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i.
She was sure November was going to be their month. Flaws identified from October had been corrected - vitamin tablet combinations adjusted and Jake’s water intake upped - and if all had gone to plan, right now she would have been letting herself get nervously excited over a late period that would never arrive. Once again, however, the universe has decided to conspire against her and Amy finds herself instead curled up on their bed, her uterus rudely reminding her that they have categorically failed again.
“Hey, Ames?” Jake taps on the door gently, popping his head round, “You okay?”
It’s sweet really how well he can read her; how he’d just known that she needed some time alone when she’d arrived home from work. In turn, she’s fully aware that he’s just as exhausted, physically and emotionally, as she is, which makes what she’s about to say next even harder.
“It’s not happening this month,” she grumbles into her pillow, tears welling in her eyes as she finally confesses aloud the root of her despondence. Not that Jake and his ace detective skills that he’s bragged about for as long as she’s known him would have taken long to guess.
“You took a test?”
She shakes her head, “My period’s coming tomorrow, I can just feel it.” Even when she wasn’t trying to get pregnant, she’s always hated this feeling so much - has always thought that if she’s going to cramp, there should at least be blood to show for it - and it’s only made worse by the knowledge that she’s inevitably waltzing towards more pain the next day. The only silver lining, she supposes, is that at least they’re $9 richer in not having to use a pregnancy test this month.
Jake wordlessly crosses the room to climb onto his side of the bed, immediately wrapping his arm around her to spoon her. It’s not even been a year of trying yet, and he’s always reminding her that they still have time, but every new page of her intricate procreation calendar only proves to her that time is the one thing that no one is master of. A website suggests that with every period she should “schedule in some grieving time”, fifteen minutes of crying perhaps to mourn something that never even existed, but Amy - and she can’t believe she’d ever even think this - has almost had enough of schedules. All she wants is for her husband to hold her close, to feel the warmth of his embrace since he’s always been her greatest comfort.
Five, maybe ten, minutes have passed when Jake breaks the silence and announces simply, “We’re getting takeout for dinner tonight.”
“Jake,” she turns in his arms with a frown, “the fertility diet...”
He wipes a tear from her cheek with his thumb and smiles gently at her, and for the millionth time she realises that as long as she has him, everything is going to be okay. “We can take one night off, babe, I think we could use a treat.”
“Okay,” she buries her face into the crook of his neck, taking in the comforting scent of his t-shirt and mumbling against his shoulder, “I want Chinese. Extra portion of pork dumplings.”
“That’s my girl,” he rubs his hand up and down her back soothingly and presses a kiss to her hair. “Next month, okay?” he says softly to her, “We’re going to have a baby, Ames, I promise.” Her husband is usually not one to waiver from a Peralta Guarantee - he’s the person she trusts most in the world, after all - and as December approaches, she really, truly hopes that he’s right about this one.
ii.
If looking after a baby is hard at the best of times, caring for a teething baby is a whole new level of exhausting. “Poor kiddo and his sore gums,” Jake laments, returning to the living area from the nursery after an hour of trying to put a very ornery Mac down for his afternoon nap. “He’s finally asleep; I think he cried himself out.”
Amy looks up at him gratefully from where she’s lying on the couch under a blanket, and her red puffy eyes immediately give her away. “Wait, why are you crying?” Jake asks with genuine concern as soon as he sees her, and she almost feels bad for him that he’s having to go straight from a crying nine-month-old to a crying wife (almost - right now she’s decidedly feeling more sorry for herself). “You didn’t watch that insurance commercial again, did you?”
“I don’t know,” she says to answer his first question, choosing to repress the memory of sobbing against him one night over the fact that the guy in the commercial’s car got destroyed by a piano falling from the sky. She sighs, “Okay, I do know, I just got my period.”
Of course, it was only a matter of time before her period finally returned after giving birth and she’s grateful that her body is starting to feel more like her own again, even if her little love is still breastfeeding every day. Still, her hormones are all over the place and absolutely nothing’s going to stop her from moaning about it, “I think I forgot how sore cramps are.”
“More painful than giving birth?”
Amy rolls her eyes, her expression morphing into a frown as she watches him walk away from her. “Hey, where are you going?”
“Getting you a hot water bottle, painkillers, and chocolate, madame,” he replies, his voice, music to her ears, quieter than usual so as not to wake Mac up.
Eighteen crazy, beautiful, life-changing months have passed since her last period, yet he moves around the kitchen getting her exactly what she wants without her even having to ask like it was yesterday, and when he finally hands her the goods and collapses on the couch next to her, his attentiveness and the fact that he knows her so well only makes her cry more. “I love you,” she gratefully sniffs, taking the paracetamol from his outstretched hand.
“Love you too, honey,” he smiles, opening his arms so that she can cuddle against his chest.
“You know what this means?” Amy absentmindedly traces her husband’s jawline with her finger, her other hand holding the hot water bottle to her abdomen, as they both revel in the peacefulness of the apartment and being able to have some quiet alone time. “Our baby’s getting so big.”
“Yeah,” Jake grins, “those cheeks just seem to get chubbier by the day.”
She thinks back to the last time she got her period - the sheer exhaustion she felt back then when they were trying so hard hasn’t really changed (if anything, she feels even more tired as a new mom), but thankfully the sadness that accompanied it uninvited most definitely has. “It was all worth it in the end,” she sighs, knowing that she doesn’t have to elaborate on their old regimen of vitamin-taking and scheduled sex for him to understand what she means.
“Hey, after your period is over, wanna have another one?” he nudges her.
“Don’t even joke about that, Peralta,” she tries to hide a smile at the teasing look on his face. They both agreed long ago that they want two kids - “They’ll be best friends, Ames, like us,” Jake once enthused - but conceiving another baby when their first one is still less than a year old is absolutely not part of the plan.
“I’m kidding, I’m kidding,” he leans in to kiss her. “But someday, right?”
“Definitely someday, babe. We make really cute babies.”
iii.
Amy’s folding what she’s sure is the tenth shirt of Jake’s when she realises her bedroom is suspiciously quiet. Too quiet.
Two-year-old Mac’s become so attached to her recently and is undeniably a Mama’s boy, always wanting to help her even if that really means following her around the apartment as she does chores while he plays with his toy cars on the floor and babbles to himself. She left him sitting up against her side of the bed with his favourite red car and baby doll named Luke, but when she looks up again from her pile of laundry her heart jumps seeing that he’s somehow gotten into the under-the-sink cabinet in the bathroom. While his endless curiosity is one of her favourite things about him, that doesn’t extend to playing with toilet cleaners.
When she reaches the bathroom five seconds later, however, she tries not to laugh at the crime scene she’s presented with, her toddler having emptied out her entire box of sanitary products over himself.
“Baby, no, Mommy’s things aren’t toys,” Amy scolds gently, picking up some of the mess off the floor before trying to lift Mac on his feet to encourage him out of the bathroom. Naturally, this only results in him immediately bursting into tears at being told no - her little boy feels very deeply - a symptom of the terrible twos that is fast becoming their new normal. When her request for him to go play elsewhere is drowned out by his crying, she resorts to hoisting him squirming onto her hip, his tiny hands still clutching onto her tampons, and taking him out herself.
Upon seeing Jake on the living room couch, Mac immediately reaches his arms out for him and splutters “Hold you, Daddy!” through tears, because of course he wants his daddy when Mommy’s being the Bad Parent.
Jake puts his laptop aside to take his son into his arms, frowning sympathetically, “What’s the matter, buddy?”
“This little monkey found my pads and tampons in the same cabinet as the bleach and is now throwing a fit because I took him away from them,” Amy explains with an amused sigh, sitting down on the couch too. She’ll admit it’s rather adorable that Mac instantly calms down a bit now on Daddy’s lap.
“Candy! Open!” Mac shoves a tampon in Jake’s face, much to both his parents’ amusement. “Open, pleeease!” he adds, remembering his good manners that they’ve been working on.
“Mac, buddy, I can open it if you want but that’s not candy,” Jake chuckles, taking it out of his hand. “Those are Mommy’s special diapers.”
“Mommy diapers?”
Amy shakes her head with a smirk at what Jake’s started as she wipes their son’s face with the tissue in her pocket. “Yeah, once every month,” he continues, “Mommy uses these when she goes potty.”
“Mommy goes potty!” Mac parrots with a triumphant toothy grin, his tantrum apparently long forgotten; it’s hard keeping up with the mood swings of a two year old.
“Although right now she doesn’t have to use them,” Jake smiles at her, and Mac’s eyebrows knit together as he tries to follow.
Maybe she went off her birth control when Mac was about to turn two, just to see if anything happened before they actively started trying again, and maybe this time round she found herself pregnant again with another little miracle within two months, much to their surprise. She looks at Jake affectionately, and he nods at her, wordlessly agreeing that post-tantrum is now as good a time as any to break the news to Mac.
“Mac, do you want to know a little secret? There’s a baby in Mommy’s tummy,” Amy says in her best talking-to-a-toddler voice, although not one ounce of her excitement is exaggerated. “Remember how we read a book about how you were once a baby in my tummy?”
“I’m a big boy!” he frowns defensively.
“That’s right, Mac,” Jake chimes in, hugging Mac against his chest, “and now you’re going to be a big brother too to a little baby. How does that sound?”
“Baby Luke?”
“Yeah, like baby Luke; or you could have a sister like baby Lucy,” Amy tells him, reminding her sweet boy of his other doll that he loves to play with.
“Okay, Mama,” Mac says simply, and even if he hasn’t completely understood the magnitude of the news he’s just been told, finally sharing it with him makes it feel that little bit more real and it’s a complete win that it didn’t end up triggering another tantrum.
“Candy please?” he turns back to Jake hopefully, with the attention span of a goldfish (or, indeed, a two-year-old) and in a tone far too sweet to be resisted.
“Fine, I think we can get you one real candy, Mr Mac,” Jake acquiesces all too easily, kissing his cheek.
“And for baby in dere!” Mac points to Amy’s stomach with concern, and she melts at his sheer cuteness; maybe he understands more than she thinks. Her little baby is going to be such a good big brother.
“Yeah, I think baby could use some candy too,” she agrees much to Jake’s excitement - craving sour straws is definitely a symptom of carrying his baby - and she stands to follow her perfect little family that she dreamed of for so long to the kitchen.