better together | ethma

Fourteen

Ethan's POV

The nurses told Emma that it's okay for her to try to fall back asleep, and I pulled up a chair to the side of her bed.

She reached out her hand, so I put my hand on top of hers.

"How you feelin', babe?" I asked.

"I'm okay right now, but my back kind of hurts."

"They can give you an epidural when you're dilated enough."

She smiled. "I can't believe this is finally happening. We're gonna have two girls, E."

I kissed her hand and smiled back at her. "You'll have two. I'll have three. That's because you're my girl too."

"We're having a baby, E. A baby baby."

"Who do you think she'll like like?"

"You. I think she'll be a little Dolan."

"I wouldn't be surprised if she had your gorgeous blue eyes."

"And I wouldn't be surprised if she looked exactly like you."

"Maybe she'll look like Tenley."

"Either way, both of our girls are beautiful."

"All of my girls are beautiful." I said, kissing her hand again.

"I love you."

"I love you too, honey."

"Ethan, you can go back to sleep if you want. You don't have to stay awake for me."

"I want to stay awake, babe. I'm so excited."

I even threw on my Girl Dad shirt before we left.

"Your little dad beard looks so good on you." She said.

I smiled. "Good, because I'm gonna have one every time we have a baby."

Emma laughed. "And then you'll shave it and our babies won't recognize you. Or they'll think you're Grayson."

I chuckled. "When Tenley was almost one, Grayson was over at my house, so I shaved, and we put Tenley in the middle of the living room, and Grayson and I sat on opposite sides of the room. We wanted to see who she would crawl to. She came to my chair, and she knew it was me. She wasn't really talking yet, but 'dada' was in her vocabulary, and she was babbling 'dada' the whole time that she was crawling to me. It was so cute. I think at that time she could only say ball, dada, no, uh oh, hi and bye bye."

"What was your first word, E?"

"I think it was night-night."

"Awe. That's so cute. Mine was wow."

"That must have been pretty funny."

"I guess when I was a baby my mom would always say 'wow big yawn' or 'wow big stretch'. Apparently I just repeated wow to her at some point."

"Emma, you should try to get some sleep. It's already 4 am. You're gonna need energy to get this baby out."

Emma smiled. "If you're gonna stay up, why don't you go get yourself a coffee?"

I stood up from my chair, still holding her hand as I leaned over to kiss her forehead.

"Okay. I'll be back in a few minutes."

Since this was the delivery unit of the hospital, they had a coffee machine station in the waiting room for the dads to make themselves coffee without having to go to the cafeteria three floors down.