Sunday morning, May 27
At two weeks old, Emma had already changed. Cuddy knew some people would disagree with her but she was sure of it. They were small changes, admittedly, too subtle for anyone who wasn't paying attention to notice. She saw them, though. Emma had gained weight, for one thing. Again, it was a small amount of weight but when you only weighed seven
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He wasn't so sure what was causing it this morning, though. It could have been any number of things: hormones still, tiredness and exhaustion, something else he wasn't aware of. He hated seeing her cry but this time he was pretty certain her tears wasn't because of him.
Her admission of not knowing what was wrong didn't really answer his concern, but at the same time it did. Maybe she was upset because she was simply overwhelmed with tiredness and the change of life. He lifted a hand and rubbed his forehead, then slowly limped into the room.
When he reached her side, he put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a rub. His eyes landed on the box of tissues by the changing table; he left her side for a second to grab her a couple of tissues, which he handed to her. Not knowing what was wrong didn't help him in knowing what to do. He bit his lip as he eyed Emma, then put his cane aside.
"Here," he said. "Give her to me." Given the baby seemed content, he gathered she must have had her fill. Taking the baby from Cuddy's arms, he drew Emma up to his shoulder and settled her there. He opened his mouth to say something to Cuddy but decided against it for the moment. Instead, he turned his head to Emma, who was wide awake, alert and ready for a play.
"How about we give Mom some space?" he said to Emma. Her head bobbed against his shoulder and she cooed happily, oblivious to how upset Cuddy was. Giving Cuddy space was probably a good idea for now. "I'll be back," he told Cuddy before he turned and headed out of the room with Emma.
When he reached the living room, he dragged her playmat out and lay her down on it. He placed the toy gym over her so she had something interesting to look at, and she kicked her feet and waved her arms. She'd be fine on her own for a minute or so, he decided. It wasn't like she could get anywhere. Still, he made sure the area around her was clear and safe before he went back to the nursery.
Cuddy was still crying when he returned. He wiped a bit of sleep out of the corner of his eye as he approached her. Again, he wasn't sure what to do, so he reached for her shoulder again and rubbed it gently. "You're a new mom, that's what wrong with you," he said.
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The small part of her mind that was still operating rationally knew that wasn't right. It knew she was being irrational...which was no comfort at all. Knowing she was irrational only made it worse because she was confirming for herself that there was something wrong with her and, worse, that she was being no good for Emma. It was a vicious, self-defeating circle and she didn't have the mental or physical resources to break it.
She pulled her legs up and planted her heels on the edge of the seat, wrapping her arms around her legs. The tissues he'd given her were soaked in seconds and she grabbed Emma's spit rag. She scrubbed at her face. It didn't do any good but she was desperate to stop the tears, or at least hide the evidence of them. She didn't know why she'd come so completely unglued that morning. It was no different to any other morning since Emma's birth but for some reason, something had given way.
"That's no excuse," she said in a thick voice. "Other mothers manage. They take care of their kids and they go about their lives like normal." She'd seen them. She knew other mothers managed to go about their business and take care of their families and their homes and they even managed to shower and comb their hair. They certainly weren't sitting in the corner of a dimly lit room crying over nothing.
"Look at me," she demanded tearfully. "I'm a mess." She hadn't looked all that bad, not up to her usual standards but not awful. The crying, though, made her look as miserable as she felt. Her eyes were red and swollen, her skin was blotchy, and just to add insult to injury, she now had a pounding headache. "If I can't manage myself, then how can I possibly do a good job taking care of Emma?"
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"No, you're not," he replied to her claim she was a mess. Again, she gave him no time to explain why she wasn't a mess. He wanted to roll his eyes; she was blowing it way out of proportion. Just because she was a mess right at this very moment didn't mean she was a mess of a mother.
Truthfully, he'd never quite seen her like this. He'd seen her crying in happiness, crying in sadness, in pain, in distress. He hadn't seen her this unglued, though. And he had to admit, her lack of control was a bit like how he sometimes felt. He'd been adjusting to life with Emma but it hadn't been an easy adjustment. There'd been plenty of times already where he didn't know what he was doing and felt frustrated and defeated as a result.
He heard Emma out in the living room. She'd let out a noise that was a bit like a squeal. She didn't sound unhappy, though, so he decided she'd be fine out there on her for a few minutes more. "Of course you can manage yourself," he said. "You do a good job taking care of Emma, too. You've been doing both of those things ever since we brought her home. You're just having a bad start to the day. That doesn't make you a mess. It makes you human."
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She was barely managing. And she barely felt human. Even through her current, inexplicable misery, she recognized that she didn't feel this way all the time. Most of the time she did manage. She got things done. It was the bare minimum of what she needed to do but still, she got something done. She expected too much of herself. She expected to be able to handle a newborn and make it look effortless and that was very much not the case. Naturally she felt like a failure.
She truly did enjoy her time with Emma, though. Yes, sometimes she resented being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night after only a couple hours sleep but she resented the lack of sleep, not Emma. She was still fascinated by Emma and her innocence and her funny reactions to the world she hadn't even begun to explore. She just wished she could enjoy her time with Emma without feeling like she'd been flattened by a steamroller.
"I'm just so...tired," she said in a hoarse voice. She rubbed her face with the spit rag again. The tears had slowed but she felt like hell. She was exhausted and her sinuses were clogged and her nose was running and her eyes felt like sandpaper. She hadn't done herself any favors by going on a crying jag...but she hadn't had any control over it.
"I feel like I'm in a fog all the time." Cuddy flapped the damp cloth in the direction of the living room, where Emma occasionally let out one of her repetoire of strange noises. "She deserves better. So do you."
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He listened to her say how tired she was, that she felt like she was in a fog. He felt a bit that way himself, had done for the last two weeks. And currently, he was still groggy from having just got out of bed. He was rubbing his forefinger and thumb into his scratchy, tired eyes just when Cuddy started going on about Emma and him deserving better.
He dropped his arm to his side with a mildly exasperated sigh. "Now, that's crazy talk," he retorted. "Deserve better than what? Emma's happy, she's always fed, she recognises you as someone important."
He sighed again while looking down at Cuddy's fragile, haggard state. "You're not supermom. This is the part of parenthood nobody can prepare for." He glanced in Emma's direction and added in a mutter, "I certainly wasn't."
House had known there'd be fatigue and frustration involved in being a parent but he'd had no concept of what that would be like until Emma had come home. Now he understood why new moms came into clinic feeling so overwhelmed. He hadn't reached any point of distress like Cuddy had now but he'd had his moments of thinking it was all too much to cope with. Lack of sleep really didn't help, either. But while he could go on about lack of sleep, he wasn't facing anywhere near as much physical demand as Cuddy was. He didn't have to feed every few hours. His body wasn't working constantly to produce milk.
"Come on," he said, his tone softer. He held his hand out for Cuddy to take. "Come here." He leaned over and grasped Cuddy's hand to pull her up from the chair whether she wanted to stand or not and once she was on her feet, he drew her into a comforting embrace. He rubbed her back at the same time, kneading his fingers into the tight muscles in between her shoulder blades and spine.
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She obviously wasn't capable of sustaining that kind of life. She wasn't supermom and worse, she wasn't even Normal!Mom. She was taking care of Emma's needs--she made sure of that--but she wasn't taking care of herself. She showered every day, dressed, combed her hair, brushed her teeth...and she'd grown to consider that a good day. Her standards had dropped considerably.
Being her, she felt guilty she was worrying about her standards for herself. She should be able to ignore her own discomfort as long as Emma was okay. Emma's well-being was what mattered, not whether Cuddy had put on her make-up. She was being selfish, thinking about her own comfort.
She let House pull her up even though she felt like she was moving through mud. Crying had sucked the last of her energy from her body, which made her crying jag even more stupid than she already thought it was. She leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him and holding on. It was comforting to be held. It had even helped to simply voice some of what she was feeling. It didn't fix it or make it go away but it felt just that little bit better.
"I don't...." She swallowed hard, her face pressed to his chest. "I just need some sleep...which I can't get."
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Emma made another few sounds out in the living room, still happily playing and oblivious to anything that was going on. When he'd gone to the bathroom, he was going to head straight back to bed but now after finding Cuddy like this and hearing her tell him how tired and overwhelmed she was, sleep was going to have to wait for him. "Tell you what," he said. He pulled back enough so he could look down at her. "Go back to bed. I'll stay with Emma.
"And don't argue with me," he added before Cuddy could get any potential ideas about saying she had to keep going. He knew what she was like, always feeling she had to be doing something. Well, she was going to have to learn that sometimes, she was just going to have to stop if she wanted to be able to function. He dropped his arms from around her and pressed the crook of his finger under her chin to urge her to look up at him. "Don't do anything today. Forget about any laundry, any cleaning, just rest. The world's not going to fall apart if you let things go for a day."
He gave her a small, thin-lipped smile. With all the crying she'd been doing, she looked like she could easily sleep for an entire week. He lifted a hand and lightly caressed her cheek, then leaned in and pressed a kiss to her forehead. "You're a good mom," he told her when he pulled away. He pulled a thoughtful look for a moment. "No, actually, scrap that. You're a great mom. Believe me, I'd tell you if I thought you weren't."
House looked towards the living room, hearing Emma let out a mildly fussy noise. "I'll deal with her," he said before Cuddy got any ideas about doing so herself. "Do something that relaxes you. Have some breakfast, have a hot bath, then go back to bed. Sleep as long as you need to."
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Then again, she really couldn't cope just then. She needed to gather her frayed edges together before she could be a good mother to Emma. And it wasn't as if she was dumping Emma on just anyone. House was her father. There was nothing wrong with him taking over for a while. In fact, if he still thought he wanted to take Emma to his apartment at some point, he was going to have to learn to take over.
She gave a faint nod when he told her she was a good mother. It was nice to hear even if she didn't fully believe it at the moment. She shook her head, though, when he suggested she do something to relax. "If I take a bath, I'll fall asleep and drown." Her voice had a nasal quality because of the sinus congestion caused by the crying. She reached up and impatiently wiped away a few more stray tears. A hot bath sounded like bliss...and like too much work. She just wanted to sleep. Preferably for a month.
"She's liable to be awake for a while," Cuddy warned, hearing Emma make some demanding sounding noises. Emma was an early bird and as far as she was concerned--it was play time. Sure, she had no concept of time and she didn't really play, but she was starting to be more awake during the daylight hours and less so at night. It was a start--hopefully she'd continue that trend and get to a point where she was sleeping longer periods at night. Cuddy's sanity was depending on it.
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He wasn't sure what Cuddy's point was in telling him that. Was she doubting he couldn't actually deal with Emma for any length of time on his own? Was she simply warning him because she knew he was tired to? Was she trying to point out that he couldn't cope without her? He was itching to demand to know what she meant. He forced himself to hold it back, though. Now wasn't a good time to go picking fights. Difficult as it was to let it go, he dismissed it from his mind as best he could, lowering his hand to take Cuddy's in his.
"Come on," he said. He tugged her hand and led her out of the nursery and into the bedroom. He guided her right up to the side of the bed and said, "Get in. I'll be back in a second."
Leaving her to climb into bed, he went into the bathroom and fetched a washcloth, which he wet with warm water and wrung out. "Here, wash your face. Might make you feel a bit better," he said when he returned to the bedroom, holding the washcloth out to Cuddy. Just as he did, he heard Emma let out a sound that was somewhere between a wail and a squeal of frustration. He ignored it. Emma was fine and her cry didn't sound urgent. When Cuddy finished with the washcloth, he took it back.
"Now sleep," he told her. "Don't worry about us." Once he dropped a quick kiss to her lips, he stepped out of the room and closed the door. He tossed the washcloth into the bathroom, where it landed on the floor with a light slap, and continued down the hall to the living room where Emma was really starting to kick up a fuss.
"Alright, alright," he said over the top of her. He bent over and scooped her up, and he held her up in front of him to look at her. She squirmed and kicked her legs with an unhappy expression on her face. House drew her closer and frowned. "Guess what? It's just you and me, kiddo. It's Mom's day to rest, so we both have to be very quiet."
Emma screwed her face up and grizzled. When Emma got like this, he usually passed her onto Cuddy because he was more comfortable with letting her settle the baby. He was going to have to suck it up and deal now, though. He brought her to his shoulder and patted her back, and she instantly calmed down a little. He yawned while he felt her head bobbing against the side of his neck and the top of his shoulder.
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Keeping Emma pinned to his shoulder with one hand, he went about getting the coffee ready to brew and took his morning meds while he waited. He'd had enough practice in the past two weeks with multitasking while holding Emma. He leaned back against the counter and pulled Emma down from his shoulder to cradle her in his arms, looking down at her peering back up at him with a much happier look on her face.
"So, what'll we do today?" he asked her. Emma gazed up at him curiously. "Yeah, I don't know, either. We could play chess. Or cards. Maybe I could teach you to play poker. Though, don't tell your mom I told you that." The coffee finished brewing and House returned Emma to the living room on her playmat and went back to pour himself a cup.
The next couple of hours went fairly slowly. House ate breakfast and read the paper while Emma continued to kick on the floor, and he joined her once he'd finished reading the world news section. He dangled toys over her, tickled her belly and let her grasp his fingers. He also encouraged her to grasp onto some of her toys - a set of bright coloured plastic keys, a rattle, a plush toy that had a hard plastic handle on it. While she gripped onto them, not really aware of what she was holding, he also encouraged her to move her arm to make the toys make noise.
Surprisingly to him, watching her on his own was a lot easier than he thought it would be. Even putting her to bed didn't end up being any kind of spectacle - she'd played for so long during the morning that by the time he put her into the cot she was already half asleep. He checked on Cuddy, too, who was dead to the world and he decided to leave her be.
For the next couple of hours, he did several things from watching TV to putting a load of washing on, to sorting the dry laundry out - a job he didn't like but one less job for Cuddy to do whenever she woke up. He also sat down at his laptop at one point with an email open and 'Dear Mom and Dad' written in it. He stared at the opening greeting for about ten minutes before he shut the laptop and tried to yet again push thoughts of his parents aside.
It was when he was dozing off in the armchair that he heard Emma stirring. "Hello, monster," he said when he reached the nursery and found her wide awake and calm. The first thing he did was change her diaper, making comments about the huge poop she'd left deposited in it while he cleaned her up. Freshly changed, he carried her to Cuddy's room but upon seeing Cuddy still fast asleep, he changed his mind about waking her. She was going to be very engorged by the time she woke up but that was nothing expressing wouldn't fix. She had said she wanted to express so maybe that would be a good time to start.
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He watched her while she feed, the way her hand caressed the side of the bottle and the quiet gulping noises she made each time she swallowed. He actually found feeding her more enjoyable than he thought he would. He quite liked the quiet time of simply holding her. In fact, as he drew the bottle away when she'd downed about half of it to burp her, he moved her up to his shoulder for a few moments and gently cuddled her.
He fed her the rest of the bottle and with her in a lazy, content stupor and a belly full of milk, he let her stay seated on his lap while he turned the TV on. She hiccuped and dribbled, at one point puked a slight amount of her dinner up, which House quickly wiped away with the spit towel. But she was otherwise happy sitting with him and he was happy to have her sitting with him.
Eventually, however, she started to get restless. He put her on the floor to play and finally decided to get himself showered. It was a quick in-and-out wash; he dried, dressed and when he came back into the living room Emma was getting fussy and tired again. He put her back down for another sleep and it wasn't until almost two o'clock that she awoke. This time, after changing her, he took Emma into Cuddy's bedroom.
He walked her around to his side of the bed and carefully crawled onto it, laying Emma down beside Cuddy. "Cuddy," he said softly, giving her a gentle shake. "I brought someone in to visit you." He cocked his head to peek at her face when he saw her eyes open. Between them, Emma was starting to get demanding for food.
"Want to feed her lying here?" he asked. "You can take your time waking up that way."
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Unfortunately, although she didn't want to admit it, she wasn't functioning well enough to argue the point. She'd gotten to a point where she needed to be treated like a child, and the dim realization of that fact only reinforced her sense that she was failing. If she couldn't keep herself together enough to put herself to bed, then how could she possibly keep it together enough to take care of a child? The obvious answer to that, in her mind, was that she couldn't.
Under House's direction, she settled into bed and fell fast asleep. It wasn't even like falling asleep--it was moe like a collapse, a complete shut-down. She couldn't have been any deeper asleep if she'd been drugged. The house could've collapsed around her and she wouldn't have twitched.
Eventually, though, as her body got some rest, her sleep became more normal. She was even vaguely aware of hearing Emma through the baby monitor at some point. Some part of her brain that actually paid attention to things like that was also aware of hearing House's voice. That part of her brain decided he must be taking care of Emma for the moment and she could continue to sleep until she needed to nurse.
The next thing she knew, she was hearing Emma not through the monitor but right next to her. As she nodded in response to House shaking her shoulder, she became aware of another fact that had been lurking in her mind and that was that her breasts hurt. They were so fully engorged they felt like they were going to explode. She let out a faint grunt of discomfort and pressed her hand to one breast. It felt hard as a rock and incredibly tender...and wet. The front of her nightgown was thoroughly wet from leaking breast milk, which was leaking all the more in response to Emma's hungry cries.
"It's okay, Emma," she said in a voice thick with sleep. She couldn't believe House had managed to delay Emma's mealtime so long that her breasts felt this engorged but that wasn't important at the moment. What mattered was there was a single way to solve both her and Emma's discomfort.
Cuddy shifted fully on her side and opened the concealed slit in her nightgown. She pulled Emma close to her and guided her to her breast. "Careful, kiddo--you're liable to get a mouthful." Sure enough, Emma sputtered as she practically inhaled a mouthful. She latched right back on, though, sucking more gently. Truth was, she probably didn't have to suck much at all. The milk was practically pouring out on its own now that they'd been triggered to release it.
Emma's nursing actually increased the pain for a moment and Cuddy winced slightly when the baby sucked too hard. As some of the pressure was relieved, though, she felt more comfortable. She rubbed at her heavy eyes and twisted her head around to look at the alarm clock. She stared at it for a moment, certain she must be seeing wrong. It couldn't possibly be that late in the day.
"Is that time right?" she asked House. "Emma surely hasn't gone that long without nursing."
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He lifted his head to look at the clock at Cuddy's mention of the time, then dropped his head back to the pillow with a soft plop. "No. I changed the time to disorientate you." He paused for a beat, then added, "Yeah, that's the time. You've been asleep for almost eight hours."
He lolled his head towards Cuddy and looked at her. "And yeah, she surely has gone that long without nursing." He pulled a innocent face, expecting Cuddy to start telling him off about being irresponsible for letting her starve. The next moment, he relaxed again. "Don't worry. She was fed at around ten. She nursed from me instead."
To 'demonstrate' how he'd fed her, he patted and rubbed his chest, over his left pectoral. Of course he was joking and he smirked as he lifted his hands behind his head, fingers laced together. "I gave her formula," he explained seriously this time. "I was going to bring her to you but you were more or less comatose. Decided to let you keep sleeping. You needed it."
He turned his eyes down to Emma. Her little head, bald at the back, bobbed slightly with each suck she drew on Cuddy's nipple. Her hand caressed and opened and closed on Cuddy's breast. "We had fun, didn't we?" he said to Emma. "Played poker. Blew up Mom's favourite pots in the backyard. Scared some nuisance kids of the lawn with Dad's shotgun."
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Her mind was still groggy from sleep. She had a sort of sleep hangover. It was almost as bad as not having enough sleep. Almost, but not really. She still felt fuzzy headed and useless but having gotten some rest made it easier for her to cope with those feelings.
She opened her mouth to protest when he finally explained he'd given Emma formula...but she closed it again without saying anything. She'd bought the formula to have 'just in case'--for an emergency. She supposed, though, that today had been a sort of emergency. She'd come unraveled and although she'd physically been able to nurse Emma, it was probably more important that she get some sleep.
"Mommy's been pretty worthless today, huh?" she said quietly to Emma, gently rubbing her finger along Emma's arm. Emma didn't care. She was getting what she needed--either from Cuddy or from House--and that's all that mattered to her at this stage of her life.
"How did she do with the bottle?" Cuddy asked House, ignoring his tall tales of his adventures with Emma.
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Typical she'd view tiredness and feeling overwhelmed as failure and worthlessness. Typical she'd focus on one particular bad day as a measure of how she'd been coping these past two weeks instead of focusing on every other day in the last fortnight. Every other day where she'd been tired and sometimes had succumbed to tears but still got on with it and still found energy to give herself emotionally to Emma. So long as she kept viewing tiredness as a weakness, he was going to keep contradicting her with the actual fact she was simply tired.
Pulling his hands from behind his head, he rolled onto his side towards Cuddy and propped his head up on his hand. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. "Fine," he answered. "She drank from it like a pro. Drank the whole bottle, too."
He looked at Emma, who hadn't missed a beat with drinking. She was still steadily sucking, still rhythmically and contentedly gulping. God, she was small. She was so small and fragile-looking. Without warning or reason, his chest suddenly seized with a swell of pride. His little girl. A sudden impulse to kiss her head and touch her overcame him but he staved it back. Instead, he snagged her tiny foot and gave it a gentle squeeze and toyed with it for a minute.
Then he looked up to Cuddy. She was puffy-eyed from all the crying, pale, dark circles under her eyes. But she also looked rested, despite grogginess. He'd genuinely hated seeing her so upset this morning. If she hadn't allowed him to take over, he wouldn't have known what to do. Letting Emma's foot go, he reached over to Cuddy's hip and caressed it.
He lightly patted it, too. "How're you feeling?" he asked, idly patting her hip another couple of times.
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Cuddy drew her finger up to Emma's head, stroking the fine, brown hair. She glanced over at House when he asked how she was. "I feel like I was drugged." She pursed her lips and pondered that possibility for a moment, but no, House hadn't had an opportunity to drug her. She gave herself a little shake to dismiss the idea.
"When I finish waking up all the way, I think I'll feel pretty decent." One night--or day--of sleep wasn't going to solve her sleep deprivation problem. After all those hours of sleep, she still felt tired. It helped, though. It helped a lot. She no longer felt like she was exhausted to the point of collapse. She felt more in control, more functional. For someone like her who needed to feel in control, that sorely needed mental boost.
"Thank you," she said, pushing her hair back from her face to look at him. Whatever issues he had with fatherhood, he'd been there when she needed him. More importantly, he'd been there for Emma, taken care of her and he'd clearly done a decent job. She was clean, content and all in one piece. She and House had both survived the experience.
"Maybe it's time to get the breast pump out," she said. She'd planned to wait just a bit longer for that but she realized she simply wasn't going to be able to handle this feeding schedule for long. However, House normally went to bed later than she did. If she could go to sleep early and let him give Emma a bottle before he went to bed, that would easily give her a good six or seven hours of sleep. She knew she could function on that.
"If you gave her even just one of her nighttime feedings, it would be a big help to me."
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