Page 86 of Own the Eights Maybe Baby
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Jordan
Jordan cracked open his eyes and glanced out the window. A silvery haze hung in the darkness, signaling first light was at least a few hours off. His best guess? It had to be somewhere between four and five in the morning—probably closer to four. He shifted his large frame and untangled his legs from the bedsheet.
He’d always been a morning person—a morning person whose day usually started closer to seven a.m. rather than four. Still, he wasn’t complaining.
He rolled over and reached for his wife. But he wasn’t surprised to find her side of the bed empty. He was about to pull up the covers and get in a few more z’s when the clap of a cabinet, or maybe it was a door clicking shut, caught his attention.
Nesting.
That’s what Maureen had called it when he’d asked her what had happened to his wife, who, up until about a month ago, enjoyed sleeping until at least eight in the morning.
Now, she rose before the ass crack of dawn to reorder the spice rack, alphabetize their takeout menus, or empty out the linen closet, only to rewash and refold their sheets, blankets, and towels, then methodically place them back in their original resting spot. During another dawn nesting session, she’d doled out his protein powder, putting a perfectly measured scoop into forty reusable baggies so he wouldn’t have to measure the mixture when he was making his morning energy shake.
It was damn kind of her.
She was an unstoppable organizing force of gestating nature. A few days ago, in a three-hour block of frenzied pregnancy persistence, he’d awoken to find that she’d assembled the baby’s crib and had reread half ofPride and Prejudice—at the same time. She’d explained that the process of going back and forth, her mind nourished by Austen’s prose, gave her the wherewithal to decipher the assembly instructions he would have sworn were crafted by a drunken toddler.
God help any piece of clutter, non-assembled furniture, or stray item that entered Georgiana Jensen-Marks’ orbit.
But it wasn’t only the nesting that signaled the progression of the pregnancy. Clocking in at twenty-three weeks, there was no hiding the little human residing in Georgie’s belly. With her rounded abdomen and smelling of pineapple, she was beautiful and radiant—the picture of citrus-scented maternal bliss. Still, it also wasn’t the nesting instinct that had ushered in the return of her easy smile and sparkling eyes.
After their night babysitting little Ollie, a weight had lifted from his wife’s shoulders. He’d seen the distinct shift with his own eyes because he’d experienced it himself.
When it came to the question of fatherhood, he’d wrestled with his own demons. While other couples planned when they wanted to start trying to conceive, he and Georgie had landed right in the thick of it. And with the most stressful of times, he and his wife were prone to fall back on the things that served them the least.
For him, it was that itch to be the best.
The drive to push harder hadn’t vanished. It would always be there. What he’d learned from his wild Georgie-Jensen-infused life was how and where to focus that energy.
Did he always get it right?
No.
Had he gone to the baby NFL website six thousand times and almost registered a non-existent child to join the tot league? Maybe. Fine, yes! But he knew better.
Their journey to the altar had taught him that while he wasn’t about to change her and she wasn’t about to change him, they could refocus and reframe any situation to make it work—and that happened by supporting one another.
That was their path. A continuum of learning and laughing and falling more in love with this woman with each twist and turn the universe threw their way.
He listened as Georgie’s footsteps drew closer, reached beneath the bed, then swiped a bottle of an electrolyte-infused sports drink.
She may be eating for two, but he had to maintain his strength as well…for other activities.
While his wife enjoyed nesting on her own in the early morning hours, there was one particular activity where she sought his company.
Namely, doing the naughty—a lot.
If he had to name this portion of the pregnancy, he’d call it the Nesting and Naughtiness phase.
This little pregnancy perk wasn’t something he’d been expecting.
They had a terrific sex life. Cars, couches, tents, more cars, offices, barns, beds, chairs, tables, in front of an alpaca—there was not a bad place to get down and dirty with his wife.
Scratch that. He didn’t recommend having a member of the camel family intrude when knocking boots in the great outdoors—otherwise, he was always game.
All the same, when it came to pregnancy and sex, he’d figured there might be a lull or at least a drop in demand. She was, of course, growing a person. If it were him, or probably any other male on the planet tasked with being a walking incubator, he’d take the entire forty weeks off.
