Page 104 of Pregnant in Plaid
"Everything from my neck down."
"Sounds about right." She adjusts something on my IV. "This should help. Give it a few minutes to kick in."
"What time is it?" My voice sounds like I've swallowed gravel.
"Almost one PM." He leans forward, reaching for my hand. "You've been asleep for about four hours."
Four hours. Which means our daughter has been in the NICU for?—
"The baby," I croak. "Is she?—"
"She's okay." Trace squeezes my fingers. "She's doing well. Breathing on her own. They're monitoring her, but the nurses say she's a fighter."
The relief hits so hard I almost start crying again. Almost. I've cried enough for one lifetime in the past twelve hours.
"Have you seen her?" I ask.
"Yeah. They let me go down while you were sleeping." He pulls out his phone, and his expression does something soft and vulnerable that makes my chest ache. "I took about three hundred pictures. Want to see more?"
"Three hundred?"
"I might be slightly obsessed with my daughter." He scrolls through his camera roll. "Also, I have no idea which ones are good, so I just took all of them. Multiple angles. Different lighting situations."
He angles the phone so I can see the screen. More photos of our daughter. Still impossibly tiny. Still hooked up to all those wires and tubes. But somehow, in the morning light, she looks a little less terrifying than she did last night when we first saw her.
My throat closes up. "She's still so little."
"Four pounds, two ounces." Trace's thumb hovers over the photo. "The nurse said she might lose a fewounces before she starts gaining. That's normal for preemies."
"How much do full-term babies weigh again?"
"Seven, eight pounds usually."
"So, she's basically half the size she should be."
"But she's perfect anyway." He scrolls to another photo. "And she has your nose."
I look closer. "You said that last night. I still can't tell with all the tubes."
"Trust me. I spent an hour staring at her this morning. Definitely your nose. And your stubborn chin."
"You mean the MacKenzie stubborn chin."
"Hey, that's a MacKenzie family trait. Generations of stubborn chins."
Despite everything, I almost smile. "Lucky her."
He scrolls to another photo—a different angle, this one showing more of her face. Her eyes are closed, tiny fists curled near her cheeks, and she looks so peaceful. So unaware that she came into the world six weeks too early because her parents are idiots who had a massive fight right before?—
"Wait." I grab his hand. "Go back."
He swipes back to the previous photo.
"Is that—is she wearing a hat?"
"Oh." Trace grins, a little sheepish. "Yeah. The NICU has these tiny knit hats for the preemies. It's got little ears on it. Like a bear."
"A bear."
