He laughed at me and smiled. “Don’t worry, Ella. I’m not going to break her. But I promise I’ll put her down if I get tired.”
“Thank you.” I laid back down and pulled the thin hospital blanket up around my shoulders.
“Ella?”
“Yes?” My head sunk into the pillow and I felt myself starting to relax.
“Thank you for giving me a family.”
I opened my eyes and saw him staring down at Mattie and I saw so much love beaming down on her. “Yeah, well, thanks for being a good son and driving a total stranger home in a rain storm.”
He looked over at me and we both smiled, knowing that so much more was in store for us.
The first two weeks of having a new baby was nothing like I had expected it to be. I can’t really remember what I was expecting, mainly because remembering anything, including my own name, at some points was a stretch.
Mattie was the perfect baby—during the day. She slept beautifully—during the day. She cooed and cried and opened her beautiful eyes every once in a while to take in her surroundings. But at night, well, things could have gone better. The baby cried, I cried, and sometimes Porter looked as though he was a deer in headlights. The poor man didn’t know up from down some days and there were times I was no help at all. I had my fair share of breakdowns in the darkness of night, having absolutely no idea why my baby cried for hours.
One thing I did learn, though, throughout all the madness of that transitional time, was that sometimes you had to throw out all the advice and parenting books you’d read and just listen to your baby. Mattie wouldn’t sleep or stop crying until she laid directly on me. So guess where she slept? That’s right: on me. This particular arrangement made it difficult for me to sleep, but I was happy to lay in the dark, half dozing, if it was quiet and Mattie wasn’t crying. Porter did everything he could to help; if she was awake, he was awake. But if she was sleeping it made no sense for him to lie awake with me. I used those quiet moments in the dark to reflect on how much my life had changed, to imagine where we’d be in another year’s time.
Thankfully, I never found myself drifting into the darkness in my mind. The events surrounding my shooting and Kyle would seep into my thoughts at times, but I never wallowed. I allowed myself to process the thoughts, I even wrote some of them down if I thought it would be helpful in court, but then I moved on. I let my mind wander elsewhere. I never panicked and I never worried. It was a new feeling of being content I’d never experienced.
I also expected that after having a baby, for a little while at least, my sex drive would be gone and, in some ways, it was. I definitely didn’t want to have sex; sitting was a hardship sometimes. But seeing Porter shirtless holding our baby, talking to her about her day, was the biggest turn on ever. He was so gentle with her, so careful. If I had thought he’d used soft hands with me before, I was wrong. He was soft with Mattie, soft for her. The sun rose and set with her. She had the secrets to the universe and he tried to coax them out of her every evening, rocking with her, telling her stories, running his fingers over the soft hair on her head.
For two weeks now we focused on Mattie and I wouldn’t have it any other way. We loved her and would do anything for her. But when I realized that, for the first time since we’d been home from the hospital with her, she was asleep in the middle of the day and I wasn’t completely exhausted, my mind immediately started thinking about how much I missed my husband.
I found him in the laundry room, moving clothes from the washer to the dryer—bless him. He was focused on his task and didn’t hear me approach. I felt him startle a little when I slid my hands around his waist from behind, pressing my front to his back, snuggling in. His hand slid over top of mine, caressing me, causing my breaths to come faster. It had been so long since we’d been together and I was now a little angry at the fact that we still had four more weeks to wait.
I breathed him in, cherishing the familiarity of his scent. He always smelled the same and I came to rely on it, expect it, love it.
“Hey, Babe,” he said softly, aware of the fact that Mattie was asleep, not wanting to wake her. “What’s up? Gonna go lie down?”
“Nope,” I said, popping the P, with my face still resting against his back.
“Can I get you anything?” He asked, making me smile against him.
“Nope.” This time I popped the P loudly, making him chuckle.
“Ok.”
I loosened my grip and walked around him, placing myself between him and the washing machine, and looked up at him, my hands now on his chest.
“Hi,” I whispered.