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Ever since Patrick agreed to have a baby, the couple had been trying almost every other day. It'd been four months and nothing had happened. Jonathan still wasn't pregnant.
Or at least, Patrick didn't know he was.
Jonathan had been feeling off for the past couple weeks. He had his suspicions, and scheduled an appointment at the doctor's office for after practice. Obviously, he didn't tell Patrick any of this. They'd been trying for so long and Patrick seemed to want a baby now just as much as he did. He didn't want to get Patrick's hopes up.
Once practice ended, Jonathan slipped away. He told Patrick that he had errands to run, things to buy for Easter. Dayna, Brent's wife, would be going with him, and that Pat could take the car home. Patrick didn't think too much of it, since Jonathan seemed to get along really well with the hockey wives, and they often helped each other out with holiday things. But, they weren't going to the store. They were going to a doctor's appointment.
Jonathan was called back fifteen minutes after he arrived, and got the news that he was, in fact, pregnant. The doctor gave him a prescription for vitamins and gave him some tips, before assigning a day to come in again for a monthly checkup. Jonathan got to Dayna in the waiting room, and cried.
Dayna had called Abby and the two told her the news over lunch at a nearby café. Abby immediately threw out important information about pregnancies and babies, before tearing up and saying, "Oh gosh, Day, our baby's having a baby!" The three then proceeded to plan how to tell Patrick and the team.
~
Jonathan didn't want to wait. He debated on making spaghetti and in the middle of dinner, flash a jar of Prego spaghetti sauce and say, "Guess what; I'm Prego!"
He decided against that one.
So, he settled on the simplest, and in his opinion, funniest, way of telling Patrick: reading a baby magazine.
Patrick had been out with some of the team. He usually grabbed a few guys and went to hang out at a bar or down at the gym. He'd gotten home, announcing so as he threw his keys in the bowl on the table by the door and walked from they foyer to the living room. There, he found Jonathan on the couch, reading.
"Hey you," Patrick smiled, leaning down to press a gentle kiss to Jonathan's forehead, "How was your day?"
Jonathan hummed, "Good. Day and I grabbed some groceries — oh, I got you those chips you like. They're on the island in the kitchen. I went out for lunch with her and Abby afterwards."
Patrick squatted down by Jonathan's face and raked his hands through his husband's hair, smiling when Jonathan leaned into his touch. "Oh yeah? What must've been fun," he replied, "Whatcha reading?"
Jonathan fought down a smirk and kept his cool, "Oh, just a magazine. It's got a lot of baby stuff in it. Outfits, pacifiers, toys- oh, Pat, look how cute this crib is!"
Patrick frowned, furrowing his eyebrows. He gave a nervous laugh. "Um, yeah, yeah it's cute," he cleared his throat, "Babe, why are you reading a baby catalog?"
Jonathan rolled his eyes, "Well for the baby, of course. We have to be prepared, Pat. We've only got eight months."
Patrick stopped. Like, literally, he stopped. He didn't move; he didn't blink; Jonathan was sure he had stopped breathing. "Baby," he questioned, "The baby?" He looked down at Jonathan, who was now sitting up on his elbows with a glimmer in his eyes. He breathed out a small laugh. "Jon...Jonathan are you pregnant?"
Jonathan chuckled, "Ding ding ding, give the man a prize."
Patrick broke into a grin. "My prize will be this baby if you're telling me the truth," he breathed, "Jonny, are you serious? We're gonna have a baby?" Jonathan nodded with a bright smile and bit his lip. Patrick laughed, wrapping his arms around Jonathan and pulling him into a desperate hug.
"We did it, Jonny. We're gonna have a baby."
~
Telling the team was also pretty simple, in Jonathan's opinion. They decided to leave the ultrasound lying on the locker room floor with the numbers 5-20-17 on the back — the date of the ultrasound.
The team walked in after morning practice, and Sharpie was the first to notice the picture. He stopped everyone, holding out his arms so that the team fell in. "Woah, woah, woah," he spoke, "What...what is that?"
Duncs pushed past and picked it up. "It's an ultrasound picture," he replied, flipping it over, "From the twentieth. That was two days ago."
Sharpie grabbed the picture and held it up. "Who's is this," he laughed, "Which one of you knocked up your girl this time?" The team began to talk and murmur.
"It's not mine."
"I don't carry ultrasounds in my wallet."
"Who's is it?"
"It's not mine. I'm still a virgin."
"Wait, what?"
And then, Jonathan and Patrick walked in, talking happily about random baby things. The team stopped and stared, and both men grinned to themselves. "Oh hey," Patrick acted, "Sharpie, you found it!" He snatched the ultrasound picture from Sharpie's fingers. "Darn thing fell out of my wallet. Thanks man."
The two of them began taking off their padding, and Jonathan turned to the still-frozen players. "Oh, did we forget to tell you? I'm pregnant."
And the locker room burst into excitement.
~
Patrick started out thinking that the pregnancy wouldn't be so bad.
As months went on, Patrick began to understand what other fathers meant about pregnant people: you love them, but sometimes, they can be a handful, and a nightmare.
It started out with Jonathan being really tired. Both had read about the baby taking up energy and the carrier being utterly exhausted, but neither thought it would be this bad. Jonathan would sleep sometimes thirteen hours a day, and would even occasionally fall asleep during everyday activities.
Then came the cravings. Jonathan wanted noodles. Ramen, preferably, but any noodles would suffice, as long as he got some within twenty minutes. Everything else seemed gross to him.
Along with noodles, he wanted apples. Which, both men ate healthy fruits a lot, but Patrick found himself buying pounds and pounds of apples a week because Jonathan would eat five apples in a day. Apples were expensive, too.
There would occasionally be cravings like pizza or Chinese, but mainly, he wanted noodles and apples. Patrick never understood that combination.
And then came the hormones.
Abby Dayna, pretty much everyone they knew, had warned them about Jonathan's hormones. They'd be all over the place: happy one moment, sad the next, angry at something, and playing with glitter within five minutes. Patrick had prayed Jonathan's hormones wouldn't act up too much, and they didn't, but when they did, it was bad.
Patrick came home one day to blankets and pillows thrown everywhere, a bowl of popcorn spilled on the floor, and a heap of blankets on the corner of the couch. No...no wait, the heap was moving.
Patrick pulled the blankets away to find Jonathan, sobbing in his fortress of fluffiness. "Jonny, baby what happened?" Patrick cooed.
Jonathan sniffled. "The dog died," he cried, "I was watching Marley and Me, and Marley died!"
Patrick bit his lip. Jonathan had watched that movie many times before without so much as tearing up. The hormones really did have an effect. Patrick tried to console him, but comforting a pregnant Jonny is much different than comforting a not-pregnant Jonny.
He'd stated that it was just a movie, and Jonathan threw the bowl of popcorn at his head, yelled at him, and took off upstairs. Patrick had to have two bowls of noodles and a Granny Smith before Jonathan opened the door.
Or another time, when Jonathan had hit three months, and officially wasn't allowed to play. Both had known Jonny wouldn't be able to play, but Jonathan didn't expect it to be so soon. Plus, he really wanted to play. He tried not to cry as Q explained it to him as gently as possible, but Patrick left his office with Jonny in his arms, sobbing his heart out.
The team watched sympathetically as Patrick led his husband out of the United Center. They all knew it was the hormones, and it was for the best he didn't play, but that didn't mean they didn't feel bad.
There was also the time when Jonathan was six months along and wanted to put on Patrick's jersey, but it wouldn't fit. He tried most of his normal clothes. They wouldn't fit. Only the maternity clothes did, and that made Jonathan really self-conscious.
Other than that and a few other rough patches, Jonathan's hormones weren't too bad, praise the lord. Jonathan always came back to his else's after a while and felt awful for how he acted, and his hormones would act up again and Patrick would spend the next hour calming Jonathan down and fork-feeding him Ramen noodles and milk.
~
The day Jonathan went into labor, Patrick nearly had an aneurism.
Patrick had a day off and was lounging around the house with Jonathan. Unknown to him, Jonathan had been getting pains since the night before.
And the little shit decided to mention that in the middle of a movie when Jonathan said, "Hey, so I'm in labor, by the way."
Patrick nearly fell off the couch.
"What do you mean 'you're in labor'? What?" He sputtered. Jonathan shrugged. "I've been getting pains since last night. I just got a small one." Patrick's eyes bulged. "And you didn't think to tell me? Jonathan!"
Jonathan smiled sheepishly. "Hey, in my defense, I have a high pain tolerance. They didn't start really hurting until a couple hours ago," he defended, "Even then, they only came every forty-five minutes or so." He grabbed Patrick's hand. "We aren't even supposed to go to the hospital until they're seven minutes apart."
"Yeah, or when your water breaks," Patrick retaliated, "You're sure this is the real thing?" Jonathan nodded and rubbed his stretched abdomen lightly. "Mhm," he hummed, "I can feel a difference between the false contractions and the real ones."
Patrick went to speak, but Jonathan interrupted him. “Can you make me some noodles? Abby brought over a whole box yesterday.”
Patrick dropped his head into Jonathan's shoulder. "You're gonna kill me one day, Tazer."
Hours went by, and Jonathan's contractions slowly worsened. First they were forty-five minutes apart, then thirty, then twenty-eight, then twenty-two, and so on and so forth. Jonathan was trying to stay calm through it all, but Patrick could tell that he was getting nervous and panicky as they contractions became closer and more painful.
It was about two o'clock in the afternoon when Jonathan's water broke. He'd begged Patrick to call Abby and Dayna, and the girls arrived with their husbands within ten minutes of their calls. The girls were walking around the house with Jonathan, when's trickle of water dampened his sweats. A sudden rush of pain erupted in his abdomen and he cried out, hand shooting to the wall to hold him up.
"Kaner!" Abby shouted as she and Dayna helped support the man. Patrick, Sharpie, and Seabs ran into the hallway, and Patrick stood by Jonathan, hands wrapped around the latter' arms. "Hey, hey, I've got you," he cooed as Jonathan whimpered and breathed heavily, "Hospital time, right?"
Jonathan couldn't nod faster.
~
There was only a lamp on, the dark sky of the early morning making the room darker. Abby, Dayna, Sharpie, and Seabs had left around two in the morning, an hour after baby Reece was born. It was now around three-thirty a.m.
Patrick was sitting in a chair next to the hospital bed, hunched over the side. One hand was on Jonathan’s knee, the other cradling Jonathan’s hand that was holding the small newborn.
Jonathan was still sweaty, the blankets only pulled to his hips with a mountain of pillows behind him. In his arms was his baby — his son — small, soft, and innocent. Reece was asleep, the baby had been in the world for an hour and a half, and the couple had just gotten him back.
“Look how tiny he is,” Jonathan whispered, slipping his index finger into Reece’s little hand, “He's so itty bitty.”
Patrick smiled and nodded. “You did amazing, Jonny,” he breathed, kissing Jonathan on the forehead, “He's perfect.”
Jonny grinned tiredly. “We have a baby, Pat,” he sniffled, “Do you want to hold him?” Patrick’s breath caught in his throat, but he nodded. Jonathan held out his arms and placed the baby in Patrick’s. Patrick was in awe. Reece moved around to get comfortable and he let out a small whine, opening his droopy eyes. Patrick caressed Reece’s cheek. “Oh, look at you,” he cooed, “Aw, Reece.”
Patrick looked back to Jonathan, who he found fast asleep. Patrick leaned back in his chair and positioned his son to where Reece’s tush was resting on his arm and his cheek was lying on Patrick’s chest. He took in the soft glow of the lamp as he held onto his son, held onto his life.