And Baby Makes Three

Chapter 25

Blaine was pretty sure this amounted to some kind of torture.

If July had been hot, then August was even hotter, and he was seriously contemplating moving to the North Pole for the reminder of his pregnancy because it was unbearable.

Most of the time he was hot and sweaty and extremely uncomfortable, not to mention finding it hard to maneuver himself around obstacles like furniture and stray shoes because of his size. Twice he nearly tripped over a pair of his mother’s shoes in the hallway and he’d bumped into the side of the coffee table with the bruises to prove it more times than he would like to admit.

Kurt sympathized, but there was only so much he could do to help. The only way to get rid of the aches and pains and unfortunate collisions with sharp edges of tables was to have the baby, and that wasn’t going to happen for another two months.

If he was honest, he wanted the baby to come so he could get some relief just as much as he wanted the baby to come so he could finally meet him or her. 

It was a struggle, and the people closest to him - Kurt, Sam, Tina, his parents, Burt and Carole - seemed to know that, and did their best to make him feel better.

He’d taken to lounging on the couch with Kurt while his mom brought him cup after cup of ice water, trying as best he could to cool off in the baking heat. Sometimes he’d get so comfortable he’d fall asleep, only to wake up hours later in an extremely uncomfortable position with raging pain that seemed to come from deep within his spine, making it almost impossible for him to move. 

The first time that had happened, he’d been in so much pain that he couldn’t stop himself from crying despite Kurt’s best attempts to soothe the pain with massage and a hot water bottle. It had taken hours for pain to fade, and even then it became a dull, constant ache that just wouldn’t go away. 

On top of it all, since he’d started getting Braxton-Hicks contractions he’d been having them almost every day for hours, and that coupled with the pain in his back made him feel nauseated and exhausted.

"Just two more months,” Kurt would remind him, smiling gently. “Just two more months, then it’ll be over and we can focus on being the best parents we can possibly be.”
_______________________________________

Towards the end of August, and round about the thirty-week mark, they were visited as promised by a midwife from the hospital.

It also happened to be on a day when Blaine’s back pain was particularly bad.

He held Kurt’s hand and cried through the physical exam, and the midwife - a red-headed woman called Sandra with crows’ feet and a sympathetic, friendly expression - had looked worried. She asked him to rate the pain on a scale of one to ten, with ten being the highest rating. 

“About - about a seven and a half? Or maybe an eight?” he’d sniffed, embarrassed that he’d cried in front of the midwife - Sandra. Kurt handed him a tissue from the box on the coffee table and he wiped at his eyes. “All I know is that it’s really painful and nothing seems to help.”

“Have you considered physical therapy? There are excellent programs available at the hospital for both women and men who suffer with bad back pain during pregnancy." 

"No,” Blaine replied. “I - we - we hadn’t thought of that.”

“We’re a bit behind with the technical arrangements.” Kurt said. “It’s sort of happened so fast that we haven’t really had time to think about it logically.”