It wouldn’t benefit the current conversation to remind my husband that Logan raised me and my three sisters and their son Emmett, and Cooper was not their first grandchild. Babysitting our two-month-old was not any sort of challenge for them.
None of that mattered, though. Bauer—with his giant heart and his fierce protective streak—was having an understandably hard time imagining someone else taking care of our son.
The road to this moment—where I could sit in a nursery decorated with bright art prints of snowboards and ice-covered mountains and watch my husband sway back and forth as he hummed some unnamed tune to the twelve-pound bundle in his arms—hadn’t been easy.
We lived together for quite a while before Bauer proposed. And we felt no huge rush to get married once that happened. Despite the patience we had leading up to it, after our walk down the aisle, we were ready to start a family fairly quickly.
But my body hadn’t quite been on board. It took a couple years of tracking ovulation and sex on a schedule and two miscarriages before Cooper was born. The first time in our entire relationship that I saw my husband absolutely break down was the moment our son was handed to him in the delivery room. The moment we heard his wailing cry, and they told us he was perfectly healthy, Bauer finally released all the grief he’d held in over the two early losses—the babies we never got to meet, but loved immensely.
When I didn’t answer Bauer’s hypothetical questions about all the things that could go wrong, he let out a great, deep sigh.
“I’m doing that thing again, aren’t I?” He sent me a crooked grin. “That big fancy word that I never remember.”
“Catastrophizing,” I said. “And yes. Just a little.”
Bauer turned his gaze back down to our son, smiling when Cooper gripped his pointer finger and tried to suck it into his open mouth. “How are we supposed to just … let him out into the world someday? If it’s this hard to go out to dinner, how the ever-loving fuck are we supposed to let him go to school. Or a job. Or college.” He stopped, clearing his throat suspiciously. “The world is terrifying, Claire. I just want,” his voice trailed off.
I stood from the chair, my throat tight with emotion from watching him struggle with this thing. He slid his arm around my shoulder when I moved into his side. Cooper’s eyes zeroed in on me, and I made a soft clicking noise as I ducked in to kiss the tip of his nose.
He smelled sweet and soft, the product of the bath he’d gotten earlier after a particularly juicy spit-up session that morning.
“I know,” I murmured. I pushed up on my toes and gave Bauer a soft kiss on his cheek. “You want to protect him.”
Bauer took Cooper to the changing table, settling him on the curved cushion while his little legs kicked happily. “I know, I know … I can’t do that forever.” He blew a raspberry on Cooper’s stomach after he unhooked the onesie he was wearing. “Your mom is smart, little dude. I really hope you have her problem-solving skills and not mine.”
I shook my head and laughed. “I’m going to go get ready. Paige and Logan will be here in about forty-five minutes. Can you give him that bottle of breast milk from the fridge?”
Bauer hummed. “You got it, boss lady.”
While he took care of Cooper, I took a quick shower and braided my hair off to the side, winding it around into a simple knot at the base of my skull. Getting ready these days wasn’t something that I spent a lot of time on. I was still on maternity leave from my job at a small private pediatric counseling practice, and would be for another four weeks. The first two months of my time home with Cooper had gone faster than I ever could’ve imagined. He was a good baby, all in all, sleeping through the night around six weeks and only fussed when he was tired or hungry. And even though I spoke a big game with Bauer about how Cooper would be fine, and there was nothing to worry about—the thought of going back to the office three days a week had my chest tight and achy.
Becoming a mom was something I’d done my best to prepare for. Long before I ever met my husband, I’d spent my entire adult life learning about the way children grew and developed. But the moment they handed me the screaming little bundle of my son, all the research and reading and studying disappeared in a soft, wispy puff. Against my chest, while Bauer and I cried happy, exhausted, relieved tears, I knew that nothing could actually make you feel ready to be a parent.
I didn’t feel ready for the sleepless nights or inexhaustible wells of love.
I didn’t feel ready to figure out breast feeding, because holy shit it was hard.
I didn’t feel ready to get spit up in my mouth or clean my first blowout.
And while I got caught up in the worries of missing Cooper when I went back to work, my husband’s worries were more forward focused than my own.
Between the two of us, we had all the facets of Cooper’s life covered with parental concern.
Sometimes, like on a night like this, it was a good reminder that there were still so many other parts of our life where we needed to remain vigilant.
Date nights, even if it just meant a forced shower and dinner out at a local restaurant, were just as important.
My husband wanted me, I had no doubt about that. The moment I’d been cleared for sex after giving birth, he took great pleasure in showing me just how much he appreciated the new curves on my body, the stretch marks that may never fade from my stomach.
But it was nice to do this too. Stare at my closet and try to decide if he’d like the red v-neck shirt with the new jeans I’d just bought, or the pretty blue sundress with straps that crisscrossed over my back.
I smiled, thinking about the first time Bauer saw me in a dress, and my hand went straight to that hanger.
For that brief moment in time, all that mattered was picking a dress that made me feel sexy and pretty for a date with my husband.
Cooper, like he always did, snuck back into my head as soon as I’d slipped the dress on and finished applying lotion to my arms and legs. It was enough to make me wonder if this would ever abate, or if Bauer and I were doomed for a lifetime of parental worry.
With a few sprays of hairspray over my braid, I reminded myself that every parent felt these things—to varying degrees.
Nothing we worried about was abnormal or unhealthy. And we had amazing examples of how to deal with it, with my brother and Paige, and all three of my sisters, who were seasoned pros at this point in motherhood.
Every phase of their life, with the normal shifts and changes, brought about a new set of challenges. Hopefully, we’d give Cooper a sibling someday, and the worry and love would start all over again.
There was only so much we were in control of.
I took a deep breath, making sure my hands were steady before I applied a few coats of mascara.
When I closed the cap and set it back into the drawer of makeup, I stared at my reflection in the mirror and tried to decide if I looked like a new mom.
But the face staring back at me was just … Claire.
All the changes were on the inside, and maybe there was something comforting about that. No one knew all the ways having Cooper twisted my heart around into some new, amazing creation—capable of an entirely different kind of love that I’d never experienced before.
Ruminating on that love, and how it changed all the tiny facets of your personality, was how Bauer found me.
He leaned a shoulder against the frame of the doorway, watching me with a tiny smile on his handsome face.
“Paige and Logan are here,” he said. “She is CPR certified, by the way.
I wasn’t too chickenshit to ask her.”
I smiled.
“You’re thinking very hard.”
My shoulders sank as I laughed. “A little.”
His eyes tracked over my face, and I turned so that I was sitting up against the edge of the bathroom counter. Bauer pushed off the wall and caged me in there, one hand anchored over my hip, and the other sliding over the length of my neck. His thumb coasted over a sensitive spot underneath my jaw, and my eyes fluttered shut. “So I’m not the only one worried, am I?”
I didn’t answer right away.
Bauer leaned in with a soft laugh, wrapping his arms around me until I was completely engulfed in the sheer mass of his body.
He smelled so good, was so warm and strong. And all the worries curling through my brain relaxed … just a little, knowing that I wasn’t alone in how much I loved that tiny little person.
“It’s okay to be worried, even if you are the professional,” he said, nuzzling the side of my head.
“I know.” My hands clutched at his back. “And I know he’ll be fine. It just seems … so weird to not be around him, you know?” I pulled back and locked eyes with my husband. “But I’m excited to be able to have time with just you, too.”
“Yeah?”
I nodded. “Yeah.”
He grinned, a dimple popping in the dark stubble coating his jaw. “Think we’re still limber enough to manage car sex?”
I laughed. “Maybe.”
His brows dipped as he exhaled slow and steady. “I’ll put the seat all the way back.” He dipped in and tugged at my earlobe with the edge of his teeth. “We’ll find a dark parking lot.”
New Book: Back Home to Marry Off Myself
Loredana’s father left the family for his mistress, leaving them to fend for themselves abroad. When life was at its toughest, her father showed up with “good news” after 8 years of absence: To marry off Loredana to a paralyzed son of the wealthy Mendelsohn family.