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Steph kept her eyes closed after giving birth. If her body wasn’t so exhausted and everything didn’t hurt, she would’ve thrown an arm over her eyes to really to make sure.
You’re being cruel to yourself, her mom had told her when she first decided she wouldn’t look at the baby’s face, Stephanie, honey, you deserve to know.
The not-looking wasn’t for Steph. It was for the baby. If she saw the baby then it would be too real, too Her Baby, and she wasn’t sure she could give Her Baby up. Now it was just a baby. She pretended like she was surrogate and the fetus in her wasn’t actually hers to keep.
The woman from the adoption agency promised she’d found the baby a good home. The couple had adopted before, too, and that kid was a toddler now and seemed to be the happiest goddamn kid on the planet. They weren’t from Gotham, either, which was something Steph made sure would happen. The baby couldn’t be in Gotham.
The baby’s parents wanted to meet her. She said no. She said no the second and the third time the woman from the adoption agency brought it up. She didn’t want to see the happy couple who got her baby. (Even if she was trying to convince herself it wasn’t hers.) She didn’t want to meet the couple that wasn’t some sad little fifteen-year-old with a druggy mom and a crazy dad who was in over her head.
That wasn’t fair to her mom. She was clean now, which was something Steph never would’ve thought could happen.
She was clean and Arthur Brown was in jail and her mom didn’t even kick her out when she confessed to being pregnant. Didn’t even get mad or tell her she was ruining her life. Just held her and whispered that everything would be okay.
Her mom would never admit to it, but Steph knew the look of relief on her face when she said she was giving the baby up for adoption.
The woman from the adoption agency was kind. Her name was Melinda. Melinda at first wanted to make sure this was what Steph really wanted. She had pulled her aside alone, without her mom in the room, to make sure her parents weren’t making her give the baby up.
I’m sure, Steph had told her, The baby can’t grow up like I did.
Steph wondered if the baby would grow up knowing they were adopted. If when they found out, would they hate her? Would they wonder how she could do it? How she could give up her baby like that? Would they think she was selfish, or that she hated them? Or would they not care.
Alvin Draper, who was really the stupid fake-name Robin used because she guessed his secret identity was still too big of a deal, stayed around. She half expected him to call her a whore or something, to act disgusted that his girlfriend (if you could even consider her his girlfriend, since she didn’t know who he was) was knocked up by some other dude.
He didn’t. He was nice, almost too nice. She brought it up to him, asked him what his deal was, and he looked so fucking confused.
Why wouldn’t I be nice? Robin-Alvin-Draper asked. You’re my girlfriend and you’re going through something big. Which was nice and made her cry, because of the stupid pregnancy hormones which made her cry over everything.
He even went to her Lamaze classes with her, when Melinda said the family adopting the baby offered to pay. Steph cried again when Alvin said he was her boyfriend and the baby’s dad after she admitted she was scared the other couples would look at her and see a little slut with no baby daddy.
His Robin identity took him away after the twelve hours of classes were done. She was just about eight months pregnant when he climbed through her window, kissed her, and said Batman was sending him away for something.
I’ll be there for the birth, he promised.
She didn’t take it to heart, didn't really believe him, until she was in labor in the hospital and there he was, Alvin Draper, slouched on a hospital chair and feeding her those stupid fucking ice chips.
Her mom thought he was the sweetest little boy. Probably because she didn’t know half of it, but still, she cooed over how attentive he was being to her — her mom’s words, not Steph’s.
Labor was horrible. It hurt. She cried and she screamed and nearly broke Alvin’s hand and her mom’s hand with each contraction because they didn’t get the epidural in quick enough, she dilated too quickly, and she was forced to push the baby out and feel everything.
So, she closed her eyes, didn’t throw an arm over her eyes, and trembled in the hospital bed as the baby was carried away.
It’s a girl, her mom told her, ignoring that Steph didn’t want to know. Maybe her mom knew that deep down she really did want to, like she really did want to keep her baby, but couldn’t.
Steph turned her head and cried.