(Thalia)
He's so small.
He's 7 pounds and 5 ounces, which the nurses tell them is right at the average weight, but to Thalia he's so small.
He's swaddled in a light blue blanket with a little hat on his head in the same color. His eyes are closed now that his screams and cries have stopped. Now, he just dozes peacefully, wrapped carefully in Reyna's arms.
He's so small.
He looks so delicate, like the slightest touch could break him. He makes her think of her mothers cabinet, filled with stupid, breakable glasses. The ones that would be thrown at her and filled to the brim with alcohol. Thalia always kept her distance from the cabinet, but she just wants to get closer to him.
Not too close, though.
Reyna still has tears in her eyes as she looks down at the little boy, gods the last time she saw Reyna cry was at their wedding. With one strong arm wrapped around him, she uses her other hand to trace a finger softly across all his visible features--his long nose, his chubby cheeks, his brow, furrowed with sleep, his tiny fingers that are smaller than Thalia ever could've imagined.
He's so small.
Thalia still can't wrap her head around the fact that this tiny person is the same little heartbeat she heard on the ultrasound so many months ago. She can't believe that this full-sized baby is the same gray blur on the monitor that she watched grow from the size of a blueberry to a strawberry to an apple to the baby boy that sits in Reyna’s arms. Their baby boy. She can't fathom that the same tiny fingers now wrapping around Reyna's thumb are the same ones the technician traced out for them on a screen just a few weeks ago.
Up until now, it's like he's just been a concept, an idea that Reyna and Thalia tried months so he could be theirs biologically.. He's been a dream that they lied awake at night thinking about together. A dream that they fantasize about, watching him grow up, seeing their son become a good man, something their fathers were not.
But now he's here. He's right in front of her and she can't believe that he's real. She's been measuring Reyna's growing stomach for the past 39 weeks, but it still didn't feel real. Seeing Reyna hold him in her arms, though, hearing the tiny noises he makes as he squirms in his sleep, now he's real.
He's so small.
Reyna manages to pull her eyes away from the baby for a moment and looks up towards Thalia. “Do you want to hold him?” She asks, but Thalia barely hears it. She can't stop staring at the baby, with her eyes wide and mouth slightly agape.
This is her son.
This is Reyna's son.
This is her baby.
He's so small.
Reyna asks her question again and this time, Thalia snaps out of her trance. She looks at Reyna, eyes still wide with fear, and says, “I don't know if I should.”
Her wife smiles up at her from the bed, understanding the worry in Thalia's eyes. She pats the spot next to her on the bed until Thalia finally sits down beside her, careful to stay straight up so she doesn't jostle Reyna or the baby.
“Of course you should,” Reyna says. “He's your son and he wants to meet you.”
“He's your son.”
Those words stick in Thalia’s brain, repeat themselves on a loop until they become jumbled.
She can't believe she has a son.
