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Trigger Warning: The following post, and Rp as a whole, focuses around labor, birth, postpartum blues and/or depression, general new parent anxiety. And also happy emotions and love and affection but point is! There are no graphic descriptions but wanted to give a large warning anyway just in case anyone is uncomfortable with anything related to or skimming any of these topics! <3
When her eyes opened to the soft light coming through the closed blinds, Danika had to take a moment to orientate herself. The overhead lights were off, allowing a cool, peaceful atmosphere in the room. All the better, really--her whole damn body hurt. Particularly her lower abdomen. Fragments of moments leaked into her awareness--liquid down her legs when she'd been washing a couple dishes after dinner. She'd barely gotten a shout out before Dom was there, then suddenly had the prepped bag for the hospital, then they were in the car and…
Moments flickered and flitted through her mind. The ******** contractions. The panic of what if this was too early? What if the girls really weren't ready, and her body just wasn't handling things right to give them enough time? Being moved to a room--a single, and uh… in retrospect, a pretty big room. Well. She wasn't going to object to whatever money was being spent on comfort and privacy at a time like this.
Pain. Dominic, there with her, talking with her about… anything, everything, to help her stay somewhat distracted. Then not much pain. Meds happened. But there was still some. The overwhelming feeling of pressure and pain and how the <********> was her body supposed to do this s**t? She swore and cussed, though had enough of her senses to always give big, big thank yous to the nurses when they came to check on her, or just talk with them for a bit.
Oh. Was Dom's hand okay? Danika winced a little as she recalled she uh… was pretty sure she had gripped his hand maybe a bit too tightly during everything…
But… then there was the sound of crying. A high pitched wail, and Danika's whole world didn't know how to remain upright or still. It wasn't… it wasn't a tunnel vision immediately, or some instantaneous world shift to focus on that tiny, tiny little thing the nurses cleaned up and got checked out. That magical sensation didn't happen, either, when a few moments later, another tiny, tiny human entered the world. Danika just felt pain, and relief, and… panic? Anxiety? All of the above. The whole notion that she'd somehow have some instinctive sense for how to take care of them, how to love them, it just… it baffled her. For a moment, she felt she might be broken, if it didn't come to her immediately. Did the nurses give her weird looks because she said it was okay to take them to get cleaned up and checked out? That she'd wait to hold them till they were looked over?
Likely they did not, they'd likely seen all of this before, and it was normal. But she didn't feel like it was. She'd clung to Dominic, feeling wrong and broken and… when the nurses brought the two little plastic cribs into the room, and they carefully placed one baby, then the other, into her arms, and the tiny heads rested against her chest, she'd cried, because she didn't feel that… that magically whatever.
She'd already spoken to some of the nurses, and a counselor (or was she a therapist..?), who told her that was okay, that it was normal, that everyone experienced things differently, but it didn't mean she was broken. She already knew she'd be speaking to them more, and setting up remote sessions with the uh. Counselor-therapist.
She was able to feed them, with some guidance from the ever patient and wonderful nurses (seriously--she was going to make sure Dom sent them and this whole department thank you baskets or something because they were amazing and so good to them). And then… huh.
She must have passed out.
Danika remained laying down on the bed, comfortable enough with the cool air of the A/C drifting into the room and light blankets over her. Enough pillows were propping her up to recline comfortably, and not require her to move around much to drink some water or something.
She turned her gaze towards the rest of the room, hearing a low hum of the TV.
itspao_
