The Midwife's Dream by Kelly Irvin

Author:Kelly Irvin
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Zondervan
Published: 2018-03-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 9

Sleep. Sweet, elusive sleep. Maybe the sponge bath would relax Lilly enough to make her nod off. Iris rubbed her burning eyes and picked up the towel. Avoiding the spot where her belly button would one day be, she patted the baby dry. She’d been careful not to get it wet. So many things to think about with a newborn. Especially this tiny one who was a decent eater but seemed to have her days and nights mixed up. Cry and eat at night. Nap, cry, and eat all day.

“You’re nice and clean after your first bath.” Iris dressed her in a lilac nightgown she plucked from the bag of hand-me-downs Rachel had given her when she went over to check on the new mom and baby Micah. Both were doing well. Micah slept a lot. Lucky Rachel. “See how sweet you look in your nightie. And you know what that means? That means it’s time to sleep. Can you do that for me?”

Lilly cooed and then burped, a loud, brash sound much too big for such a small baby. A stream of white, stinky formula spit-up followed. Iris sighed. “Just be that way, Lilly Marie.”

Thank goodness for hand-me-downs. The next nightie was a soft blue cotton. Her arms heavy with fatigue, Iris redressed Lilly and wrapped her in the nine-patch quilt Jessica had left behind. Something from her real mother. It took more than blankets or blood to make a true mother. A true mother rocked her baby in the middle of the night. She patted her back when she had a tummy ache and nursed her when she was hungry. She didn’t run to Texas while others slept. “Do you have a tummy ache, my sweet? Am I giving you too much formula?”

She didn’t know anyone who bottle-fed so she had no one else to ask. Lilly didn’t answer. She didn’t wail either, which was a good sign. Iris settled into the rocking chair she’d moved into her bedroom, along with the cradle. “You’re fed. You’re clean. You have a fresh diaper.” She began to rock. “Now you sleep. It’s night. We sleep at night. Now close your eyes and sleep.”

Lilly’s head bobbed, but her eyes were wide open. She’d slept through Deputy Rogers’s visit the previous afternoon, according to Mudder, who said Daed did all the talking. Yes, they would take care of the baby. No, they didn’t know where the parents had gone. The deputy went through the gym bag and scoured the bedroom where they had slept, with hardly a word before telling them the same thing he’d told Iris and Mahon. If they thought of anything else, let him know.

“What else could there be?”

Lilly wrinkled her tiny nose and sighed at Iris’s entirely rhetorical question, but her eyes remained open.

“Ach, bopli, Aenti Iris needs to sleep.”

Aenti Iris. Would she ever be more than an aunt? Mahon’s words spoken in the buggy reverberated in her mind. Waiting for you to be ready. Mahon didn’t think of her as someone’s aunt.

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