Chapter Text
Striding out of the room and into the corridor, Beca let out a huge shaky exhale, tears still very much present in her eyes. She grappled for her phone, immediately drawing up her father’s number, and dialled it. She hadn’t informed him Chloe had gone into labour. Hadn’t informed him that she and Chloe were up at the hospital.
“Hi Beca,” came Cal’s familiar voice, sounding a little tired, and it only just occurred to Beca that she’d probably woken him up, “everything okay?”
He sounded concerned, and because of that concern Beca found her heart thumping a little faster, while an overwhelming urge to burst into tears struck her. He cared about her. He actually cared about her. More now than he ever had done in her memory.
“Yeah.” Beca replied, a tired smile sweeping onto her face as her nose tingled, “Yeah Dad, I was just calling to tell you that you’re now officially a Grandad.”
Beca leant her back against the wall of the corridor, her free hand sandwiched between the cool backing and her warm body. And the smile on her face was unlike a smile she’d ever worn before, broad and toothy and full. Full like her heart, which felt as though it was about to burst from her chest she was so consumed with pride and excitement and relief.
There was an eerie silence the moment a gush of fluids sounded. Silence despite the way the healthcare professionals appeared to wipe frantically at something between Chloe’s legs. Beca’s heart was in her throat, her hand still clasped onto her wife’s while she looked at the other inhabitants of the room. Why weren’t they saying anything??
Suddenly a high-pitched screech sounded, tiny and tinny and slightly wet, erupting from fresh lungs. Beca felt a huge wave of relief crash over her entire being when she realised what this meant. Their baby was finally here. And it sounded healthy. It sounded perfect.
Beca snapped her eyes over to her wife who had opened her own eyes and was looking back at her with a huge exhausted smile on her face, clearly feeling as relieved as Beca felt.
“Well? What do we have?” Chloe asked, and Beca’s eyebrows rose. She’d been so caught up in worrying whether Chloe and the baby would be okay that she’d forgotten they didn’t know the sex of their baby yet.
“Oh.” Beca dithered, trying to stretch away from her wife to see their baby without letting go of her hand. But it was impossible. So, reluctantly, she stepped entirely away from Chloe, and down towards the foot of the bed. Her mouth dropped open at the sight of the newborn, a purple tinge to its skin and a head full of dark hair resembling something like a naked Cabbage Patch Doll. But that wasn’t the thing that stunned Beca the most, her eyes having caught sight of her baby’s genitalia.
-
Chloe was exhausted, and sore, and tearful. But above all of that she felt more love coursing through her being than she’d ever felt before. Love and happiness and contentment had sprung forth the instant she’d heard her baby’s first cry. A love that remained strong the moment her wife told her they had a daughter. A daughter .
She looked down at the sleeping newborn in her arms. She had a daughter . She’d given birth to Beca’s daughter. And the more she reminded herself that she didn’t have a son, the more settled she became with this new reality. Because really, before now, she and her wife had both been fairly certain they were having a baby boy.
“It’s going to be a boy.”
Chloe had never heard her mother sound so certain about anything before, which was why she found her eyebrows rising in surprise. Every single person around the room of this baby shower - Beca included - had said they thought the baby was going to be a girl. But her mother seemed to think otherwise.
“What’s your theory?” Fat Amy piped up from somewhere to Chloe’s right. Chloe found herself leaning her face a little closer in her mother’s direction. Because if the woman was going against the grain here then she’d certain have a solid reason why.
“Because every girl born to my side of the family has gone on to birth boys before eventually having a girl.” Sue replied with one single shrug, and the Grandmother-to-be took another sip of her homemade cocktail. Chloe glanced at her wife and a soft smile spread across her face as she saw a calm smile spread across Beca’s. As though the brunette agreed with the theory. And to Chloe’s joy she felt the baby in her womb tumble and kick. Clearly her unborn child felt the same way too. Maybe it will be a boy…
The door to the hospital room opened slowly, and Chloe looked up to see her wife sneaking quietly back inside. Beca looked as though she’d been crying again. Though, if she thought about it more thoroughly, Chloe had to admit her wife hadn’t really stopped crying since the moment their daughter had been born.
“It’s a girl!” Chloe heard her wife exclaim in shock and delight, and the redhead felt her heart burst from her chest. A girl. A girl! They had a daughter!
Chloe had always envisioned having a daughter one day. She could never quite see her future raising sons like her mother had done before she’d been born. But then Sue had said with such confidence and assurance that Chloe’s unborn child would be a boy that Chloe found no reason not to believe her mother. After all, every female in her mother’s family line had all birthed boys before eventually having a girl. One girl to every female. So why would Chloe be any different?
“Congratulations Mommy.” the doctor said in such a sweet and kind tone that Chloe almost burst into tears herself, and she watched in awe as her baby girl was lifted from between her legs and up onto her chest.
The weight was unlike anything she’d ever felt before. Her baby wasn’t too heavy but wasn’t too light. Her baby felt perfect . Looked perfect too, from her tiny fingers and toes, to the way her nose wrinkled while she wailed. And her hair . There was so much of it, dark brown just like her Mama.
Chloe drew her eyes from her daughter up to her wife, and the pride she felt filling her chest as she saw the look on Beca’s face was unlike anything she’d felt before. Beca, in floods of tears, staring down in wonder at their perfect little baby girl. At that moment, Chloe knew that her wife was going to be the best mother in the world. That she’d love and protect their little girl unconditionally for the rest of their lives.
“Hey” Chloe whispered with a soft smile.
“Hey.” Beca mumbled in a quiet voice, a calm tired smile on her face as she crept over to where Chloe and their baby laid on the bed. The woman clambered up and settled on the mattress by Chloe’s side, reaching her left arm out to curl behind the redhead’s shoulders. Her right hand she saved exclusively for their baby daughter, delicately tracing her fingertips across the newborn’s forehead, causing a tiny wrinkle to appear on the baby’s nose as a reaction. The two new mothers let out gentle chuckles while leaning into one another.
“We should probably think of a name.” Chloe murmured, unable to tear her eyes from her little girl’s adorable bottom lip that remained hung open while she slept.
“A name.” Beca replied, humming in agreement. They’d discussed names in the early months of Chloe’s pregnancy. All manner of names, from traditional to the more obscure. Many were vetoed because both Beca and Chloe were still in some element of shock that they’d managed to get pregnant so quickly. But as the months rolled on,as Chloe’s bump grew, and as the reality of impending motherhood grew, the couple found themselves suggesting names here and there more frequently.
Most of those names had been girl names, Chloe feeling so certain that the baby wriggling about in her womb was female. She’d had her heart set on ‘Eleanor’ as a girl name for her first daughter, ever since she’d heard the song ‘Eleanor Rigby’ as a child. She’d never told anyone in her family which was why, when her brother had announced that his own newborn daughter was called Eleanor ‘Ellie’ Beale, Chloe had felt conflicted in her feelings: thrilled to be an Auntie again, but devastated that her brother had unknowingly ‘stolen’ her chosen baby girl name. She’d felt less devastated when she’d later discovered that Ellie had been named after her sister in law’s late mother. Chloe wouldn’t have wished losing a mother on anyone, but for it to have happened to someone as wonderful and young as Laura - who had only been twenty nine at the time of her mother’s passing - had caused Chloe’s heart to ache for the youngest of her sister-in-laws.
Coming up with an alternative girls name that both Beca and Chloe had liked had been almost impossible. Which was probably why, when Sue Beale had declared she predicted Chloe and Beca’s unborn baby to be a boy, the couple had been more inclined to choose boy names over girl names. And boy names had seemed to come more easily to them, possibly because Chloe had been so set on ‘Eleanor’ for a girl that no other names seemed to measure up in greatness.
Dexter, Leo, or Xander had been the top three boy names after extensive conversations between the two mothers. But a girl’s name? Chloe was struggling. What would suit them as a little family? Beca, Chloe, and… something Beale. Beca, Chloe, aaaaaand-
“Abigail?”
Chloe glanced at her wife the moment Beca had spoken. Abigail. Abigail . Abigail Beale. Abbie for short maybe? Little Abbie Beale. Beca, Chloe, and Abbie…
Chloe looked down at their baby in her arms and a smile swept across her face as she noted the tiny twitch of a smile poke onto their daughter’s face while the little girl slept. Abbie. Yes, she even looked like an Abigail.
“It’s perfect.” Chloe replied softly, her eyes remaining on the baby in her arms while she asked, “Named after the doctor who helped deliver her?”
Beca swallowed loudly, her eyes flicking briefly to the nearby bottle of water she’d been looking at moments ago, which happened to be made by a brand called ‘Abigail Spring’. She couldn’t bring herself to admit to her wife that she was suggesting they name their baby after a bottle of water. It was a stroke of luck that their doctor also happened to be called Abigail (of which Beca had completely forgotten such had been the stressful situation of her wife being in labour when introductions had been made). So Beca decided to roll with that instead.
“Yeah.”
Beca, Chloe, and Abigail Beale. Beca liked it. And she felt a warmth spread across her heart as her wife’s bright blue eyes darted over to hers, shimmering with tears.
“I love it.” Chloe agreed affectionately.