Finding Family

Faye: Our Baby

I brushed my hair softly, avoiding all contact of the seemingly rock hard brush with my swollen belly, not wanting to hurt either of us. Placing the brush down, I put my hand on the bump. The baby kicked me sharply, as some sort of reminder that it wanted to be free.
"Soon you'll be separate from me." I whispered, talking to the infant inside me. It kicked again, as though a thank you. "Ouch, you can stop that." I added, in my best 'parenting' tone. The reason I wasn't addressing the baby as a name yet is because we'd made the apparently smart choice to not find out the gender until it was born, which under further inspection, seemed almost rude, as we were now referring to our child as an 'it'.
Mick, my fiancee, walked into the bedroom, and he hugged me, from behind, as gently as he could manage.
"Happy Valentine's day sweetheart." I said.
"Happy Valentine's my darling." He replied, kissing my head. "How's my little baby doing?" He added with a little playful tease I'd become so used to already.
"It's our baby, and if anything I've put more effort into it than you so, if we're playing that game, it's my baby. But I think it's doing okay." I replied with a little laugh, closing one hand around his wrist and moving it into position on the bump.
"He... It's a good kicker." He laughed as the baby kicked at my insides. He was almost dead certain this child was going to be a boy. In all fairness to him though, I was hoping it would be a boy too. I wasn't sure I could cope with having another little girl, I'm sure it would shatter my heart.
"You're telling me! Try putting up with that inside of you." I responded, trying to will myself into not punching him. Instead I started crying.
Joys of Pregnancy number 1: Mood swings.
"Are you okay?" He asked me. He was always slightly worried about my emotions because I'm not quite sure he got the hormone mood swings thing. We hadn't lived together much before I'd got pregnant, in part because I was on tour for a majority of it, but I'd moved in with him fully almost as soon as I'd found out for sure. As a result his knowledge about my emotions wasn't entirely as there as it could be to know I didn't mean to be as sharp as I'd just come across.
"Yeah, it's just pregnancy... it messes with your emotions so badly..." I tried to explain for what was probably the millionth time.
"It's okay. I know you don't mean to be like this." He replied, as he stopped hugging me. He sat down on our bed, patting it as an indication he wanted me to join him.
"Thanks for understanding so much cause I don't even know what I'm doing myself half the time and I've been through this before." I said, sitting down on the bed next to him. "It's just so tiring, carrying a baby requires so much energy; and it's so stressful, the fact that the life of our littlie is basically depending on me." Plus I didn't know how to control my own emotions at this point, but I didn't feel like adding that bit.
"Maybe this will help." He said, getting up and walking to the wardrobe. I already felt slightly anxious about what he was trying to find. There was one thing in there that I wanted to keep hidden. He pulled out 3 cassette tape boxes, and put them softly on the bed next to me. I stared at them, taking in each tiny detail of the cases. As if I needed to. Each one was engrained in my mind from seeing them so much. Next Step concert, End of the Road concert, and Steptacular concert.
"No." I said, matter of factly.
"Oh come on, it'll make you feel better." He replied, elbowing me gently.
"Yeah! If we are talking about burning them." I replied sarcastically, trying not to allow myself to cry at the memories. It wasn't just memories of Steps though, but memories too of my the last time I went through this. When I gave birth to a baby girl.

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I eventually got bored of his 'bright' ideas of what to watch and make me feel better, so I watched Mamma Mia. It made me happy for some reason, I'd watched it so many times in the last 2 months so the DVD now just lived upstairs as I found the bed the most comfortable place in the house. Mick promptly left the room; it wasn't that he disliked the movie, just that he'd probably seen it more times than was good for him. It hadn't even been out for 6 months yet! I sung along to most of the movie, so he could probably think of where in the movie I'd got to without seeing it anyway.
"Standing at the crossroads, no desire to run..." I took to singing along to When all is Said and Done. I tried my very hardest to not cry while listening to the words. It wasn't the memories, it was just my mood swings, or so I tried to convince myself.
Because it was Valentine's day, we then spent the rest of the day together, we went for a walk round a country park. I felt so in love with him, I was so happy that we were having a baby together. I hoped raising this child would go better than raising Evalynn would have been with her father.

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On the drive back from the country park, I thought for a moment. Where was Evalynn now? Was she happy? I wasn't allowing myself to know where she lived now, but I wanted to. This time last year I'd thought about contacting the centre about organising a meeting between me and her. I hadn't been brave enough. I mean what if she no longer wanted me, the mother who gave her up all those years ago.
I almost let myself cry, almost let myself go before I realised. Mick doesn't know I have a daughter, well not a live one anyway. Sure I'd told him I'd been pregnant before, that I'd given birth once before, but I'd never told him about the child, he'd never met it, and I just presumed he thought it wasn't around anymore. Admittedly, she wasn't around, just not in the way he probably assumed sue wasn't. I shuddered at the thought of Evalynn being dead, and looked at Mick. He glanced over at me and smiled.
"I love you." I said to him trying my best to mask my feelings.
"I love you too sweetie." He replied.
Damn it. If I wasn't pregnant, we'd be married by now. Not that that either of those things had even made a difference to the last guy. No. I couldn't think like that. I knew Mick was better than Jasper. I knew he wanted this child. His child. Our child. He was as happy to be becoming a father as I was to be becoming a mamma properly.

"Just promise me one thing." He said spontaneously, dragging me out from my thoughts. "If you pick the name, please don't go for anything Mamma Mia related. I don't think I could cope."
"Don't worry." I replied softly. "We've decided on a name for him - if indeed it is a him." We were going to call him Benjamin. It was a decision we'd made quitc quickly once we limited the list of boy names down. It was if we had a girl we'd have a problem, because we still didn't know which of a long list of names to go for. But Benjamin fitted his categories of being 'normal' and not being Mamma Mia related so that was okay. I just wanted to have this baby now. I was ready.

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Later, when we got home, Mick was cooking dinner. I went into the bottom of my side the wardrobe, pulled out a few random items (a few I thought had been lost for good) and eventually found a rectangular box. I picked it up, and set it on my bed. Very gently, I untied the ribbon that bound it and opened the lid to the box. Inside were all the things that related to Evalynn. Her birth certificate, folded in half very neatly; the official documents that meant that I was still connected to her and could still see her if I wanted too. The silver locket that matched hers, and finally, a photo of me cradling Evalynn. There was only one such photo of me and Evalynn, and I treasure it dearly. There was a photo of Lisa with Evalynn too, which was also inside the box somewhere. I smiled sadly, I hadn't seen Lisa in so long, I think I was beginning to forget she looked like. Rummaging through the box to find it I picked out the photo of Lisa with Evalynn and found, to my relief, I hadn't forgotten what one of my best friends looked like. I wondered if she was still as beautiful now, with an almost 1 year old child living in her house. What was his name? Jaden. It had seemed a bizarre name (in my opinion) when I'd found out, but over time my liking of the name had grown. I was happy for her. Maybe one day my little one would get to meet little Jaden, but with the amount we see each other outside of "co-incidental" event attendances who knows. I'd like for our children to grow up and be friends with each other, but as time passed that seemed less and less likely. Still a glimmer of hope at that future remained within me. A hope that one day the baby Scott-Lee and the baby Tozer would get chance to become the friends that Lisa and Claire had always said our children would all end up being. I'd spent years telling them that was weird and that I wasn't having children, then that I wouldn't have one other than Evalynn. It was like the universe was determined to prove me wrong on the children front.
Mick called upstairs to me, telling me it was almost time for dinner, so I carefully placed all my Evalynn related belongings back in the box, and concealed it in the bottom of my side of the wardrobe before walking downstairs.
I wondered what Evalynn would make of her little half-brother or half-sister if she ever got to meet them. I hoped she'd like them, but I just couldn't tell. After all, I'd never actually met my own daughter.