“There’s another wave coming,” Jason said, watching the goddamn monitor again instead of me. No, don’t watch me. Watch the machine.

“It’s not a fucking wave,” I said, screaming as another contraction took hold. They were getting stronger and closer together. I didn’t know how much longer I could do this.

“We talked about what you wanted to visualize during labor. This was your plan, waves.”

“Fuck the fucking waves. Would you stop already? Christ, I’ve never known anything more irritating,” I said, exasperated by his efforts. Twenty hours of contractions could do that to a person.

He opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. Smart man.

“How are we doing in here? Your nurses said you should be ready to push soon.” Dr. K. glided in. “Let’s check you out.” After the seventy-fourth vaginal check in twenty hours—give or take—I finally heard the words I’d been waiting for. “You’re complete. Let’s get down to business.”

“Oh my God, this was a really bad idea,” I said, feeling a ring of fire where there should be zero rings of fire.

“You’re doing great. Just a bit more,” Jason said, head watching my vajayjay in fascination.

“How do you know?”

“The head is right there,” he said, gesturing with his hands.

“He’s right. Not much longer now,” Dr. K. said, patting my leg for support. “You’re pushing like a machine, Vivienne. That’s exactly what we need you to do. Give me one more and you’ll be able to meet your baby.”

“Gahhhhh, ahhhhh, rrrrrrr,” I screamed as the ring of fire turned into a motherfucking blowtorch.

“We’ve got a head, Mommy. Take a look,” she said, excited yet in complete control.

“Vivienne, open your eyes,” Jason said in the calmest voice I’d ever heard from him. I did what he said. Suddenly, the pain seemed secondary. Dr. K. was suctioning as I glanced down to see our baby’s head. I sobbed at finally catching a glimpse of the tiny human we’d been waiting for. “One little push, and I won’t bother you again for a while.”

I followed her directions, screaming one last time.

“Sorry, shoulders are not fun, are they?” Dr. K. said, sounding chipper. That must be a good sign. All of a sudden, my thoughts were interrupted by a yell. A cry. Our baby was crying to beat the band. “It’s a girl. Congratulations.”

“She’s seriously the most beautiful baby I’ve ever seen, right? I’m not just saying that because I’m her mother,” I asked Jason for the tenth time.

“You are completely right because she looks exactly like you,” he said, bending down to kiss me again.

Her warm, baby body wiggled inside of the pink blanket, two wee fists emerging. Instinctively, I put one finger by her fist as she clamped down on it with her sweet itty-bitty hand. “Thank you for giving me what I always wanted,” I said to Jason, my heart ready to burst with joy.

His finger reached down to touch both of ours. “Thank you for giving me what I never knew I always wanted.”

Sometime in the future…

“Hope, stop shoving so much at her,” I corrected my daughter for the tenth time in as many minutes.

“Sadie’s hungwy, Dad,” she replied with her bottom lip out in a pout.

“I know she is, honey, and I’m so glad you’re helping like a good big sister. But Sadie’s just a baby. We have to give her little bites, okay?” I helped correct, although there was probably no need. That baby was young, but the kid could pack it away like there was no tomorrow.

One, two…shit. Where’s three? Christ, it was anyone’s guess these days. Rarely did my head count ever equal the number of kids who were supposed to be present.

“Hope, where’s Leah?” I asked inconspicuously, not letting on how freaked out I was at not knowing where one of my kids was. Again.

“She’s chasin’ Jinxy.” Hope sighed, shaking her head like every eldest sibling when a younger sibling misbehaved. That poor cat. She’d be lucky to get out of Leah’s toddlerhood with her tail still intact.

“Anyone missing a two year old?” my beautiful wife said, walking around the corner carrying said two year old like a sack of potatoes. An extremely colorful sack of potatoes.

“Pfft, she was just chasin’ the cat,” I said, playing it off like I knew where Leah was the whole time.

“Daddy wost her again, but I kepted an eye on her just wike you toad me to.” Hope beamed. Little tattletale.

“Uh-huh,” Vivienne said, giving me the look. Shit.

“They outnumber me. What can I say? I would have cleaned up if I’d known you were coming home for lunch,” I said. We both knew that was a total lie. Nothing got cleaned—except diapers—when I was alone with the kids. I grabbed our problem middle child away from my wife.

“Riiiight, I bet.” Vivienne snickered as I bent down to kiss her.

“No way,” Leah yelled, pushing our faces away from each other. Her mother and I were never allowed to kiss or show affection to one another—just to her. She was an attention junkie. We chuckled, each taking a chubby cheek for a big kiss. Her short, little arms grabbed us both around the neck while we loved up on her.

“I see they delivered the bike,” my wife said, raising her eyebrows, shining her best smile at me.

“They did, about an hour ago. Thank you,” I said, giving her a quick kiss.

“Thirty is a big birthday. Besides, this one is way hotter than your old one.” Vivienne rated motorcycles based on a hotness scale. The one she’d bought me as a wedding present was still completely fine.

“I love it and I’ll demonstrate exactly how much later tonight.” I shot her a knowing sexy grin.

She pursed her lips, quickly glancing away. “Looks like you’ve had a busy morning,” Vivienne said, spying the big table with our supplies still on it.

“We finger-painted.” I smiled tentatively at the unholy mess on the formerly clean table.

“I see that. Did you manage to get any paint on the paper, little miss?” she asked Leah, tickling her belly in the process. Leah giggled, swinging from side to side in my arms.

“Can you take her for a second? Dr. Miller’s office called, but I couldn’t hear the assistant with all the noise the girls were making. I’ll call them back now,” I said, handing the well-painted kid back to her mother.

“Um, Jason, one thing before you…” She started, but got cut off.

“Anybody home? I’ve been knocking for five minutes straight,” Gerry said, waltzing around the corner in his best work coveralls.

“Hi, Gerry. Didn’t expect you,” I said, shoving my hand out immediately to the man who worked endless hours on our dream house. He’d put the finishing touches on it exactly one hour before Vivienne went into labor. The first time.

Over the years, we needed him back to do small fixes and other fun things like the hot tub enclosure and gazebo. It’d been a while since we’d needed him, though.

“Oh, Gerry, I didn’t think you’d be so quick.” Vivienne laughed nervously, looking a bit suspicious.

“Anything for my favorite clients. I’ll just run upstairs and start measuring.”

Hmm, what exactly was he here for? I opened my mouth to talk, but Vivienne beat me to the punch.

“So, your appointment? No rush, really,” she said in a quiet voice.

“If they can get me in sooner, I’ll go. You can stay home while I get the snip, snip,” I said, imitating a scissoring motion with my fingers. “I won’t be able to carry Leah or Sadie around for a few days, but then I should be okay.”

“Yeah, so, you remember that surfing vacation we took to the coast last month? When Harper and Jack babysat for us?”

Boy did I ever. In fact, I’d never forget some of the stuff we did. It was burned deep into my memory. “I do. You want to go again?” I asked, surprised she’d even mentioned it. It took me weeks to convince her to leave the Three Musketeers behind and give the two of us some much-needed alone time.

“Someday, yeah. Do you remember forgetting to pack the medical bag with my,” she lowered her voice, “pills in it?”

Yeah, so I forgot one bag out of the umpteen she wanted to take with us for a three day getaway.

“I said I was sorry. Yes, it was my mistake. Are you ever going to quit mentioning it?”

“Not for a while.”

“Seriously? It was one bag. I remembered all the other ones.”

“It was an important one to forget, Jason,” she said, her eyebrow hiked high. “The stomach thing that wouldn’t go away? Yeah, not a stomach thing after all. I just got back from the doctor’s office. And the signs of menopause I thought I had? Yeah, not so much.”

“Oh boy,” I said, backing up to rest on the couch before I fell right over. My heart beat so quickly, and my lungs burned from lack of oxygen.

“Or girl. Again.”

“Seriously? Honey, your ovaries love surfing way too much.”

Vivienne laughed so hard, tears started running down her face. Then I wasn’t sure if they were happy tears or not, so I strode over to her. “Look, we can handle this. How much crazier can this house get? We won’t even notice another kid around here,” I said, pulling her into my arms.

“Yeah, you won’t, but the rest of us will.”

“Ha-ha, very funny,” I said in a dry tone.

“I’m good, really,” she said, pushing away to wipe under her eyes. “It was just such a shock. I didn’t know where we’d put all these tiny people. That’s why I called Gerry right away.”

“The office upstairs?”

“Yeah, you don’t mind giving it up, do you?”

“Nah, I get my best work done in the back anyway.” Vivienne had converted the small garage in the back into a writing den for me. Sequestering myself in there was pretty much the only way I got anything done.

“Speaking of which, why are you not there right now, Mr. Bestseller? Doesn’t your editor need a first draft soon?”

Bestseller was generous. My last few books hadn’t quite made it that far, but they all did surprisingly well. The following I had increased every day.

“I missed the girls. Besides, Edith looked a bit frazzled, so I sent her home,” I told her, waving toward the door.

“She always looks like that. So do we. We’re victims of our circumstances,” she said as I took her hand, leading us to the couch.

“Another baby? What are the chances it’s a boy this time?” I asked my glowing wife while I dragged her beside me on the couch.

Her body shook from laughter. “Fifty-fifty. However, from the looks of things, I’d say possibly less. I’m convinced my eggs don’t like boy sperm.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Happy?” she asked, her face falling a bit with worry.

“Ecstatic. We make great babies together,” I said, taking her mouth in a grateful kiss. “We filled up your house in no time flat. That must be some kind of record or something.” I tried very hard to do the math on how many kids we’d had in how many years or months. Being severely sleep-deprived, math made zero sense right now.

“Do you think we can handle it?” she asked, allowing her concern to finally surface. “We were already outnumbered, and now adding…” Her hands grasped my arm, holding on tightly.

“Adding another blessing to our house is more than we ever hoped. It’ll be fantastic,” I said, taking her face in my hands.

“But what about my age? I’m—”

I cut that shit off immediately. “I have a deal to propose.”

“A deal?”

“A deal. You have the babies and I’ll figure out how to look after everything else.”

“Honey, you don’t know where thirty-three percent of our children are most of the time.”

“I’ve got thirty-three percent of your kids right here. She was stalking that dang cat of yours. I don’t think you’ll ever get Jinxy out from under your bed,” Gerry said, tromping into the living room with Leah in his arms. “You’re a mischievous little thing, ain’t you, little Leah?” He tickled under her chin before letting her run wild again.

“Thanks, Gerry. What do you think about converting the room upstairs?” Vivienne asked, leaning back on the couch. Pregnancy fatigue must be setting in already. It had been difficult to spot due to our normal fatigue of musical beds every night. Not to mention running after three young kids.

Another baby. Who would have thought? I gazed over to the big table, three blonde heads bobbing around, chatting and playing. Once Hope learned how to say her L’s, she was going to make a heck of a leader, just like her mother. When Leah wasn’t running off somewhere, she loved to sit with me and read books. It was one or the other.

And little Sadie, she liked…food. I guess she was a good mix of both Viv and me. Thinking about adding another blondie to the group made me grin from ear to ear. I wondered what this one would be like.

Vivienne poked me in the side. I hadn’t realized they’d stopped talking shop already. “What are you thinking about with that goofy smile on your face?”

I laughed, putting my arm around her. “It’s a good thing you bought that big table. We’re going to need it.”

“Hmm, I was just thinking we should take it out back and burn it. Put it out of its misery,” she said sarcastically.

“How long to renovate the office, Gerry? Any guess as to a timeline?” I asked.

“Well, we need to…” He continued talking about up to code, insulation, wiring, and all the other words we hated. Shit. This was going to take a while. “So, my best guess would be…”

Vivienne and I looked at each other, cracking up. “Eight months,” we all said simultaneously.