I returned my gaze to Aaron who’d remained silent. Wordlessly, he stepped back from the doorframe and strode down the hall, his anger still apparent in the rigidity of his movements.

“You get your stubbornness from your daddy,” I told Andreas before sighing.

Rocking us in the chair for a few minutes, encouraging Andreas back to sleep, I heard Aaron as he moved farther down the hallway. I knew he was headed down to the basement level where his home office sat. I shook my head, still pissed at his earlier comments. Aaron was the one who’d wanted more children in the first place. Immediately after the twins were born he’d informed me that he wanted at least two more. He was adamant. But that was before everything changed.

The first few hours after Andreas and Thiers’ birth were okay, but as I laid in the hospital room, awaiting the nurses to bring me the babies for their next feeding, the pain in my body sharply rose. At first, the nurses told me to just relax, that it was normal to experience some cramping as my uterus contracted to shrink back to its original size. But this pain wasn’t normal. It grew increasingly worse. My recollection of exactly what happened is hazy due to the pain and fear. I knew something wasn’t right. It was confirmed when a nurse finally rolled me over onto my side to find a pool of blood.

It was at that moment, Aaron returned to the hospital room after having made a trip down to the nursery, and tend to Kyle and Kennedy who’d been taken home with his parents. I remember him yelling at the hospital staff, likely threatening their lives. Soon a doctor rushed in, giving me a shot of something, and not too long after the pain subsided along with the bleeding. But I wasn’t out of the woods. I had to be given a blood transfusion due to the amount of blood I lost.

I shook my head, releasing that horrific memory. I almost didn’t make it to see my boys grow up. I understood why my being pregnant frightened Aaron. Once I was home with the twins settled in, he insisted that we weren’t having anymore children. At least not the traditional way. He was open to adoption, just not my getting pregnant. And since I’d just been terrified of dying after giving birth, I agreed, going back on birth control after the first six weeks. Obviously, that hadn’t been fail proof.

I lifted from the rocking chair, cradling a now sleeping Andreas. I checked his diaper to make sure he wasn’t wet before placing him back into the crib, lying him on his stomach and covering him with the embroidered blanket we’d been given as a gift.

I went over to check on a soundly sleeping Thiers, running my hand over his soft curls. While to outsiders the boys were difficult to tell apart, I noticed their slight differences. Thiers’ curls were less tightly coiled than Andreas’ and a little more coarser. Thiers’ eyes, while still hazel, were a little more green in color. Running my hand down his plump cheek, I smiled and moved away from the crib, heading toward the door, closing it lightly behind me.