Blue Fire

Chapter Thirty-One - Fresh-Eyed Life

SARA

I had been a mother for two weeks now and to say I wasn't stellar at it was an understatement. I wasn't scared of hurting her anymore by just holding her, that fear had grown out of me quickly since I spent most of my days changing her, feeding her or burping her.

She was a mellow kind of baby so far. Slept somewhat okay but fussed whenever Catcher was there. He spent twelve of those fourteen nights with us and she fussed. The two nights he wasn't there I was out like a light and so was she.

It was strange in a sense, but then again maybe she took after me and whenever his intensity left the room we were exhausted.

I was mostly cooped up in my room, using the ton of stuff that Sona had promised me I'd need when she got here, which I hadn't believed, and she gloated some about that. The Lexus breast-pump saved my life, basically. It was gentle on my sensitive skin and it took hardly any knowledge to work. So, yeah, Sona had been very right.

She spent most of her days with us too, helping me understand the ins and outs of being a mother to a newborn, having given birth and generally how to exist again in this new world of motherhood. She rocked Julia whilst telling me gruesome stories of her own births and others and boy did I understand. I was torn to pieces down there, and I was basically going to go celibate from now until eternity because I truly didn't think I would ever feel the same and there was no way I was letting Catch get anywhere near that disaster-zone, even after the demanded five-week waiting period.

I walked around the room with her, I fed her, I pumped. I ventured downstairs three times to show her and myself off and to get her used to the world around her as well as to get me the fuck out of that room.

It was going okay, I wouldn't say stellar, but okay.

I Skyped with Tash a few days after she was born and showed her off, in all her glory. Tash had cursed and cried, and when I told her her full name she'd bawled and disconnected.

Today was her two-week birthday. She was officially two weeks old and I had dressed her in the little pink onesie Sona had bought to re-stock my baby-wardrobe seeing as she was in fact a she and not a he like we'd thought.

They were celebrating us tonight, a Wilder feast of sorts that would probably get wild later on and we'd have to deal with it, her and I.

I was still in my maternity clothes, wearing one of the maxi-dresses I'd bought before I came back here. A long flowy thing in deep purple that hid the state of my body. I hadn't put on any makeup because I realized quickly that pampering and motherhood didn't go hand in hand and fuck if I was going to bother.

Julia was laying on my bed, dressed in her little pink number and staring at nothing whilst making noises as I grabbed a pair of leather flipflops Sona had gotten for me.

Catcher had been working all day, as he usually did, but I was hoping that he would come early tonight and actually stay the night. Even though she got fussy when he was here, he was amazing with her. Whenever he came back he went to her first, picked her up and kissed her before he turned to me with her in his arms and kissed me. He changed diapers, he was the one who got up when she started crying her little heart out in the middle of the night because her daddy wasn't paying her attention anymore. He was doing it all. He fed her, bathed her, dressed her, loved on her with a passion that was impossible. Just as impossible as my own.

My life was them now. Catcher Ryland and Julia Sonja Natalie Ryland. They were my entire world. Nothing came before and nothing came after.

They were it.