Erica Spindler - Cause for Alarm

The baby was here.

After fifteen hours of labor, Julianna gave birth to a baby girl. A week and a half early, she weighed a mere five pounds, two ounces, but what she lacked in size, she made up for in lung capacity.

Julianna had held her briefly in the delivery room, though not because she wanted to. Without asking, the nurse had laid the howling infant on her chest, beaming ridiculously at Julianna, babbling about how beautiful her daughter was. As far as Julianna had been concerned, the baby looked like a red-faced frog, and she hadn't wanted to have anything to do with her.

She'd turned her gaze away and asked the nurse to take her. Ellen, who had stayed with her during the entire ordeal, had stepped forward, eager to hold the child. Julianna had watched the woman cradle the baby, tears streaming down her cheeks and had wondered what the big deal was.

She still did.

Ellen popped her head into the room. "Hi," she said softly. "How are you?" "Tired." "I'll bet. Can I come in?" "Sure. Is that for me?" Julianna indicated the bud vase containing a single pink rose surrounded by white baby's breath.

"Of course." Ellen set the vase on her bed table. "Congratulations, Julianna. You did great."

Just then the nursery attendant entered the room, pushing a bassinet. The woman smiled brightly. "I thought you might like to spend a little time with your daughter."

She scooped up the sleeping infant, careful Julianna saw, to support her head. She placed the baby in Julianna's arms. "Just ring the nursery when you need us to come get her. Congratulations again. She's just precious."

"Everyone keeps saying that," Julianna murmured when the nurse was gone.

"What's that?"

"Congratulations."

"That's because the birth of a child is something to celebrate."

"I suppose." Julianna lowered her gaze to the bundle in her arms, swaddled in a pink receiving blanket, her moon-shaped face overwhelmed by the knit cap covering her head.

Julianna studied the sleeping child. The infant's chest rose and fell with her rapid breathing; peeking out from above the blanket, her hands were squeezed into fists, her puffy eyes shut tight.

An unfamiliar ache in her chest, Julianna shifted her gaze to Ellen, hovering at the foot of the bed. "She is beautiful, isn't she?"

"Yes," Ellen said softly, "she is."

Julianna returned her gaze to the baby. She traced a finger across the infant's cheek, finding her skin almost unbearably soft. "I did this," she murmured. "I made her. All by myself. And she's perfect. Absolutely perfect."

"That she is." Ellen cleared her throat. "A tiny miracle."

"Yes." Julianna smiled and looked at Ellen once more. "I didn't understand that before. I didn't know. But I do now."

A look of distress crossed the other woman's features, then just as quickly disappeared. "How are you feeling? It was rough going in there."

Julianna agreed, though after a point in the labor she didn't recall anything. The pain had been unbelievably intense, building, cresting, then retreating. After a time, one crest had led directly to another. The best she had been able to do was suck in a lung full of air before the next contraction had racked her body.

Even so, she had refused the epidural block and welcomed the pain, finding it almost pleasurable. Cleansing. Affirming. It belonged to her and her alone.

She hadn't been about to let anyone take it away from her.

"At one point you passed out. Believe me, you gave us all a scare."

"Did I?" she murmured, still gazing at the baby. "I don't remember."

"Julianna?"

"Yes?"

"Now that she's been born, how do you feel about giving her up? Are you having second thoughts?"

"Why would I be?"

Ellen hesitated a moment, then lifted her shoulders. "The baby's real now. You've held her in your arms. This is when some women realize they can't go through with the surrender."

"I'm not like that. I know I'm not meant to be her mother." Sudden, sharp emotion welled up inside her, taking her by surprise. She tamped it back. "Kate is."

"Are you certain? If you have any misgivings, now's the time to acknowledge them. Afterward…after placement, it's hard on everyone. Even the baby."

She hesitated a moment. "I don't have any misgivings."

How could she? This moment, Julianna Starr ceased to exist. Her old life was gone, her new one beginning. Starting this moment she became the woman Richard would love.

"Buzz the nursery and tell them to come get her. Then call Kate and Richard. Tell them their daughter's been born."

Kate gazed at her new daughter, cradled in her arms for the very first time. A bundle of pink and white, she had been born two days before, on April twenty-ninth.

Kate and Richard had named her Emma Grace. Emma after his grandmother and Grace at Kate's insistence because she believed it had been only through God's perfect grace that Emma had come to them.

She moved her gaze over her sleeping daughter's face, taking inventory of every feature: the turned up nose, the tiny rosebud mouth, the eyes, still puffy from birth and squeezed tightly shut, the cap of silky dark hair, skin as fine, soft and white as a gardenia petal.

Kate trailed a finger across Emma's cheek. As she did, the infant turned her head slightly, following Kate's finger, instinctively seeking a nipple.

Kate drew in a shuddering breath, a tidal wave of love and protectiveness rising up in her. Before now, this moment, she hadn't had a clue what a mother's love really meant. Now, she knew. It was an awesome thing, all-encompassing, powerful. She would go to any length to protect her child, she realized. She would face and beat back any who meant her harm, she would give herself, her own life if she had to.

Kate lifted her swimming gaze to Richard's only to find his on her, damp with his own tears. In that moment she loved him more than she ever had. "She's so beautiful," Kate whispered. "So perfect." "You're perfect. You're beautiful together." Emotion choked her. For long moments she couldn't speak. When she found her voice, all she thought of to say was thank you.

Kate's first six weeks as a new mother were confusing and exhausting. Caring for Emma consumed her every waking moment-and then some. The infant needed to be fed every few hours; she cried often and it seemed to Kate, for no reason at all.

Those times, Kate walked the floor with her, bounced her or sang softly as she rocked her in the big chair Richard had bought her. Still Emma cried.

Frustrated and insecure, Kate wept with her. She wasn't meant to be a mother, she thought. There was something wrong with her, something missing in her womanly makeup that left her unable to nurture a baby. Maybe that's why she had been unable to conceive. Maybe nature had been telling her something.

Then, as suddenly as it had begun, Emma's crying stopped. And she smiled. Not just any smile, not just at anything. Or anyone. No, she had gazed into Kate's eyes with total trust and presented her with a beautiful and adoring smile.

A smile meant only for Kate.

In that moment, everything changed. Kate had become Emma's mother, for real and forever. In that moment it was all worth it-the sleep deprivation, the hours walking the floors, her haggard appearance and the self-doubt. In that moment, they all melted away.

Kate gazed down at her sleeping daughter, heart filled to near bursting. She trailed her fingers softly, rhythmically over her silky head. She never got enough of looking at Emma, of holding and touching her. All else in her life slipped away, and she found herself mesmerized by the tiniest changes in the infant's expression.

From downstairs, came the sound of the front door opening, then snapping shut. Richard was home. Doubting that it could be that time already, Kate checked her watch and saw that it was.