A place in this world - peace series spin off - ellianas story

everything changes forever

**monday july 9th – 2040** day 0 **

-ellies pov-

"The head is out" she says and use this suction thing to get mucus out of her mouth and nose. "One more push and she should be out" she says, and I give it what I have left which slips her out the rest of the way.

"omg" I say as I see the doctor holding her. Then I hear the most precious sound, her little cry and my heart melts. Now I'm a mother. Tears are streaming down my face as they open my gown to place her on my chest while they dry her off at the same time.

"Dad do you want to cut the cord?" the doctor asks, and Alex does that, when I look at him, he has tears in his eyes too.

My hand is resting on my little girls back as she cries on my chest. This is the best moment of my life. They say that about when your child is born, but I never believed it, now I know they were all right. I've never seen something as beautiful as her in my life, and now she is here in our lives.

After a few minutes they take her over to the baby table thing to examine her. She was born at 37 weeks and two days, so they want to make sure she doesn't have any signs that are associated with prematurity. She is two days over the cut off for what would be considered premature, so they just want to make sure. And they do the Apgar score thing.

They weigh and measure her, give her the eye ointment before swaddling her. She is not happy about people bothering her, so she is crying hard, but I take it as a sign she has strong lungs at least. "2,5 kg and 35cm. So she is a bit low in weight but that's not abnormal considering your medical history" the doctor says as she brings the baby back over to us. She now also as a band around her foot to identify her, and I get the matching one.

While she was getting checked out, they delivered the placenta, but I was so busy looking over at the baby that I just pushed when they told me and ignored everything else. I let them place Emilia back in my arms and the doctor starts to stitch me up "you have a stage 2 tear. So there will be about six stitches I think" she says, and I scrunch my nose. I wish I didn't tear, it sucks, but whatever. When the reward is the beautiful little girl in my arms, I don't give a shit.

The nurse comes over to me "do you want to try to breastfeed before we take her down to do the newborn screening you agreed to?" she says, and I nod.

"Your milk won't come in until a couple of days, but the colostrum which is what is coming out is good for her. Getting a good latch and a good position can be tricky in the beginning but we are going to help you" she says as we open my gown more to get access to my boobs. They have gotten bigger the last two weeks clearly getting ready for feeding this little girl.

She helps me put Emilia, so she is facing my boob in a way where we are tummy to tummy, and then having her head in line with the rest of her boy, not turned. Apparently that helps with swallowing for her. One would think you just lay the baby to the boob and that's it, but apparently not.

It's harder than I thought getting her in the right position, harder than it looks when other moms do it. "Her mouth should cover both your nipple and the areola, with her lips pointing outwards so she isn't sucking on her own lip. the areola is the part around the nipple that's a different color than the rest of your breast. It's important so her mouth, tongue and lips massage the milk out of the milk glands. It won't work if she just sucks on your nipple because it doesn't compress the glands. A good latch is also important to make it less painful for you and prevent your nipples from getting sore or cracked"

It hurts when she eventually starts to suck, but I was expecting that anyway because people said it would happen. "Even though its colostrum now frequent breastfeeding our pumping will help stimulate milk production" she explains further, and I nod.