I help her pull hers over her head. She’s so different from how she’s ever looked to me before. Today, large milky breasts, and the ever-changing long red stripe up her middle. She flushes across her chest, and up her neck, as she sees me wanting her.

“Please, just a nap, Bette.” She takes the fresh gown from me. It smells of lavender.

“Of course.” We lie back together. I kiss her forehead.

“You’re very good in a crisis. My crisis. I was so lucky to have you.” Tina rubs my arms. “Hold me right now though?”

”I’m here.” I slip my arms around her. All week she has needed this from the most. To be held. “Your emotions are up and down?”

“Overwhelmed.” I feel her cheek against my neck.

“Sad, too?”

“Not sad, but a lot of changes, and we planned for everything. How could I plan for what I never expected to feel?” Tina sounds shaky to me.

“I understand a little bit of it, but can only understand, and try to feel.” I rub my hands over her back. She and Angelica are everything to me I realize again and again. Every part of myself that used to go out the door to work has been refocused completely on them.

“I’m okay, really.” Tina says as I finally feel her sigh and relax against me.

What can I do to help her with any of these biological changes? Her brain chemistry flooded with unique hormones. In my minutes of spare time I’ve read about a woman’s post-natal biochemistry and neuroreceptors. I’ve read studies about what she may be feeling as her body changes and fluctuates. I’ve watched the attachment, super-charged by hormones, forming so deeply between her and the baby. I witness it by the moment and the hour. They are beautiful together.

“Tina,” I kiss her lips one by one sucking each one slightly and with attention. “Baby, I do need you.”

She curls her hands behind my neck and into my hair. “I need sleep. I really need sleep,” she tells me.

“If I stopped talking to you right now, how fast would you be asleep do you think?” I smile at my challenge to her.

“Two minutes, maybe less,” she answers as she plays with my hair.