Comfort Food

Celebrations

After getting her POI diagnosis, Regina often imagined what it would've been like to be pregnant. She imagined taking the home test and then the different ways she would tell her husband her good news. Then she pictured what it would be like to have a baby grow inside her, seeing the child on the ultrasound machine screen as the doctor made certain everything was progressing normally. It always made her choke up and that was usually when she ended her daydreaming, unable to see the rest of what she had assumed she would never have. Over time, she had stopped imagining it—even when she and Robin were going through the process to adopt. She just figured they would be given the baby and go home, that they wouldn't be very involved before that moment.

Yet she was sitting in her ob-gyn's office, looking at an ultrasound machine screen that showed the clear form of a baby. She could see his or her head and watched as the baby kicked their little legs. One little hand rested on their stomach while they sucked the thumb of the other hand. It was absolutely adorable and Regina had never experienced such overwhelming love for someone, not even Robin.

He took her hand and gave it a squeeze. "Look at that," he whispered. "There's our child."

"He or she is beautiful," Regina said, sniffling.

Dr. Whale smiled at them. "Are you ready to hear the heartbeat?"

Regina gripped Robin's hand as she nodded. He leaned forward. "We are, Doctor. Go ahead."

"Okay," he said, pressing a few buttons on the machine. He moved the wand and soon the sound of a fast but strong heartbeat filled the room.

Tears sprung to her eyes and Regina felt a lump form in her throat. She leaned against Robin, who hugged her and kissed her head. Their future child was no longer just a dream—he or she was a real baby who liked to suck their thumb and had a good heartbeat.

It was even better than she had dreamed.

"Everything looks good," Whale said, turning off the heartbeat so they could hear him better. "I'll get pictures printed up for you. You can pick them up at the front while Emma makes her next appointment."

The mention of Emma made Regina turn her attention back to the young woman lying on the examination table in a paper-thin gown. Her blonde hair was loose, falling around her shoulders as her green eyes were watching Robin and Regina rather than the screen. She tilted her head. "You already love him or her, don't you?"

"We do," Regina said, feeling the tears run down her cheeks. "The baby is absolutely beautiful."

Robin nodded, reaching over to squeeze Emma's hand. "Thank you for this. This means more to us than you know."

"I have one more question," Whale said, interrupting their moment with the young woman who was going to make them parents. "Do you want to know the sex?"

Caught off-guard, Regina looked at Robin. He stared back at her with wide eyes. "Do we want to know?" he asked her.

"I don't know," she replied, slightly dazed. "We've never discussed it."

She honestly didn't know if she wanted to know the gender of their baby. On one hand, it would be fun to be surprised at birth but on the other, she would like to know how to decorate the nursery as well as build up a little wardrobe for the baby before he or she arrived. If they did decide to learn the gender, did she want to learn it now or did she want to go the whole nine yards and have a gender reveal party? This could be their only chance to go through the pregnancy process and she didn't want to miss out on anything.