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"How are you feeling?" Jadzia asked, clasping her raktajino with both hands and looking sympathetically at Kira.
"Honestly? Like crap." Kira shifted in her chair, taking a long sip of her tea and making a face. "Did you know that I'm still bleeding? It's been a month since Kirayoshi was born. A month!"
"Audrid bled so much after her second child was born she thought she was actually dying." At Kira's expression, Jadzia quickly added, "She wasn't, she was fine, it just went on forever."
Kira sighed. "How do you feel about them? Your other hosts' kids? If you met them, or their descendants…"
"It can be a little strange. That's why Trills generally avoid getting involved with people we knew in our past lives." She took in Kira's wistful expression, and asked the question she'd been wondering ever since they transplanted Keiko's baby. "Are you sad that the baby isn't yours?"
"What? No!" Kira's emotional defenses had always been so obvious they were nearly visible to the naked eye.
"You had him living in you for months, you gave birth to him -- it's natural that you'd feel some kind of attachment." Jadzia drained the last of her raktajino. "I don't think I ever told you this, but Emony had a child. A girl. She gave her up for adoption."
Kira side-eyed Jadzia. "You've never said anything about that."
"Because it wasn't something Emony liked to talk about. She was early in her gymnastics career, it wasn't planned, and with the training schedules she had to keep to, it just didn't make sense for her to have a baby. She didn't regret it, but she still felt sad about giving her up, not getting to see what her daughter would become."
"I'm not sure if it's better or worse that I see the O'Briens all the time. He's Keiko's baby, and he should be with her." Kira stretched her legs and looked down at her hands. "I never thought I would have a baby."
"Why not? You'd make a great mother."
Kira smiled. "Thanks. But in the Resistance? I thought for sure I'd be dead by the time I was 25. And to think of bringing a child into that world we lived in-- That's not something I would want to do. I'm not sure I'd want to do it in this world either."
"There's never a good time to have a baby. I don't think any of my hosts ever really felt like they were at the best point in their life when they had children, but once they had them, they didn't regret it, even if they had hardships later."
"Well, if I'm ever crazy enough to go through pregnancy again, I'll rely on your years and years of experience with babies to help me through it."
Jadzia laughed. "Well, as Jadzia I have no experience at all with babies, so you know more about it than I do." Kira smiled, and Jadzia decided it had been a good idea to probe Kira's feelings about the baby after all. It felt good to get Emony's secret out in the open too. All the experiences of her past hosts, both the parents and those who never had children, combined with her own life so far, made Jadzia certain she wanted to have children in this life. Maybe not yet, but perhaps soon. It was definitely something she wanted to do before she died.