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I placed my hands under his belly and tried to hold it up, offering as much support as I could. "You feeling okay?"
He nodded. "We need to find a midwife."
My palms were suddenly clammy, and my stomach turned to stone. "What's happening? Did you start bleeding?"
"What? No. No, I don't mean right now. I mean, I want to have one ready for when it’s time. And I want a midwife who knows about this." He gestured to the air between us.
"What is this?" I gestured back, still anxious about what he was saying without saying.
"Us, you know. Two different kinds of shifters, making a baby. I don't know what's gonna happen."
The anxiety in Joe's voice rang through, breaking my heart. "Come on, my love. Let's have some tea and start looking for someone."
He sighed and took my hand, obviously relieved to be taking action.
The boys had gone home, visiting with their family and friends before heading back before the next harvest. I missed them, but it was nice to have the farm to ourselves for a while.
Joe was entering his third trimester, and his pregnancy hadn't been a particularly easy one. There was a lot of morning sickness in the beginning, and since then, he just seemed to be tired all the time.
Truthfully, I was more worried about him than I let on.
I hung a hammock on the porch, under the awning so Joe could still nap out there in the rain. It had quickly become one of his favorite places. I outfitted it with a long body pillow, a cup of tea, a cozy blanket, and his phone so he was comfortable.
He sipped his tea and smiled at me. "Thank you."
I sat next to him with my laptop and began searching for midwives. But then I had a better idea. "Let's call Mateo."
Joe and Mateo had struck up a friendship when Este and his family visited last fall. They talked on the phone regularly, and Mateo even offered to come out and help after the baby was born.
I dialed and put him on speaker.
"Hello?" I could hear the twins babbling in the background. They were loud, and the noise actually made me smile. That was what parenting would be like.
We asked Mateo if he could help us find a midwife, and I mentioned that Joe was feeling anxious. After a moment of trying to relay questions and answers between them, I ended up handing the phone over to Joe and letting them talk while I closed my eyes and listened as the anxiety in Joe's voice slowly dissipated.
Joe's questions for Mateo began to get more technical, and I started to get anxious. Maybe having a midwife there really was a good idea.
Mateo sent over a list of names, and we spent the next month interviewing midwives. One of them stood out as the clear choice. Her name was Abigail, and I could tell that nothing would surprise her. She lived a couple hours away, as most of them did, and told us we'd need to give her plenty of heads up on the day of.
We hired her over the phone, and she started coming out to check on Joe every other week.
As much as I wanted to take care of Joe all by myself, we needed a community, however small. I was grateful that Este and Mateo had become our good friends, and it surprised me how much I missed the boys when they were gone.
When I first moved out here, I really did need to be alone to be comfortable. But now that I'd found Joe and people who accepted me for who I was, I wanted them around me all the time.
I needed my family close by.
By the time the boys came back, Joe was more relaxed and enjoying the last stage of his pregnancy. It wasn’t time for the harvest yet, so we put the boys to work building a boat dock on the lake. We all had so much fun being in the water, so adding easy boat and paddle board access just made sense.
I got us some balls, and we spent half the day working and the other half playing water polo and goofing around.
One day, I sent the boys to town to buy a few things, and they came back with several paddleboards they'd found at a flea market. Joe made amazing picnics and sometimes acted as our referee. He'd float in the water and sigh at how good it felt to have all his extra weight disappear. But most of his time was spent in a yellow striped lounge chair, getting tan and reading.
I couldn't keep enough books around for him, but I tried my best to make sure his library was always full. Every time I turned around, it seemed like he'd just finished the last stack.
The boys were completely different kids now, happy in their own way. Having grown up with The Quiet, I knew its nature was to pull you into deep thinking. On the surface, this could look like sadness or anger, which made the people around you treat you like you were sad or angry.
But it was different from regular sadness. It was more like having access to a deep, dark, still lake inside yourself. A place you needed to visit, a place that reflected the world back at you so it made sense. They were learning to cope with it much faster than I did, but the changes in all of us were significant.