Whew. Yeah, that's a completely realistic aftermath. This hits me on a couple of different levels, and this feels absolutely right on all of them. The loss of imagined future children can be nearly as bad as the loss of one you've held in your arms. And lord knows I was never at my best in the first two months post-partum, with all the sleep deprivation, and I wasn't recovering from surgery! Good thing Martha & Jonathan finally knocked some little bit of sense into both of them.

Again, I think this could be tightened up a little bit... but it packs quite a punch as is.

PJ

Yeah, this really solves it realistically. Not that I can testify from experience like Pam, but I can imagine. Anyway, it was resolved nicely. Well done .

Hi,

Great story.

MAF

Glad they worked it out in the end. Nice. Laura

Oh, Laura, that was so heartwrenching. I can totally understand both Clark's and Lois's feelings. You really had me crying, it felt so real. So I'm glad everything worked out in the end. It fits the story perfect and it's understandable that both Martha and Clark had to talk some sense into the younger couple.

I do have to say that I missed Ellen at the end. She had a rather important roll earlier and she had some good points about not resolving things with Lois. We never saw now if that has happened and how she felt about Joy.

But for the rest it's very poignant. I enjoyed it.

Saskia

This was beautiful, Laura

Jose

Laura
just read all of this
powerful and very realistic story
merry

Laura

WOW! This is superbly written.

Tricia

Whoops, I just realized that I forgot to respond to this thread. Blame real life -- I was really sick with the flu that turned into bronchitis, then it was my birthday , then it was end of the semester presentations, I am moving into an apartment, then I broke my hand, and now it is finals time (by the way, I have a final exam in 12 hours that I have been procrastinating studying for all night -- haven't even started yet ).

Thank you, everyone who read this story and especially to everyone that has commented. This story was really emotional story for me, not because I have had this experience, but because it explored a level of psychology that, ironically, will be covered on my final exam tomorrow. Plus, the amygdala is my favorite part of the brain. Okay, seriously, I am sort of surprised that people call this "kiddie fic". It is a bit weird to me, because when I was writing this, the baby was just a mechanism to make Lois and especailly Clark use their amygdalas. I didn't even realize the baby needed a name until I was almost done writing and talking on IRC. So it is almost funny to me that people associate this story with the child. To me, she is a complete afterthought, completely unimportant. Lois could have had cancer or some other horrible disease and that would have led to the same consequence -- but I wanted the possibility of a happy ending, so I chose a baby. I guess you had to be inside my mind to see that the baby was relatively unimportant to the story in my mind.

Now to respond . . .

Wow, thank you! I am so glad that this worked!

My junior year of college, my roommate had a baby, and she certainly wasn't herself for the first three or four months post-partum -- and it was even worse for her because she had final projects and final exams plus being a virtual single parent! (by the way, this is the only experience I've ever had with children of any sort, so I base all of my information about pregnancy and babies on that experience).

I spent a lot of time revising this ending to make it a bit easier to follow before I sent it to the archive.

Interesting point! I hadn't even thought about Ellen. However, after I read your comment, I thought abuot adding in something that resolved her and Lois's relationship, but it got way too complicated. I hope it still works without Ellen.

Yes, it is a problem that had escallated into something gigantic. I thought that Martha and Jonathan were the best people to solve teh problem because they are very astute to problems like this.

Thank you, everyone that read and commented so faithfully on this story. This story is the most special to me of all of the 30+ stories I've written, so I am glad you all enjoyed it, too.