was the worst experience of her life, and taught her something about herself she had never known or suspected. Maybe it had never even been there before, but it was there now. All she wanted, to fill the aching void the miscarriage had left, was to fill the void with another baby. And Sam felt it too. They both cried for their unborn child, and when Alex went back to work the following week, she was still feeling shaken.
They had gone away for a few days over a long weekend, and talked about it, and they both agreed. They weren't sure if it was a reaction, or real, but they knew that something major had changed. Suddenly, more than anything, they wanted a baby.
Sensibly, they decided to wait a few months, to see if the feelings stayed. But even that was impossible to do. Two months after the traumatic miscarriage, Alex sheepishly told Sam the news with barely concealed glee. She was pregnant.
And this time, unlike the first, it was a celebration. A cautious one, because there was always the possibility that she would lose this one too, or that she would never be able to carry a child to term. She was thirty-eight years old, after all, and she'd never had a baby. But her health was excellent, and her doctor assured them that there was no reason whatsoever to anticipate another problem.
“You know what? We're nuts,” she said, lying in bed one night, eating Oreo cookies, and getting crumbs all over their bed, but she claimed they were the only things that settled her stomach. “We are completely crazy. Four months ago, we were suicidal about having a kid, and now we lie here talking about names, and I keep reading articles in magazines in the doctor's office about what kind of mobiles to buy to put over the crib. Have I lost my marbles or what?”
“Maybe.” He smiled tenderly at her. “You're definitely harder to share a bed with. I had no idea that cookie crumbs would be part of the deal. Do you think you'll have this fixation for the whole time, or is this just a first trimester addiction?” She giggled at him, and they cuddled in bed. They made love more frequently than they had in years. They talked about the baby as though it were real, and already part of their lives. She had an amnio, and as soon as they knew it was a girl, they decided to call her Annabelle, after their favorite club in London, but it was a name that Alex had always loved, and it had good memories for them. This pregnancy was completely unlike the first one. It was as though they had learned an important lesson the first time, and felt as though they had been punished for their indifference and hostility to that baby. This time, there was no question of anything but unbridled excitement.
Alex's partners gave her a shower right after the New Year, and she left the office reluctantly that week, only two days before her due date. She had wanted to work right up until she went to the hospital, but it didn't make sense to continue working on cases she couldn't complete, so she left on schedule, and went home to wait for their little miracle, as they called her. Alex was afraid that she'd be bored, but found that she enjoyed setting up the nursery, and was surprised herself at how much time she spent folding little undershirts, and arranging diapers in neat stacks in the changing table. For a woman who struck fear into most lawyers' hearts when she entered a courtroom, she seemed to have changed in a single instant. She even worried sometimes that it might dull her skills when she went back, maybe she wouldn't be as tough, or as focused, but in spite of her concerns about that, all she could think of now was the baby. She could imagine holding it, feeding it, she wondered if she would have red hair like her own, or dark, dark hair like Sam's, blue eyes, or green. Like a long-awaited friend, she could hardly wait to see her.
They had arranged to have the baby in a birthing room at New York Hospital, Alex wanted everything to be natural. She was planning to savor every moment of the experience. At thirty-nine, she couldn't imagine doing this again, so she didn't want to take any of it for granted.