“A couple of days before we left for Hawaii … I’ve been feeling a little sick lately, so I went to the doctor to get checked out and he confirmed that I was pregnant. He’s not sure how far along I am, but I have an appointment with the OB/GYN on Wednesday, so I’ll find out then.”
“We need to cancel it. I’ll get you in with Dr. Flanagan on Monday. She’s the best neonatal surgeon I know, and she’s a certified OB/GYN. I’ll give her a call later,” he says in a do-not-argue-with-me tone.
“Okay,” I say with a smile. Anybody else and I probably would have argued it, but since Ashton helped save Lily when she was born, his medical opinion is the only opinion I can trust, and if he says Dr. Flanagan is the best then I believe him.
He leans in closer and rests his head against mine. “We can do this, okay? It might not be easy but we can definitely do this.”
My smile grows as my fingers crawl into his wet hair, and I begin to massage his scalp as I focus on the deep green hues of his eyes. “We can do this,” I repeat with a certainty that eases my insecurities, and I’m finally able to feel excited at the prospect of bringing another human being into this world … mine and Ashton’s little human being.
“We’re having a baby,” I laugh excitedly and Ashton laughs along with me, clutching me tight to his body.
“We certainly are …” Ashton says just before he presses his lips back onto mine. We spend a few moments celebrating our news in the midst of a breathtaking kiss. He pulls away and what he does next will be etched in my mind until the day I die. Shifting on his knees, he gently smoothes his hand across my stomach before lowering his head, pressing a soft kiss against the center of my bare skin, inches away from where our tiny baby grows in the warmth of my uterus. “Hey baby, I’m your daddy,” he whispers against my stomach, causing moisture to well up in my eyes and happy tears to fall freely down my cheeks. “I can’t wait to meet you, and if you’re anything like your momma, you will be just as beautiful. Now, I don’t want you doing a Lily on us and coming early. You need to stay in there until you’re healthy and strong … but if you do decide to honor us with your presence earlier than planned, then we will fight along with you, just like we did with Lily. We will look after you. Everything will be okay, I promise.”
He places another tender kiss on my stomach. His loving touch has me sighing in content, my skin tingling from his deep affection for me. He stands tall on his knees and slides his fingers through my hair until both hands are resting at either side of my head.
“You’re amazing. Has anybody ever told you that?” I ask with a smile on my face.
He tilts his head to the side, regarding me with humor, giving me his signature smirk. “Yeah, a few times, but I never get tired of hearing it.”
I shift closer to him until my chest is pressed up against his, and let my hands linger against his firm abs. “I love you so much,” I declare, feeling my heart double in size at the love I feel for this man, my husband.
“Not as much as I love you,” he says before descending his lips onto mine. I find myself falling under his spell, entranced with his smell, touch and feel. And now that I’m carrying his baby we made together in an act of loving passion, knowing that I have a piece of him growing inside me, makes me fall deeper in love with him. The thought of having another baby always scared me. I was positive I wouldn’t be able to cope … that if I was placed in the same situation that led me to almost losing Lily I would hit breaking point, but now that I have the strength of Ashton, I know I can cope with just about anything that life throws at me.
They say what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and I now understand that it isn’t about defying the bad in life and surviving life’s curveballs, but it’s about embracing the bad and turning it into a positive, turning it into strength. In the past I could have allowed the evil to weaken my soul, to destroy every living cell of my body, but instead I found the strength in an unexpected place. I found it in the love of my life.
Ashton is not only my strength, he’s my hero, soul mate and my best friend too, and no matter what life throws at us next, I know as long as I have him by my side, I can survive anything.
Seven months later
TODAY IS THE DAY. The day that I become a father. Of course I already feel like a father to Lily-Mai since I love her like she’s my own, but my daughter, my flesh and blood—yes we’re having a girl—is moments away from being welcomed into the world. It’s three weeks earlier than most pregnancies but this hasn’t been your average pregnancy, and to get to this stage is beyond anything we could have imagined. Seven months ago when Ava told me she was pregnant, she made me the happiest guy on this earth. The moment we landed back in Seattle I couldn’t wait a moment longer to find out how far along Ava was, so we got a cab straight to the hospital. After numerous tests and a transvaginal ultrasound, we were told the baby was healthy at eight weeks gestation and that her cervix and uterus were normal.
I couldn’t help but chuckle when I realized the conception was around the time of my brother’s wedding in Texas, well … our joint wedding since we crashed it with our own impromptu ceremony. We had so much sex that weekend I’m not surprised she got pregnant. We were at it like rabbits.
With Ava’s history of premature labor, and the previous complications that resulted with the early arrival of Lily, the OB/GYN explained how she would keep a close eye on Ava’s cervix and uterus with regular appointments to see how she progressed. After that first hospital appointment, we were able to breathe for a moment … and things were steady up until Ava hit her eighteenth week when she began to bleed. She automatically assumed the worst, and if I’m being honest I had my worries too, but I managed to hide it from Ava because the last thing I wanted was to add to her anxiety. From a doctor’s standpoint I knew I shouldn’t have let myself panic without further investigation, but for the first time in my life I became the parent. I found myself in a similar situation my patients’ parents find themselves in and I understood exactly how they felt; looking down at their baby who shouldn’t even be born yet and wondering if they would survive.
After an emergency appointment with Dr. Flanagan, it came to our attention that Ava had cervical insufficiency, which causes the cervix to shorten and dilate prematurely. Thankfully it was caught in time for Ava to undergo a cerclage procedure where a stitch is put in place to close the cervix. Once that was done, her pregnancy was smooth sailing. The aim was to get her to a healthy gestation of thirty-six or thirty-seven weeks and then take the stitch out to allow natural labor to begin. Miraculously, Ava’s managed to hold our baby girl until thirty-seven weeks. And oh boy was it a beautiful sight to behold. Just watching Ava’s stomach continue to grow with our baby was overwhelming, yet sexy as hell. Since the moment she told me she was pregnant, my hormones have been haywire and I’ve constantly wanted to jump her bones. There’s just something so incredibly sexy about a pregnant woman, especially my pregnant woman. But frustratingly we’ve not been able to have sex ever since she had the stitch put in as it was highly recommended by the doctor to abstain from sexual intercourse until the end of the pregnancy. I was a hundred percent behind the doctor’s decision, as I didn’t want to risk tearing the stitch and inducing premature labor. We were desperate for our baby to stay safe in the warmth of Ava’s womb for as long as possible, and we weren’t going to let anything jeopardize that. However, that’s not to say Ava didn’t make good use of her tongue because she did—we both did.