The Middle Child

Chapter 28

Michelle

“I turn my chin music up, and I’m puffing my chest, I’m getting red in the face, you can call me obsessed, it’s not your fault that they hover, I mean no disrespect, it’s my right to be hellish, I still get jealous” -Nick Jonas

3 months later, July…

“Oof, you’re really active today, is this your way of telling me you want to be an athlete instead of a musician Nugget? Because I feel you loud and clear,” I said with a slight grimace as I rubbed my very large belly. I had just entered the eighth month of my pregnancy, and this journey has been nothing short of an amazing experience. Watching my stomach grow bigger and bigger, witnessing and feeling the changes in my body to accommodate my growing baby girl has been magical and so life changing for me. 

Yes, two months ago Cole and I were finally able to find out the gender of the baby. We could have found out earlier of course, but Nugget would always know when we were trying to find out and would always be turned to where we couldn’t see. But after much coaxing and hoping, she finally turned for us. I think it’s safe to say she already has her father’s jokester type of a personality. The first time we tried to find out the sex, Cole thought it would be a great idea to start filming the experience, and our appointments, so we could look back on that moment. Of course, when we couldn’t find out that day, we decided to keep recording moments to make into a little montage, but three appointments later when we still couldn’t find out, it ended up being a mini movie. It perfectly highlighted the range of emotions I felt, the anticipation, the hopefulness, the tears and brief sadness and frustration I felt when we couldn’t find out, the journey along the way, and then finally, the moment she finally turned around and let us see that she was in fact a she, just like everyone suspected. 

That night after Cole’s shift at the hospital he was still bubbling from excitement, and despite working a nearly day-long shift before and afterwards, he wanted to rewatch the video from the appointment. While we were watching, I had gotten the great idea to use that as well as all the other footage as a kind of a gender reveal to the family since we were all in different areas of the world. Kelly and her family were in Australia, and Bey had taken all of the kids on a vacation that also doubled as a food tour for Junior, and Cole’s and my family were in New York and Michigan. I wasn’t about to travel, so since I had a lot of free time on my hands and since I was alone a lot, I took up the hobby of video editing. It wasn’t that hard, considering I watched Bey a lot when she created a lot of her projects, the only difference is I wasn’t trying to make this a motion picture, I was just trying to stay within the three S’s: Short, sweet, and sentimental. Once it was just like I liked it, I saved the video to flash drives, put them in cute little boxes wrapped in a box, and then I had them sent to my family all around the world. I sent special instructions to everyone that I wanted to watch their reaction when they got it and watched. 

Cole’s and my family were so happy and overjoyed, and unsurprisingly enough when Bey and Kelly watched it, they cried like a baby, especially Bey, making me cry right along with them. Then they were sad because they were in different parts of the world far away from me and they weren’t able to physically be with me to celebrate properly, hence why Bey had been sending gifts like crazy, but they made promises to come visit me the first chance they got and spend some time with me. I was excited because that time had finally come, well at least for Bey and Sasha. They couldn’t take it anymore so Bey had Shawn come to Spain where they were to finish the rest of the vacation with the kids so they could catch a flight here. Sasha wanted to spend some time with me before she left for Howard and Bey just wanted to be near me period, so they would both be here for about a week before meeting the rest of their family back home in California. Unfortunately, Kelly wouldn’t be able to come see me until the week of Nugget’s arrival, but I was still happy that she would at least be here in time to witness the birth, Bey as well. I missed everyone so much and phone calls, text messages, and Facetimes could only do so much, especially now that everyone knew that I was expecting. When Cole and I left to come back home a week after the Kid’s graduation, everyone was literally devastated, mainly Bey and Kelly. They actually threw tantrums like they were children. I had to pry them off of my stomach so I could leave, but we made promises to keep in touch even more than usual, which we had successfully been doing. I had just spent the entire morning talking to Kelly, actually, half of the conversation Kelly was talking to the baby, and now I was getting an incoming facetime request from Bey.