The Idea

They hadn’t even been home for 5 minutes when Ella’s questions began, it is what Erin had expected, although she had hoped for a little bit more time before the questioning started. She was trying to get her own head around the past few hours, which was hard enough. Although, they weren’t really questions for Erin to answer, more rhetorical questions that she answered herself forming a running commentary:

“Do we want to use an anonymous donor, or do we want to know who is going to father our child? I think anonymous is better, wouldn’t it be weird knowing who was going to be the father? But I suppose if you had a guy in mind you could always just sleep with him and not go through the clinic if that’s what you wanted. But then I suppose we don’t know a lot of guys out here. I mean, does our child even need a father? My dad wasn’t there much for me until I was in high school and college. Yes, I love the guy to pieces, and it broke my heart when he passed, but we didn’t have a great relationship to begin with. But I also know how important your dad is to you, he’s important to me too. The way he took me under his wing, from the moment you told him about us. I guess a kid does need a male influence, but we have Ty don’t we? And our brothers in law. They’ll help won’t they? I think they would be fine with it.”

Topics of ‘conversation’ changed from time to time: “do we want a girl or a boy, or do you not want to know. I didn’t even know you could choose the gender of your baby. Isn’t that a bit crazy? How do they even do that? Seems a bit complicated to me. I don’t think we should choose a gender, we should just find out afterwards. Doesn’t it ruin it to choose the gender? I mean I get it, we have lots of nieces between us, so maybe another girl would be nice, but then maybe we should have a boy to mix it up a bit…”

Erin wasn’t even sure Ella had taken a breath since she started speaking, luckily for her she was used to Ella’s rambling, and had learned to just hold her hand and nod in the right places. Well, she held her hand when the younger girl eventually sat down. As well as rambling, pacing became a habit for Ella when she was overthinking. Erin just let her eyes follow Ella wandering round the room, until she sat down. Erin knew that she just had to be quiet and let Ella get everything out of her system.

Erin had figured that about Ella from the start, to just let her get everything out of her system. In fact, after learning of Ella’s previous troubles in life, Erin had encouraged her to talk about things. She knew that when Ella was a teenager, she hadn’t been great at dealing with life, choosing instead to bottle things up and take it out on the field. Yes, sport had helped Ella a lot, but it couldn’t take feelings away. Soccer had helped to distract her for periods of time, but thoughts and issues were after practices and games – she still had to go home and face real life.

After what seemed like forever, the pair decided that they needed to get out of the apartment. They had spent a long time discussing the appointment before and after it, and now they wanted to do something to take their mind off it. Yes, having a baby was very, very important to them, but they also needed some time away from the issue. Erin, being the romantic she is, had thought of a great idea. Since the pair didn’t have to train the next day, it wasn’t particularly important that they got to bed early.

Erin worked in the kitchen, making a picnic for them, whilst Ella hunted round the apartment for things they would need such as multiple blankets. Erin packed a variety of food, from sandwiches, to fruit, to some of those peanut chocolate things that Ella loved, and before they lived together, would often steal from the Canadian’s apartments. Ella packed blankets, lots of blankets.

The two headed out towards the more rural part of their area, to have a picnic and watch the stars. They knew a great place to watch the stars, a field that was used by many people for this reason. It was almost like a country park, the two would often walk Max there, and during the day there were often lots of kids playing a variety of sports around the field. The wives would often go to watch the sunset, it helped them both to remain calm in some of the most difficult situations. They had always found a good place to watch the sunset no matter where they were. However, no place could beat the Vancouver sunset at the top of their favourite hike.

After the girls arrived, they found a nice spot in the field, not too close to anyone else, but close enough that they could get help if anything went wrong. They laid out the blankets on the floor, and sat down, and put out their picnic in the middle of them. Erin, had packed a little bottle of rum, the type you would get on an airplane, and some cans of coke. She knew that Ella liked a rum and coke in the off season. It wasn’t technically off season, but they did have a couple weeks off from training, so it was fine.

Erin poured Ella her rum and coke, and opened a diet coke for herself, before they began tucking into their picnic. After they finished, they lay down on the blankets, and as it was getting late, they decided to stay for a while and watch the stars. Sometimes, simple things are the best things in life.

At around 11:15pm, the pair decided to head home. It had been a very, very long day. It had been tough emotionally for both of the girls, and they both just wanted to go to sleep and forget about their day for a little while. And so that’s what they did, they went home, dumped their stuff on the kitchen table and headed to bed.

Sunday
A few days, and a lot of conversation had passed since the clinic appointment. The girls had eventually, between them, answered a lot of each other’s questions, and made some decisions on theirs and their baby’s future. Most importantly, they had decided to go ahead and make another appointment at the clinic. They had decided that, they did want to have the baby in Sweden, and although it hadn’t been their original plan when they moved out to Sweden, Erin would definitely be carrying their first baby. It had also been decided, that the two would be using an anonymous sperm donor. Yes, that would mean that the baby would never know its biological father, but it would definitely have male role models, and good ones at that. And finally, they had decided to not choose the sex of the baby. They wanted for Erin to get pregnant, and they would find out at a later date, maybe during pregnancy, or maybe at birth, they hadn’t discussed that part yet.

It was 10am, and as they did every Sunday, the two headed out to the local café to get a small coffee and a small donut each. This had begun as a tradition. When Ella had been younger, herself and her dad would go to the local donut store every Sunday and get a donut. When he had passed away, Ella had carried out this tradition wherever she had been. Whether she was in Vancouver, Chicago, Norway, Houston, Paris or Sweden, Ella would always get a donut on Sunday. She would only ever get one donut, (Apart from that one time where she ended up with a dozen donuts in Orlando…) and a small coffee, and a donut and a coffee for Erin. Ella was not going to allow the tradition to die…

“You do realise our kid is gonna have to like donuts right?” Ella asked, half way through hers.

“Ella you can’t force a child to eat donuts. The baby won’t even be able to eat solid food until its’ about one” replied Erin.

“Well, can’t you blend it into the milk or something? I am not giving up Sunday fun-day” Ella complained.

“No Ella, you cannot blend donut into baby milk. I am not doing that to our child. We can still come here every Sunday and get our donuts and coffee, and when our baby is old enough than yes, we will definitely give them donuts every Sunday.” Erin looked up at Ella who had the biggest smile on her face, “What?”

“Our baby. You said our baby. It just makes it seem so real, we are actually doing this aren’t we? We are going to have a baby…”

“yes, we are going to have a baby Ella. I’ll ring the clinic tomorrow morning when I wake up and make an appointment for as soon as possible if that’s okay with you?” the goalkeeper questioned.

“Of course” replied Ella. “I can’t wait to have a baby with you, you are going to be a great mom”

“And so are you,” Erin said as she placed a kiss on her wife’s cheek. And it was true, she knew that Ella was going to be a great mom. She had known it from the moment she they had met. Ella had a caring and helpful instinct, she wanted to help everyone with anything she could. That’s one of the first things that Erin had noticed, the first day they met when Ella had been carrying boxes for Lori and Taryn. She didn’t have to help the Canadian’s, she didn’t even know them, but she had spent hours of her own time carrying countless boxes up and down stairs for them. That is what had drawn Erin and Carm to want to be friends with Ella, they clicked from the first moment.

Erin spent a minute reminiscing about all of her feelings for Ella and how fast she had fallen for the younger girl…