Welcome, Julian and Roselynn

It was toward the latter half of November. Mia knew her due date had to be sometime in November, but it felt like the whole month just continued to drag on while she waited for the day to arrive. She was nervous and anxious, but so ready to get it over with at the same time. She wanted to hold her babies in her arms, rather than in her body now.

There finally came a night when she woke up to contractions. These ones were far stronger than what she had been experiencing before--those 'practice' contractions were nothing compared to what she felt now. This had to be it. This had to be the real deal.

Mia shook at Ceidwen’s shoulder, her other hand pressing against her pregnant stomach.

“Ceidwen? W-we need to go to the hospital. Now.”

Much of it was a blur after that. Being rushed to the hospital. People telling her to breathe and breathe while she wailed in pain.

Mia wasn’t really sure what to expect. Would it be different for her as a Goddess, or would it be what humans experience? Like they showed in movies? It turned out to very much be like what humans experience—in fact, she had never felt more ‘human’ in her entire life, despite trying so hard to fit in to human culture for so long. She was completely at the mercy of the doctors, as they prepped her for a C-Section.

The C-Section was not a surprise. Mia had been told well in advance that she would need to have one. She was too thin to pass even one baby through her birth canal, much less two. There was a part of her that thought, perhaps her hips would change before she went into labor—maybe her Goddess body would just magically be more accommodating. But no—it wasn’t accommodating when it surprised her with the pregnancy to begin with, and it was not going to be accommodating now.

But the delivery went relatively smoothly. There was always this paranoid side of Mia that feared something was going to go terribly wrong, but…it was okay. There were no horrified gasps, or foreboding ‘oh no’s. The babies were delivered, and Mia passed out for a while from the exhaustion of the experience.

And when she woke up again, she was told she had two beautiful, healthy twins waiting for her. Mia cried when she finally got to hold both of them in her arms.

Julian and Roselynn. They were finally here. They looked so much alike--both with little tufts of red hair, just like their mother.

While Mia was in the hospital recovering, her many friends on the island came to see her. It was the first time she really considered just how many friends she had on Manta Carlos. After so many years of self-destructive behavior…she was finally happy. Happy with the people in her life. Happy with the relationship she was in.

And so, so incredibly happy to be a mother.