first commercial break got antsy. I peeked at my cell phone and noticed the voice mail indicator on. I’d missed three calls yesterday.

Hmmm.

No!

I’m a stay-at-home. One hundred percent mom. If I listened to my voice mails, I might get sucked in again. I padded to the middle of room, where Laurie was lightly sleeping in the bassinet. She fidgeted and swung her arms. I touched her cheek, and despite the fuzzy sleeper, she seemed cold.

When would I be allowed to use a blanket in her bassinet? She had broken out of the swaddle a few weeks prior, and keeping her warm in this weather was going to become a concern.

My eyes flicked back to my cell phone. There wasn’t any harm in checking messages, was there? All I would be doing was listening. Maybe there was an important message, even something urgent.

I grabbed my cell phone as the doorbell rang. I made my way to the front door and looked through the peek hole. There was a pregnant belly poking its way through a bouquet of flowers. My best friend, Paula, was standing behind the bouquet.

I flung the door open and a gust of wind hit me in the face. I grabbed Paula around the neck, crushing the flowers between us. “Oh, my God, what are you doing here?”

Paula, a born designer, was wearing a white cashmere overcoat and was wrapped in pink accessories. Pink gloves, scarf, and hat. They matched her cheeks.

She stepped inside and handed me the flowers. “These are for you.”

“For what?”

“I called yesterday and Jim told me you had been in the hospital. I wanted to come see you right away.”

A delicate Parisian shopping bag hung from her wrist. She unlatched it and handed it to me. “Something for the little one. Where is she?”

I directed her to the living room. Paula immediately spotted the bassinet and rushed to unbundle herself. She thrust all her pink accessories at me, even her Dolce & Gabbana purse—also in pink.

I hung everything in the hall closet. “I wasn’t expecting you home so soon.”

“I came home to have the baby!” she said, reflexively rubbing her belly.

“But you’re not due, for what, another couple of months, right?”

“Yeah, yeah, but I wanted to be home before I got too far along to travel.”

“What about David and Danny?” I asked.

Paula and her husband, David, had relocated to Paris several months ago with their two-year-old, Danny. David worked for a top consulting firm and they’d requested he take an assignment in France, holding the promise of a promotion over his head. “At home getting settled in,” Paula said. In moments she had scoped Laurie up. “Kate! She’s so darling.”

Laurie remarkably remained asleep in her arms.

“Who do you look like?” Paula asked Laurie. “You have your dad’s forehead. What about your eyes?” She jiggled Laurie. “Hey, wake up there, kid. I’m talking to you.”

I nudged Paula shoulder. “Don’t you dare!”

Paula laughed and continued her conversation with a snoozing Laurie. “I’m having a girl, too. You guys will be best friends, just like your mommy and me. I can’t wait.”

I gestured for her to have a seat.

“Where’s Jim?” Paula asked.

“Still sleeping.”

Paula raised an eyebrow. “You are the luckiest person I know. What new mother can actually sit down and have a conversation with a girlfriend while her newborn and husband sleep?”

I waved a hand at her. “I’m sure the peace and quiet will be short lived. Coffee?”

She sat on an easy chair in front of the couch and nestled Laurie into the crook of her arm. “I’m dying for a cup of coffee, but I’m doing the caffeine-free thing until the baby is born.”

“I have decaf tea.”

Giving me a thumbs-up, she kicked off her pink ballet slipper flats and propped her swollen feet on my coffee table as I headed to the kitchen. When I returned with two steaming mugs of tea, she said, “Kate, you look great. Did you wear one of those girdle things after giving birth?”

I stopped in my tracks. “What girdle things?”

“You know, like the kind I wore after having Danny.

You wear it for the first six weeks after giving birth and it pulls your tummy right in.”

“What! I’m as big as a house! You never told me this! And Laurie’s already seven weeks! Is it too late?”

Paula laughed. “You are not as big as a house. Where do you get that stuff? I just told you, you look great.”

I pulled up my shirt to show her my stomach. “Look at this!”