Page 68 of Sebastian's Baby

“That’s awesome, Seb,” she grins at me. “Hurry up and try it; I want to hear our baby’s heartbeat again.”

“Okay, lay back as much as you can, let’s see if we can do it.”

Lita sits back in the armchair and stretches out as much as she can, but I frown because I won’t be able to access the lower part of her belly, and the videos I saw online all showed that’s where I need to place the wand.

I tell Lita this and suggest, “Maybe try lying sideways?”

She puts her legs over one of the arms and leans back as much as she can over the other. She’s basically still in a ‘V’ position, though.

“Can you lean back a bit more?”

She leans back, and I mightjustbe able to get the wand to the right position, except that Lita is grimacing.

“Is it too uncomfortable?”

She nods and sighs. “Sorry, Seb. I really wanted it to work.”

I’m bitterly disappointed, but I shrug my shoulders and smile at her. “It was worth a try.”

She stands up, and I’m wondering how else I might be able to record the heartbeat when she gasps. I snap my gaze over to her to make sure she’s okay, but she’s grinning at me.

“We’re idiots.” She points to the floor. “I’ll just lie down there.

I look down and burst into laughter. “The simplest answer.”

Lita lies flat on the floor in front of the amp and pulls her top up under her breasts while I unbutton her jeans and pull them down. I grab a hand towel I prepared earlier and tuck it into her underwear in a similar fashion to the way the sonographer did for her.

I grab the bottle of gel that came with the Doppler. “Okay, princess, this might be cold. I’m just going to have a listen and make sure everything’s going okay in there.”

I’m pleased when she laughs at my joke and says, “Sure, Dr. Fox.”

I laugh with her as I squirt the gel onto her stomach.

“Oh, god. It really is cold,” she says with another laugh.

Noise comes through the amp from the Doppler, and we both fall silent as I try to find the baby’s heartbeat. I angle the wand around her belly in slow circles the way I saw online.

It did say not to freak out if you can’t hear the baby’s heartbeat because it can be hard to find. It doesn’t stop my heart from leaping to my throat in the moments before I find the placenta, though.

“Oh,” she gasps. “That’s the placenta.”

I smile and nod at her. Relief floods through me because if the placenta is working then there’s a good chance the baby is okay.

“Yup, it is. Come on, baby, come to dada.”

In the videos I watched, sometimes the baby would hide behind the placenta, so I move the wand a few inches to the right and start angling it from there instead.

Then I hear it—the best sound in the world. My baby’s heartbeat is amplified into the air around us from the speaker. It fills everything in here, and I close my eyes, focusing on it and timing it instinctively—still the same strong heartbeat as last week.

My love for this tiny creature is all-consuming. It surpasses any feeling that I’ve had in my life. I know that I would lay down my life to keep them safe, and I could listen to this sound all day. I’m so grateful that this worked because my mind is full of lyrics and melodies for the song I want to write.

“It’s beautiful, Seb,” Lita whispers, breaking the silence. “I love our baby.”

Her face is lit up, and she looks completely in awe, her eyes glistening, and I feel bonded to her. We both love this tiny thing as much as the other.

“Me too, princess. I’ve never loved anything as much as I love our baby,” I whisper back.

After a few minutes, the sound stops, and I don’t want Lita to worry, so I tell her, “That happens sometimes. The baby moves. I was watching videos on YouTube about how to do this. I should have gotten the recording I need, though.”

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