The Mommy Miracle Read Online Free PDF

What if Jodie wanted the baby all to herself? What if he was suddenly shut out? He wasn’t prepared to let that happen, but how tough would he be willing to get about custody and access, when Jodie’s recovery was still so far from complete? What would be best for DJ?
    He’d wanted to get the revelation over with, so that at least he would begin to know where he and DJ stood, but the timing had to be right. It had to be done in the right way.
    With all the talk, the questions, the arguments back and forth between pretty much every member of theBrowne and Palmer families for weeks, the conjectures that maybe at some level she knew, and that some tiny thing might easily jog a memory, no one had considered that Jodie herself might be the one to determine when they broke the news.
    Devlin had wanted her told sooner, and his parents had been on his side. The Palmers had wanted to wait, insisting she wasn’t ready for such a massive revelation. The doctors, therapists and counselors wanted to respect the family’s wishes, but had been growing more insistent with each stage in Jodie’s improvement, after the setback of the serious infection she’d had just after DJ was born.
    This was part of the problem. It had all happened in stages. It wasn’t as if she’d just opened her eyes one day and said, “I’m back. Catch me up on what I’ve missed!”
    All through the coma there had been signs of lightening awareness, giving hope for an eventual return to consciousness, but it had been so gradual. First, she followed movement around the room with her eyes, but couldn’t speak. It seemed so strange that she could have her eyes open without real awareness, but apparently this was quite common, the doctors said.
    Then her level of consciousness changed from “coma” to “minimally conscious state.” She began to vocalize vague sounds, but had no words. She started to use words but not sentences. She began to move, but with no strength or control. For several days she cried a lot, asking repeatedly, “Where am I? What happened to me?”
    Once she’d understood and accepted the accident and the need for therapy, she’d become utterly determined to make a full recovery and had worked incredibly hard. Every day, over and over, in her hospital room, in theoccupational therapy room, or the rehab gym, they all heard, “Don’t bother me with talking now, I’m working!”
    Barbara Palmer began to say, about the baby, “Not until she’s home,” and her therapists cautiously agreed that, emotionally, this might be the right way to go. Let her focus on one thing at a time. Don’t risk setting back her physical recovery with such a shock of news.
    How did you say it?
    How the hell was he going to say it now?
    You were five weeks pregnant at the time of the accident, it turns out, although we’re almost certain you didn’t know. You gave birth, a normal delivery, at thirty-three weeks of gestation, when your state was still defined as coma, just a week after you first opened your eyes. This is your beautiful, healthy baby girl.
    He said it.
    Somehow.
    Not anywhere near as fluently as it sounded in his head.
    â€œSh-she’s yours…Jodie,” he finally said, stumbling over every word. Yours? No! He wasn’t going to sabotage his own involvement. “She’s ours, ” he corrected quickly. “I didn’t know what to call her. I thought you’d want to decide. So she’s been DJ till now, because those are our two initials. Is that okay? Are you okay? This was supposed to happen on Tuesday, at your appointment, with your doctors and therapists and people on hand to answer all your questions. To—to help you deal with it.”
    The words sounded stupid to his own ears. Deal with it. Doctors and counselors could help someone deal with a cancer diagnosis, but this was in a whole different