Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
“What are you looking at?” Riff asked, coming up behind me, resting his head on my shoulder, and creating a basket with his hands to lift my belly, releasing some of the pressure for a few moments.
“I’m still not convinced that little hellion of ours wasn’t switched with your brother’s kid at some point,” I said, getting a chuckle out of Riff.
“Except none of his kids are redheaded,” Riff reasoned.
“Hey, genes can skip generations,” I insisted.
“What’d she do?”
“Drove over her brothers in her car.”
Riff let out a snort. “Well, it looks like the battery is dying out at least,” he said as it puttered for a bit before dying. “Maybe I will conveniently forget to plug it in tonight,” he offered.
“That would be nice,” I decided, leaning back into Riff for a moment before the cramp started, sharp and unmistakable.
“Uh oh,” Riff said, moving out from behind me, looking me over. “Was that a contraction?”
“What? No. It’s early,” I insisted.
“The boys were early,” he reminded me. “And Dr. Price did say they were pretty big.”
Big for twins, at least.
“It could just be Braxton Hicks,” I said, waving it off, not mentally ready for delivery, despite having many months to get there.
They always say that you forget the pain. That the forgetting is how you manage to be willing to get pregnant again, because otherwise, there’s no way you’d be willing to go through it again.
They were liars.
I didn’t forget it.
I remembered every damn contraction, I swear.
The only reason I was pregnant a third time was because my husband and I still couldn’t keep our hands off of each other. And we were sometimes forgetful about contraceptives.
“Darlin’…” Riff said, shaking his head at me.
“We can wait a bit to be sure.”
“Remember last time?” he asked.
Meaning with our little girl, when I kept pretending it wasn’t happening until we were too late to get to the hospital, and Riff had needed to rush me to Dr. Price’s office to deliver.
“One hour,” I demanded.
“Not a minute more,” he said, already springing into action.
I took my butt over to the couch, breathing through the occasional contractions, watching Riff as he rushed around the house, grabbing our hospital bags as well as the luggage we had packed for each of our kids because they were going to need to go spend the next few nights with a set of their aunts and uncles.
“The babies are coming?” our daughter asked, rushing inside to sit next to me, pressing her hand to my belly like she always did, marveling at how her siblings were in there, kicking at her.
“I think they are,” I agreed, watching her brothers move into the room, looking a lot less enthusiastic and a lot more horrified.
It wasn’t their fault. They’d recently gotten a pretty in-depth explanation of pregnancy and childbirth. They were a little traumatized by the schematics of it.
“I’m gonna be okay, guys,” I told them, patting the couch and waiting for them to come sit next to me. “And then you’re gonna have two new siblings to play with.”
“To boss us around,” our older twin said with a head shake as he looked at his little sister.
“Probably,” I agreed. “But it will be different since you’ll be so much older than them this time,” I told him. “It will be more like you guiding them and teaching them stuff,” I told him.
I was still explaining to them, for the third time, that we would only be gone for a few days, that they would get to come visit us at the hospital as soon as their siblings were born, when there was the slamming of doors out front.
Not a minute later, the front door was bursting open, and there was Raff.
“Uncle Raff!” the kids cheered, rushing toward him, all worries about me disappearing at the prospect of spending time at their uncle’s house.
Let’s just say… Raff let them get away with a lot more than we did.
“I’ve got all the goods for tonight,” he told them all. “Two movies. Three different kinds of popcorn. Candy. Ice cream. Soda. Pizza is ordered. Don’t tell your mom,” he said in a low voice as he shot me a wink.
“Hey, it’s your sleepless night,” I said, wincing as another contraction started.
“We got company,” Raff said, glancing outside as he heard another car door. “Looks like your birth coach is here,” he said, pushing the door open to let, well, Coach in.
He’d been there for both of my births so far. Mostly because with our first twins, I’d had such a panic attack about the pain and the invasion of privacy with so many people looking at me unclothed that I’d asked to have Coach to come and help me meditate and calm down.
He’d just offered the next time too.
And now, well, it was a tradition, it seemed.