Baby on Board

Baby, Baby, Baby, Oh

It's no secret that Sophie Whitaker and I do not get along. Since before I met her, she's hated me, although I don't know why, but I have to say, the feeling is almost, like ninety-nine percent, reciprocated. Now, however, after being her midwife when she went into labour on Sunday, I feel as if our bond has strengthened. 

"You're such a fucking idiot," Sophie seethes, her venom coming in my direction.

Perhaps our bond isn't as strong as I thought it was. We were currently stood in the doorway of one of the spare rooms of Dan and Sophie's house, surveying mine and Mick's handiwork. Since the surprise arrival of my niece, Léa, our group of friends had been busy pulling together to get the house ready for when the family had the go-ahead to bring the new arrival home. 

Léa was a shock addition seeing as Sophie had no idea she was expecting which is why Sophie hadn't taken all the vitamins and supplements that most pregnant women would be expected to take. Sophie had a complete meltdown on Monday morning when this dawned on her and then she started to seriously freak out about the tiny amounts of alcohol she'd drunk over the past nine months, insisting that she'd harmed her baby in some way because of this. It took three doctors telling her that she was being ridiculous before she calmed down enough and instructed them to do countless tests to make sure Léa was ok. 

Of course, she was fine. There were some discrepancies about how far along in the pregnancy Sophie was when Léa was born; due to Léa's low birth weight, one doctor thought that Sophie must have been only thirty-four weeks pregnant when giving birth while a second doctor thought that due to the low levels of hormones during the pregnancy, Léa was likely born at full term but hadn't 'over indulged.' I think it was that phrasing that led to Sophie demanding that I give a third opinion. 

In my professional opinion, I thought that Léa may have been born a few weeks early but I had to agree with the second doctor, the hormone levels had also played a factor in how tiny Léa is. That wasn't enough for my deranged de-facto sister-in-law. She then started to run off a list of all these genetic tests that we should do but the only one we could agree on was the one for Cystic Fibrosis. Since Lucas has CF and there was a possibility Sophie could be a carrier, Léa needed to be screened for the condition. The results would be back in a week or two. Until then, Sophie and Dan were told that they could bring their bundle of joy home. 

When I wasn't in doctor mode, I'd been put in charge of painting Léa's nursery and had chosen a very nice shade of pink for the walls. I thought that I couldn't go wrong with pink and Lottie agreed because she and Emma had gone all out on pastel coloured accents that complimented the colour of the room. When everything was finally completed, we invited Sophie and Dan up to see the finished product. 

"Why the fuck did you chose pink?" Sophie continued her rant. Walking into the nursery, her eyes scanned all the little details, the frown between her eyebrows deepening the longer she spent in the room. "You painted my daughter's room pink?"

"Well, she is a girl," Mick grumbled, coming to my defence but not really wanting to go up against Sophie Whitaker. She's scary. We all know that. "What colour would you have picked?"

Sophie thought hard before giving her answer. "Not pink," she said, her voice lowering as she sensed that she was losing this argument. "Who chose this colour?"

Raising my hand, I fessed up that I had chosen it. Naturally, Sophie rolled her eyes, almost as if to say, Of course, it was you, dipshit. Usually, I would let her get away with that sort of attitude because I didn't have anything to use against her but now, well, let's just say that I've seen more of Sophie Whitaker than she'd like to me see.