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They have not produced a calm infant; Alan wonders if calm infants are a true mammalian phenomenon or merely an idea pushed about by the uncredentialed “experts” preaching overstrict schedules and behavior-modifying techniques, as if a four week old baby could possibly understand manipulation or problem-solving logic. That is to say, that he believes what he can observe: that Jane prefers to be swaddled (even if she gets too hot, and her rosy skin becomes damp with sweat) that Jane prefers to sleep on one of their shoulders (which means neither he nor Ellie get very much sleep at all) and that Jane prefers to nurse lying down, which sometimes, sometimes, means that they can all manage a few precious hours in bed before the dig site starts to awaken with the sun.
Sometimes, her eye twitching with exhaustion, Ellie wonders why she decided she could do this, but she’s seen Tyrannosaur parents chase their young across San Diego and that was after she and Alan chased across Isla Nublar with Lex and Tim (the Velociraptors snapping, wild and bloodthirsty, at their heels) in the first place.
Woman will inherit the Earth, and Dr. Ellie Sattler will manage an excavation in the Montana Badlands with a baby slung on her hip. Both. She can do both.
But not alone, at least.
“Here, let me take her.”
(They sky darkens, a wash of ominous brown painted over the horizon. The students, now months into the summer semester’s dig, know to start securing down tarps and tents over the grid and to head indoors to wait out the dust storm.)
Brushing a kiss over the top of Jane’s head, Ellie fixes a worried look to the sky, and then fixes a similar look on Alan. He helps her to her feet, away from the Annularia stellata specimen that she’s revealed out of a flat of Jurassic shale. “Here,” she murmurs, catching up with herself and gently lifting Jane out of the wrap that keeps her secure to her side.
Cheeks reddening, she howls, her tiny fists balling into the air.
“It’s just me, it’s me.” Alan shushes her, entirely awkward and still half-unsure of his own child. Plucking apart the top few buttons of his plaid shirt, he tucks her between the flannel and his cotton undershirt, and Jane quiets when her cheek presses against his chest. “Just me, Janey. Calm down, honey.”
Babies (children in their entirety, really) are a study in chaos. Or at least that’s what Ian said, and said again, when Jane came a month early. Laughing at him carelessly, telling him that Jane would do just fine in an unused plastic mail crate until the bassinet they ordered became un-lost in the mail en route to Montana.
(Ian was right. Not that Alan would ever concede that.)
“Mom will be right back,” he tells Jane, running his hand over her back, cupping where her fragile skull meets an ever more fragile neck. And remembers, as he has intermittently these past few months, that human infants are one of the most unprepared out of any species as they leave the womb. “But we want to get inside.”
The inside of their trailer is cool than the arid July air, with heavy blinds hanging on the windows to cancel out most of the harsh sunlight. When he pushes the wide brim of her white floppy hat back from her face, Jane blinks up at him, and shoves her fist into her mouth.
Alan frowns.
“You’re hungry.”
Jane’s answer is a squirm, and a discomfited noise that is the precursor to a cry. He feels perfectly inadequate; defense from various carnivores and electrified fences he can do, climbing up and down trees and performing first aid, but feeding the baby will have to wait until Ellie returns. Which will be soon, with the way the wind is rattling their trailer as if it was a tin can waiting to be upended.
(Another nightmare to clear from his mind.)
And soon, regardless. Ellie and Alan don’t like to be separated, since…
Well, since.
So she comes to them, like he knows, and takes the baby from his arms and into hers. And because if the heat wasn’t tiring, having an infant would be, and besides all of that when she’s nursed lying down it somehow keeps Jane’s small tummy more settled. Or so Ellie says, and he’s continuing to jot down in notes into the margins of the small moleskine book he’s been keeping of everything Jane Cera Grant — feeding times, diaper changes, which onesies she prefers over others, her litany of noises and behaviors that connote anything between contentment and extreme dissatisfaction. His field journal of infancy, Ellie likes to tease him, like they both don’t hear Lex’s screams in their sleep.
“How long is this one supposed to last?” Ellie asks, lying on the mess of sheets on their bed.
His eyes feel like sandpaper; he tries to blink the feeling away.
“Not sure. I forgot to check the forecast this morning.” He moves towards the door. “I could go ask one of the grad students for the read out—”
“I don’t want you to get stuck out there. It doesn’t matter, honey.”
“Oh.”
She smiles up at him, somehow. At best, she feels moments away from falling asleep, even as Jane eats at her breast. But she’s never felt more like smiling, and after a moment of tired hesitation, he mirrors the expression on his own.
“It sounds like it’s gonna last a while,” she says, brushing the back of her fingers down Jane’s cheek.
The baby makes a snuffling sound, one hand flinging up to catch on the neckline of Ellie’s soft t-shirt.
“Right.”
Alan sways on his feet.
“Come take a nap,” she says, patting the space behind her on their bed. It’s a small trailer, when any of them are awake, they’re all awake. “Maybe we’ll all get some sleep. White noise, like we were saying. Maybe the storm will keep us from waking her up.”
“I think this is a bit more than white noise,” Alan mutters, sliding in behind her and wrapping an arm around her middle. The wind howls in response, the room darkening except for the dim desk lamp on their dresser. Kissing Ellie’s shoulder, he looks over the slope of her body, at Jane.
Ellie hums. “She doesn’t seem to mind.”
“Interesting.”
He’ll have to make a note.
(Jane is a very intriguing breed of child.)