Oh, Baby! - Judy Baer Mills & Boon Steeple Hill

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worry. He’ll loosen up.”

      “I’m not so sure. He’s a throwback to the 1950s, as far as I’m concerned.”

      “What a shame. He’s probably one of the best-looking men I’ve ever met.” Then Lissy shrugged her shoulders and held out her hands, palms up. “But pretty is as pretty does, and this whole thing doesn’t look all that attractive.”

      My cell phone rang and Lissy groaned. “Don’t tell me our shopping trip is over.”

      I flipped open the phone. “Hello….”

      “Hey, beautiful. Did you forget our date?”

      “Tony? What are you talking about…?” I glanced at my wristwatch. “I’m sorry, I completely forgot. I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

      “I’ll hold the fort, but they will be wanting you.”

      I closed my phone. “Sorry, Lissy, I have to go. Tony’s waiting for me at the free clinic. We volunteered to do a class for expectant moms today. I can’t believe I forgot.”

      “It was that dumb skirt you bought,” I heard Lissy mumble behind me. “All those colors made you go insane.”

      The free clinic is not much to look at but it serves the purpose. Built in the seventies, the rooms are small and sterile-looking with ugly tan-and-brown tile and white cinderblock walls. Still, it’s clean, and the volunteers have hung brightly colored pictures on all the walls. In the pediatric area, there are bright, childlike drawings everywhere. The room in which Tony and I do our Lamaze classes has posters of babies in utero, showing the amazing growth from a few cells to a fully formed infant.

      Tony had already set up the room for class and was standing, legs spread, knees locked and arms crossed over his chest, with his back to the room, staring out the window onto the street. He dipped his head in recognition as I moved to stand beside him but he didn’t turn to look at me.

      “You believe in God, right, Molly?”

      “Of course. So do you.”

      Tony is from a large, boisterous family with a strong background of faith. That is one of the things that I enjoy most about him, his openness to conversation about faith. “Why would you ask?”

      “Do you doubt Him sometimes?”

      I took a sip from the cup of muddy coffee I’d poured upon entering. “I’m human, if that’s what you mean. Sure I doubt…and question…and wonder…but I always come to the same conclusion.”

      “And that is?”

      “That He’s up there and I’m down here and He knows best.”

      “Yeah, that’s what I think, too, but…”

      “Did something happen to put you in this mood?”

      “My older sister called this morning. She and her husband have been trying to get pregnant for nearly five years and they’ve finally decided to pursue adoption.” His gaze locked on a boarded-up store-front across the street. “Why do some families get to experience a pregnancy and bring home a baby and others don’t?”

      “You know the scientific answers better than I do.”

      He looked at me despairingly.

      “‘Hope deferred makes the heart sick, but when dreams come true, there is life and joy,’” I murmured. “Proverbs 13:12.”

      “My sister and her husband are heartsick right now, that’s for sure.”

      It’s easy to move from optimistic and expectant to despondent and give up hope when we don’t get what we want. I have traveled that path plenty and I’ve only figured out one solution.

      “I like to remind myself that hope is deferred. It’s delayed, not canceled or destroyed.”

      “So you think that just because you don’t get something right away, that doesn’t mean you will never get it?”

      “I may not get it in the form I expected, but I have to trust I’ll get something better.”

      “When does ‘life and joy’ come, then?”

      “The Old Testament saints waited a long time for Christ to come. That’s what that verse talks about.”

      “My sister hasn’t got that long.”

      “Sometimes God gives us something even better than what we think we want.”

      Tony looked irritated. “What’s better than a baby?”

      “You’ve got me there.” I put my hand on his arm. “I don’t know the answers, Tony. I doubt I even know the questions. Sometimes I just have to trust that things will work out. That’s what God asks of us, after all.”

      I recalled a verse from Luke that I’d learned in Sunday School. “‘Don’t be afraid, little flock. For it gives your Father great happiness to give you the kingdom.’”

      “I just wish He’d hurry up. My sister is going nuts.”

      “I can’t do anything else but I can pray,” I offered. “That’s one thing I’ve had a lot of practice at.”

      A smile broke through, and the sparkle came back into his eyes. “You’re something else, Molly. I’m crazy about you.” He wrapped his arms around my waist and swung me in a big circle. “If I ever were to settle down, it would be with someone like you.”

      That statement didn’t even make me think twice. Tony will never be ready to settle down. He’ll be flirting his way through the nursing home, making every woman there, no matter her age, wish they had a Tony in their life.

      Chapter Four

      “Now tell me exactly what a doula does.”

      Emily Hancock, a painfully well-dressed, worried-looking creature stared at me intently, as if I were planning to extract a wisdom tooth, not aid her in guiding a new child into the world. We sat in the highly polished stainless-steel kitchen of her three-story Tudor, looking out over gardens and grass manicured within an inch of its life.

      “I know very little about this. Midwives, I’m familiar with, but doulas… They’re new, aren’t they?”

      New? As in something developed recently to maintain new technology such as the latest generation of cell phones or MP3 players? Hardly. “A doula is actually a very old concept.

      “Doula is a Greek word meaning a woman who serves other women.” I tried to smile encouragingly at the nervous woman. “We use massage, aromatherapy, positioning and reflexology to make our clients comfortable during birth.”

      “I had no idea,” Emily murmured approvingly.

      “A doula’s function is to be there for a mother in labor in any way she can, from ice chips to foot rubs, reading aloud to singing lullabies. During labor, your wish is my command.”

      “Nothing medical?”

      I held up a hand as if to ward off a bad idea. “I always defer to medical personnel. I know how to stay out of the way when necessary. Women have even hired me to be in charge of their husbands so that they won’t have to worry about them fainting during labor.”

      “There’s no worry about that with my husband,” she said wistfully. “He won’t faint. If he’s even there, that is. He’s taking part in a mission trip to Guatemala about the time the baby is to be born. The trip has been in the works much longer than the baby, and he’s been instrumental in the planning, so he’s hoping to go and still get back in time for the birth.”

      Finally her shell cracked and tears sprang into her eyes. “What made me think it would be a good idea to have a baby when I’m well over forty? I should

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