I really have no business posting this. I have no buffer written, and nearly constantly feel overwhelmed with real life these days, so can make no promises in terms of keeping a posting schedule – some weeks I seem to have enough free time to write a chapter (on a good week, maybe even two). Other weeks I don’t have time to write a word. And I haven’t yet figured out how to predict what kind of week it will be.
Still, this is the first thing I’ve written in months that is worth seeing the light of day, so I was eager to share it just to prove I still can or something.
This is unbetaed for no better reason than the fact that it’s a sequel to something that was unbetaed. Let me know if this is drivel and I shouldn’t have posted, or there’s a kernel of something in here, but it would have benefited a lot from a beta.
This is the sequel to Gestation – Human and Kryptonian, although I think it is enough of a stand alone that you don’t need to read that to understand this. On the other hand, much of the tone and even the main theme between the two are similar enough that if you had decided Gestation wasn’t your kind of story, this one probably won’t be either. Hopefully, the reverse is also true – if you liked Gestation, this will be to your liking.
Like Gestation, there is an element of this that is autobiographical – or at least the events are – obviously this is my take on how Lois and Clark would deal with the events that happened.
I will try to get online again this weekend to at least reply to feedback, but may not make it – we have friends in town so I think it’s going to be a busy weekend.
In the Beginning
The sound filled the room. Almost immediately, my eyes filled with tears. I hadn’t been expecting that. I thought I was past the overly emotional part of this. But when my eyes met Clark’s, they were glistening with tears as well.
“She’s beautiful,” he whispered to me.
“I want to hold her,” I told him, his words bringing clarity to why I was crying. I hadn’t even seen her yet, but it didn’t matter. My daughter was crying – I wanted to hold and comfort her.
“She’s perfect,” Evelyn said from her position by my side.
“When can I see her?” I asked, trying to strain to see, but with the barrier up and the lower half of my body all completely numb it was hard to do. I suddenly wished we hadn’t opted to have a cesarean section. The rational part of me knew that was silly. Evelyn had been right to suggest it – we knew so little about what to expect from a Kryptonian birth. Still, I wanted to hold my baby.
“She needs to be checked over first,” Evelyn said kindly as Larissa was moved past me by a doctor I didn’t know. We had talked about this beforehand, and I knew Evelyn thought the process was cruel, but those were the rules here.
Two months ago, Clark and I had met with Evelyn and Bernie to talk about how to take care of this baby once it was born. We decided that given how little we knew about how to care for a Kryptonian baby, we should at least follow the best, most up-to-date scientific evidence of how to care for a human baby. A pediatrician in Boston, Dr. Newcross, seemed to be the man that had that knowledge. Unlike Evelyn, he was more of a practioner than a research doctor, but his research was hard to dispute. He had run his own clinical trials on all sorts of things related to infant care in the first weeks of life. The main thing his research showed that we were concerned with was feeding. Most doctors were already suggesting that breastfeeding was the ideal way to feed your baby; Dr. Newcross’ research proved it. And he showed that the earlier you began nursing, the more likely you were to succeed. Based on this, he suggested that mother and baby room together in the hospital.
The hospital he was associated with in Boston allowed this in a few rooms. While apparently there were some hospitals around the country allowing this already, none were in Metropolis.
Given this, we had decided to deliver in Boston. Officially, Dr. Newcross was listed as our pediatrician. But in reality, we expected Bernard to care for this little one. We didn’t want to let anyone new in on our family secret. But Evelyn was a friend of Dr. Newcross - they had gone to school together. There had been some complicated finagling involved I was sure, but somehow, Evelyn had gotten him to agree that we should be allowed to be patients here and she should be on hand for the delivery. Given our choice for a c-section, Evelyn had felt that I would be in better hands with another doctor with more surgical experience, but she was in the room to make sure everything was going okay.
And, as she pointed out, she would also be useful in the delivery room in case we needed anyone to think quickly should anyone notice anything unusual about Larissa. She suggested that Clark and I may not be up to the task at the moment.
Despite the fact that this hospital had the most up-to-date care for new moms and babies, some things were the same as at Met General. The fact that I couldn’t see Larissa until after surgery was one of them. Dr. Newcross was fighting to change that – he claimed that the sooner after delivery you start nursing the better the experience is likely to go, and that this was even more critical after a c-section as apparently surgery often meant your milk was slower to come in.
But so far, he had not made any headway with this. The hospital believed that right after surgery both the mother and baby required the best care and that could only happen if they were apart.
Clark squeezed my hand before he moved over to the side of the room where Larissa lay in a bassinet being looked over by Dr. Newcross and another pediatrician.
Larissa. The name still felt funny on my lips. We had only firmly decided on it last week.
“So, any names yet?” Martha asked. I could tell she was really curious, but Clark had asked that we not discuss this with his parents, so we had not run any potential names past them.
“We’re not sure yet,” Clark said.
“Okay,” Martha said, as she always did, backing off before she potentially offended us by pushing too hard.
“You need to decide soon,” Jonathan said. “That little girl is going to be here before you know it.”
I gave Clark a meaningful look as we had discussed just that on the way over.
“Well, it’s not like we don’t have any ideas,” Clark said, defensively. “Just nothing we’re sure of.” There was an uncomfortable silence before Clark broke. “I like the name Hazel and Lois likes Larissa.”
“Hazel?” Jonathan asked with his nose scrunched up to show his dislike, right as Martha said, “Oh, I like Larissa.”
“Like the nut,” Clark clarified for his father. “Cause she’s so small right now.” I couldn’t help but smile at him when he said that.
“And Lariassa?” Martha asked. “Is that for Lara?” Neither Clark nor I said anything for a moment before Martha added, “It’s pretty. And I think it’s really nice that your daughter will have something of your mother’s.”
“You’re my mother,” Clark said softly.
Martha’s eyes teared up. “Of course I am, honey. And I would do anything for you. But Lara clearly would as well or we would never have had you. Honoring her doesn’t take anything away from me.”
“You really feel that way?” Clark asked. I pushed myself not to shake my head at him. I think Clark was the only one who worried about hurting his mother’s feelings by naming after Lara.
“Clark, I’ll get to know Larissa. That’s a pleasure Lara and Jor-El will never have. How can I begrudge Lara something as silly as a name?” Martha asked.
Clark smiled as he fell into his mother’s embrace. “Larissa it is then,” he smiled at me.
It was hard to imagine that one day, it would just be a name and all this thought we had put into it would be forgotten.
“She’s incredible,” Clark said from the other side of the room. I had my neck craned to catch whatever glimpses I could of my daughter, and I could see Clark anxiously looking back and forth between us, not sure where he should be. From his eyes it was clear - he wasn’t even all that sure where he wanted to be.
“She is perfect,” Dr. Newcross said. “Her APGHAR score is a nine.”
He placed the baby in Clark’s arms and Clark brought her over to show her to me. She was still wailing like a banshee, and looking at her little face scrunched up as she cried just made me cry even harder.
One of the nurses came over and offered to take our first family photo. While I knew I must look awful, I decided I didn’t care and said yes.
I tried to move my arm to touch Larissa, but with all the tubes and wires going into me at the moment that wasn’t possible. I looked at Clark and he immediately could tell what I was thinking.
“Just give it a few minutes. We have eighteen years with her, this is a tiny time in the course of her life,” he said soothingly, although I knew he didn’t really feel that way. I appreciated his trying to make me feel better though. “I’m so proud of you,” he said to me, leaning down to kiss my forehead, then beaming as he did the same to Larissa. He moved her closer to my lips, so I could kiss her forehead as well. “See, now you’ve touched her,” he teased me.
I nodded, crying too hard to talk.
“That little one needs to go upstairs to the nursery to be weighed,” Dr. Newcross said. Clark handed him the baby, but stood still when Dr. Newcross motioned for him to follow. “Don’t you want to be with your new baby?” he asked.
Clark looked around, a slightly panicked look on his face. “I’d… I’d like to stay here with Lois,” he said, his voice unsure. “I thought we were going to all be allowed to stay as a family for a little while.”
Dr. Newcross shook his head. “Sorry, son, but the baby does need to go upstairs to the nursery and you can’t be here while they finish with your wife.”
I wanted to take his hand and squeeze it. I could only imagine how my over-protective husband felt about leaving me alone down here with my abdomen wide open. He was probably imagining all sorts of awful things. “I’m with Evelyn,” I reminded him.
He nodded his head, although I could tell he still wanted to stay, before he reluctantly followed Dr. Newcross and Larissa out of the room.
*******
I would have tapped my toe impatiently if I could have. I was stuck in the recovery room. It had been an hour and I still hadn’t seen my daughter. I wasn’t allowed upstairs until I could move my foot and so far nothing. It was a stupid foot. Who cared?
“Relax, honey,” Martha said, placing a hand on my shoulder.
I glared at her and then felt immediately awful. She was just trying to help. “I’m sorry,” I said quietly. She just laughed in response.
“I can’t imagine how you’re feeling,” she said. “It’s okay.”
“What does she look like?” I asked again. Martha, Jonathan, and my mom and dad had been camped out in the waiting room during the surgery and they had all obediently followed Dr. Newcross and Clark to the nursery. My parents were still up there, watching her through the window, I guess, but Martha and Jonathan were with me.
Clark had come downstairs almost the instant Larissa was brought into the nursery and he couldn’t be with her anymore. He had stood at the surgery door, but they hadn’t been finished stitching me up yet, so they sent him away. Apparently, he had been moving back and forth between the surgical room and the nursery since then as he had appeared by my side seconds after I got to recovery. He hadn’t left my side since.
“She’s beautiful,” he said now. “All teeny tiny toes and fingers. And a small mop of dark hair.”
“She’s seven pounds, two ounces and nineteen inches long,” Martha repeated the statistics from earlier.
“That’s good, right?” I asked the room in general, although what did any of them really know.
“It’s perfect,” Jonathan smiled at me.
“And she has your temperament,” Clark said. “She’s been wailing constantly since she was born.”
I glared at him before giggling. “Good. I’ll have help keeping you in place.”
“Like you don’t have me wrapped around your finger,” he asked as he leaned over to kiss the palm of my hand.
“Sort of. But I’d like more control,” I told him, trying to keep the banter up. The more time we spoke about this, the less I’d focus on the fact that it was an hour and a half and I still hadn’t seen my daughter.
For what felt like the billionth time I tried to move my foot. “Don’t push it,” Clark said. “You could hurt yourself. Burst your stitches or something.”
I growled slightly, but stopped trying quite so hard.
“Oh, Lois, she’s darling,” my mother said as she came into the room.
“She really is the cutest baby in there,” my dad said as he followed.
“And she’s not doing anything…” I made the flying motion with my hand.
“Aside from being beyond adorable, she’s a very normal baby girl,” my dad assured me.
“I did it!” I exclaimed as I picked my foot up. “Get the nurse. Tell her I’ve moved my foot and am ready to go upstairs now.”
Clark laughed, but did as I asked.
It took another fifteen minutes to get things ready and then five minutes more before they had me situated in my private room. There was a cushy chair in the corner that pulled out into a bed for Clark and a bassinet for Larissa. But the bassinet was empty.
As soon as I was settled, Martha got up. “I’ll go see about getting that baby.”
“They won’t let you,” Clark told him mom. “Only Lois or I can take her out of the nursery. I’ll go get her.”
My parents and the Kents made small talk while Clark was gone, and I stared out the window.
Clark came back five minutes later, sans baby. “Where is she?” I asked him.
“She still needs some bloodwork done,” he said. “They said we need to wait a little bit longer.”
“But she needs to eat!” I insisted. Really I just wanted to hold her, but it was true that at this point it was getting to be very long after delivery. Dr. Newcross suggested nursing immediately and it was now nearly two hours.
“I’m sorry, honey,” Clark said, coming to sit on the edge of my hospital bed and putting a hand in mine.
I spent the next hour watching the hand on the clock move, barely taking in the conversation around me. Finally, a nurse came in with Larissa in her arms. “Did you want to try breastfeedng?” she asked me.
I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t tell her that no, I did not. What I wanted was to hold my daughter for a good long while. Then I’d deal with nursing. “Yes,” I said instead.
“Come get us when you’re ready for visitors again,” Martha said as our parents left the room.
The nurse handed me the bundle in her arms and I just held her before making any steps to feed her. She was perfect. Her eyes were still scrunched up in sleep and she breathed deeply in and out. I watched her little chest go up and down for a few moments. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.
