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A quote: “Father asked us what was God’s noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.” ~~ Louisa May Alcott
I’ll start with a story …
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Her head was shaved, her body pierced and inked. Declared her friends were her ‘true’ family because they celebrated her “authentic self.”
It was raw, exciting. Living on the edge in sketchy locations.
Then she found out it wasn’t a bad street taco sending her yakking but a baby.
Oh how fast that family of ‘friends’ faded away when she refused their insistent advice to get rid of it.
But it wasn’t an ‘it’. Everything changed the moment she heard the heartbeat, felt movement. When finally she held him, felt his tiny fingers grasp hers …
She called her parents.
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Now, it’s your turn.
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. featured image, cropped, Adobe Stock standard license.
Cameron says: I was one of those people. The kind that saw a bar fight as light entertainment, knew what a jail cell looked like and whose paycheck was spent on booze. My parents and siblings didn’t care about me so why should I care about others?
When she got pregnant, I was astonished that she wanted to keep him. That never entered into our worldview but I suddenly realized that my life’s downward spiral had to stop. And eight months later, I was looking down at this tiny thing with a grip like iron.
No, I’m not perfect now. Just better.
Rafe and I had planned to wait a little while to start a family. Get things established here on our new home, three hundred light-years from Earth, get a better handle on how the Kitties’ legal system worked, all that stuff. At least we’d come here as voluntary settlers rather than being scruffed after yet another uprising, but it was still a major upheaval.
However, it turned out that family wasn’t going to wait for us to get our ducks in a row. At first I thought it was just my body getting used to a new environment and my cycle would settle in a month or two. The second time I tossed my cookies, Rafe told me to get myself a test. It turned out positive.
It’s been about a month now — Earth’s time measures don’t quite fit when neither of this planet’s moons has the same orbital period as old Luna where Pete Conrad wisecracked and Big Al Shepard hit golf balls. The tech is running a scan, something like a sonogram but using quantum field technology to give us a lot more detail about the baby.
Or babies, as it turns out, much to the tech’s delight. Her ears and whiskers perk up as the image resolves into two tiny forms lying almost on top of each other. “So good to see two, and not only one baby who’ll be lonely all her life.”
But twins are a high risk pregnancy, I start to say, only to stop myself. The tech is thinking in Kitty terms.
I remember the language lessons we’re taking over at the local Learning Center. The Kitties’ language has special words for “twin brother” and “twin sister,” and a kitten born without a twin is regarded as a sort of orphan. But the Kitties — and most of their sepoy species — have a bicornate uterus that lends itself to bearing fraternal twins.
I try to remember which species also have a single-chamber uterus. I’ve seen one sepoy species that makes me think of a capuchin monkey. If I can explain in terms of a familiar species’ medical needs, maybe I can help her understand why my pregnancy will be complicated, and that I will need closer monitoring.
Then I can figure out how to tell Rafe just how much our family will be growing.
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