong, baby?”

“I’m so helpless.” You cried. “I can’t wipe myself, I can’t wash my hair, I can’t wash my ass…”

“And that’s what I’m here for, honey.” David continued, his tone of voice felt like a hug to your soul, “You just gave birth to our beautiful daughter. You just had a major surgery. Being helpless is okay right now, baby. It won’t last forever. You will heal and be back to normal, but for right now, it’s okay to need me, baby. It wasn’t my job to carry Eleanor or give birth to her, but it is my job to care for you and I’m so blessed to get to do this.”

David’s kindness and love for you made you cry even more.

“I’m so blessed,” you cried, “I don’t deserve you.”

David chuckled to himself, knowing hormones were the culprit behind your sudden emotional fragility. He gently leaned down to kiss you. “Just as I don’t deserve you, baby. That’s why we’re blessed.”

He made sure that you were okay before he resumed washing and rinsing your hair, putting in conditioner, and washing your body and helping you rinse.

Once you were clean, David helped you step out of the shower. He wrapped you up in a towel while he dried off and dressed so that he could step out into the room to get your clothes.

He returned to the bathroom, leaving the door open, knowing you would get hot and sticky if he didn’t. He took your towel and began drying you off. He was so gentle as he rubbed the towel over your abdomen and hips. You grabbed his shoulders for support and squatted slightly so he could have better access to dry all of you.

You were grateful that you weren’t bleeding much post delivery. Regardless, you didn’t hesitate to step into a fresh pair of mesh underwear with giant pads provided by the hospital. David helped you get your abdominal binder on and shorts, followed by your nursing bra and one of his t-shirts. Once you were dressed, he sprayed detangler in your hair and gently worked your comb through it until all of the tangles were removed.

You felt so much better as you maneuvered your way back into bed. You were so thankful for David and you were so thankful to be clean. The nurse soon came in with a couple of percocet for you.

You looked puzzled.

“I called for some pain meds for you, baby. I know you were hurting during the shower.”

Tears welled up in your eyes again as you gratefully took the meds from your nurse.

“I’m so thankful to have you, baby.” You said to David a short while later as the two of you sat in your room together while you nursed your daughter.

Now about 5 minutes after 3, we hear the baby monitor go off again, which is to be expected at this point. Four weeks of having our beautiful baby girl, we know how long she sleeps before she's hungry again. That also creates exhaustion in both Harry and I. More exhaustion for me though because I'm still healing from giving birth and I'm the one that has to feed her from my body when she's hungry. That's why this time when the monitor goes off Harry tiredly mumbles, "I'll go get her and bring her to you, alright."

When Harry slips out of the bed with hooded eyes, messy curls, and low riding gray joggers that show his v line, I blindly slip my shirt off to make it easier to feed her when he returns with our tiny baby. A minute later, Harry returns with a fussy baby in his tattooed arms, ready to be fed. He walks over to the lamp on my bedside table and turns it on, leaving a warm glow in the room. Then he pulls back the blankets that's covering my naked chest and gently lays her small body between my boobs. Once our baby is on my bare chest, Harry carefully grabs one of my boobs in his hand and positions my nipple to her small mouth. "Is she latched on correctly?" he asks, not being able to see fully see due to her facing away from him.

I look down at my nipple she has in her mouth and can see her mouth doing subtle sucking motions along with feeling and the sounds the sucking she's doing with that strong mouth of hers. "Mhm I believe so. Come back in bed please." I respond. Harry leaves the lamp on and walks around the bed to crawl under the warm covers again. He scoots his pillow higher up and closer to mine, in the middle of the bed. Then he turns on his side and places a ring-less hand over our baby's back, gently rubbing it in soothing patterns and watches her while she eats.

Harry loves watching our baby feed from me. Not in a sexual way because its from my boobs that he adores so much during sex or foreplay. Its more of a fascination for him. Being fascinated with how my breast can produce milk to help our baby grow and become strong. Often when I'm breast feeding, no matter the time of day or place of feeding, he'll sit and watch. I never mind honestly. Harry is my husband after all, so I'm very comfortable around him.

As he's half consciously watching the baby feed from my boob, I'm laying flat on my back with my eyes closed, just about to doze off to sleep from the sleep deprivation my body is in. I'm not afraid to fall asleep because I know Harry is awake and watching her. So I do feel comfortable enough to doze off with her on my chest though I'm trying to keep awake to burp her when she's finished. I can feel Harry glancing at me and he's picking up on my battle with sleep. "It's okay to fall asleep. I've got her. When she's finished, I'll burp her and put her back to bed alright." he whispers quietly to me.

Knowing I have full permission to fall asleep, my mind falls blank as I doze into a much needed slumber. A few minutes later our baby girl detaches from my right nipple. Harry sits up and lifts her from my chest, pulling the covers back over my exposed upper body, and places her on his naked and tattooed chest carefully. He reaches over to his nightstand where a burping cloth lays and grabs it to place over his shoulder. Then he properly situates her upright over his shoulder to begin burping.

Usually it takes no longer than two minutes to burp her after a feeding, but for some reason tonight she isn't burping. "Come on my darling. Burp for daddy please so we can go to sleep." Harry coos in her ear softly while patting her back. She just makes a grunting noise like she's got a bit of a tummy ache due to not burping yet. Harry repositions her to where she's cradled in his arms and looks down at her. Our baby's face is scrunched up in discomfort. "Why won't you burp huh? Is your tummy hurting?" he questions his daughter in a playful yet worriedly manner. Obviously she can't respond to her daddy's question, so Harry just places a hand on her belly and starts rubbing gentle circles over it, thinking it'll help her tummy ache. It soothes her for a minute but Harry knows she must burp. So he places her back over his shoulder and attempts to burp her again.

After about ten light taps to her small back, she lets out a burping sound but its much more than a burp. It's a sickly burp that came along with vomit. Our poor baby girl projectile vomits a stream of white milk down her daddy's back and on the pillow underneath him. "Shit." Harry whisper yells, while jumping up from the bed out of quick reflexes. His sudden movements startle me awake.

"What Harry? What's happening?" I question my husband with a confused brain due to the sleep I was just in.

"She just spit up all down my back and on my pillow while I was burping her." Harry replies back while shushing the now crying baby in his arms.

I look over with blurry vision and see the spit up puddle on his pillow. "Why'd she throw up? Does she have a tummy ache?" I ask him worriedly. The one thing that stresses me out most with having a newborn is they can't communicate to let people know when somethings wrong.

"I'm not sure. She wouldn't burp for me, so I gave her a belly rub and tried to burp her again. Well she burped alright but it wasn't just air that came with it. It was her meal as well." he responds.

I make my way out of the bed and go to our master bathroom to fetch a damp cloth. I notice I'm still topless at the moment but I don't really care. Once I have the warm damp clothes, I make my way over to Harry who's calming our baby down. I walk behind him and began cleaning up the spit up that's running down his back. "I think her burp just got stuck and when it was finally ready to come out, she accidently brought up the milk too." I tell Harry. "She seems alright now so I don't think she's actually sick or anything."

Once I have cleaned Harry's back off, I carefully wipe our babies mouth off to make sure she doesn't have any dried spit up on her face. Then I go to our hall closet and find a clean pillow case for his dirtied pillow. While changing his pillow case, Harry asks, "Do you mind if she sleeps in her bassinet in our room for the rest of the early morning? You know, to keep an eye on her and to have easy access to her when she needs to feed again."

"Yeah of course babe. Hand her to me and go grab the bassinet." Harry hands the sleeping baby to me after I've changed his pillow case and goes to the nursery to fetch her light pink bassinet bed. I sit on the edge of the bed waiting on him to return. When he returns, he has a diaper, wipes, and the bassinet in his arms and hands.

"I'll place it on my side of the bed so you don't have to get up to get her when she's hungry. I can just hand her to you." Harry speaks lowly in his deep accent. Once the bassinet is sat on the floor by his side of the bed, I hand him our baby again and he lays her down on our bed to change her wet diaper. When he was holding her moments ago, he felt her heavy diaper, so that's how he knew to grab one when in the nursery. He unbuttons her onesie and takes off her soiled diaper. Then he takes a wet wipe and gently wipes her off so she doesn't get a rash from dried pee left on her. After she's all clean, he puts the fresh diaper on her and rebuttons her onesie.

Lastly, he slowly picks her up and places her in her bassinet and pulls her blanket up on her to keep her body warm. Once our baby is back to peacefully sleeping, Harry hands me the pee filled diaper and I toss it into the bin located in our bathroom. Then I turn the lamp off and we both crawl back under the warm blankets. Harry pulls me to his body and I curl up into his side. My breast still naked under the blankets but I know the baby will need to be feed again in a short amount of time, so there is no use in putting a shirt back on. Not long after me and Harry cuddle each other, we are both back asleep due to how tired we both are as new parents, but we are happily tired because we wouldn't trade our baby girl for the world.