The Timeline

30.

November 15th, 2015:

Life with a newborn was... challenging, to say the least.

Theodore was now 15 days old and, despite being the joy and absolute mascot of the house, he had also managed to revolutionize everyone's lives.

The biggest revolution, of course, had been of him being born 269 kilometers away from home, in the Northern General Hospital in London. Claire had been discharged from the hospital exactly 48 hours after his birth, after the doctors had made sure that everything with both her and the kid was alright.

Obviously, Anna, Richard, the twins and Claire's friends had stayed back in Sheffield with her, to make sure that everything was, in fact, fine. Even Claire's parents stayed on the Sunday after Theodore had been born, but then left in the evening, because they had business to attend in Maidstone. Claire hadn't been sad to see them leave.

She had been extremely sad, on the other hand, to see Harry leave. He had stayed the night with her, until a nurse had come inside the room and had deeply scolded him for being there, startling the both of them. He would've stayed even more, but he had to go to Cheshire to his family and then back to London, because the promotion for One Direction's final album was beginning literally that very Monday, with the boys attending the Music Industry Trusts Awards in London. Whatever they were.

Despite everyone's protests and continuous telling him that Claire giving birth there was not his fault - just an abundance of coincidences - Harry still felt tremendously guilty and paid for everyone's accommodation (except for Claire's parents, but Claire didn't mind that). And then he had paid for Claire's friends' tickets to go back to London. Claire had left inside Richard and Anna's car, holding Theodore for the entire three hours of the journey back, sitting right next to the twins, her suitcase in the car's trunk.

Claire had managed to snatch from Harry the promise of all those payments being his present for Theodore's birth, since he had done so much, and he had begrudgingly accepted, muttering something about her birthday. Claire had rolled her eyes, instead choosing to focus on when she would've seen him next.

And then, once she was out of the hospital's bubble and back in London, her new life had begun, and she was still adjusting to everything that had changed and was still changing with Theodore now being around.

Claire's room was now hosting the baby's crib where he slept during the nights, but the house had literally turned into a Theodore Land: there was a stroller that moved between the living room and the kitchen so that Theodore could always be around when the guys weren't in their rooms, where Theodore sometimes slept his naps during the day or simply took his bottle (Claire had no milk, and no doctor had been able to explain why); there were Theodore things scattered everywhere in the house (clothes, toys, gadgets and devices that Claire and her friends had bought for him); his diaper change thing constantly went from the downstairs bathroom to the upstairs bathroom and all his toiletries also were moved, depending on where Claire and her friends felt like doing stuff. Mostly, they were downstairs, because bringing them upstairs was a bore.

In short words: the house had turned into a battlefield.

Claire knew that it would've happened, having spent the first weeks of the twins' lives at Anna's to give her a hand. She also knew that, had she lived on her own, without her friends, she wouldn't have made it. Having their help was truly a lifesaver.

Her friends were truly acting like they were the baby's father: they were methodical and had picked up on how to take care of him also by watching tutorials on YouTube; they had also established a little calendar of shifts in which they were required to take care of him. Obviously, if one happened to be in the room and the baby needed something, they would help instead of staying put and not doing anything. But still, the shifts truly helped at night, so Claire wouldn't have been the only one to lose sleep over Theodore.