MOTHERHOOD | M. JACKSON
—MASTERLIST
mature! era
context: you and michael are expecting!
Looking back, the signs had been there from the very beginning.
For the first few weeks after the wedding, you had simply assumed a stubborn, heavy stomach bug had gotten the best of you. There was a constant, underlying fatigue that you brushed off as the lingering exhaustion of planning such a massive event, and a sudden, strange sensitivity to the smell of Michael’s favorite hair products that made you cross to the other side of the room.
"Michael, please tell me you didn't use that styling wax today," you had groaned one morning, pressing the back of your hand to your mouth as he walked into the bathroom.
He had paused, looking at his reflection in the mirror, then back at you with a guilty little shrug. "Uhh..just a little bit, beautiful. Does it really smell that bad? I can wash it out right now if it's making you feel sick."
Michael, being the ultimate worrywart, was completely stressed out by your lingering "sickness." After two weeks of watching you look pale and pass up your favorite meals, he practically begged you to let the on-site doctor check you out in the private medical bungalow just to run some routine blood work. You finally agreed, mostly just to make him stop hovering.
A few hours after the blood draw, you and Michael were sitting together in the cozy, cream-colored little waiting area of the bungalow. You were leaning your head against his shoulder, completely exhausted, while he gently traced patterns on the back of your hand.
The doctor finally walked back into the room, holding a clipboard and wearing a massive, knowing smile. He looked at both of you over his glasses. "Well, Mrs. Jackson, the good news is you don't have a stomach flu.. better news is, you're pregnant."
The words hung in the air, completely quiet. Michael froze beside you, his fingers stopping on your hand. He looked at the doctor, then slowly turned his head to look at you, his large doe eyes blinking in absolute, stunned silence.
"Pregnant?" Michael finally whispered, a breathless, radiant smile slowly spreading across his face as the shock instantly melted into pure excitement. He let out a soft laugh, pulling you into a tight hug. "A baby... we're having a baby! Are you hearing this?"
He pulled back just enough to look at you, his hands framing your face, his eyes incredibly bright. "I'm so happy, beautiful. I'm so, so happy we're doing this together."
Every single check-up after that took place right there in the little sanctuary, and Michael never missed a single one. He would sit right beside the examination bed, holding your hand tightly, his eyes glued to the ultrasound monitor with a look of pure awe.
"Look at that, Y/N," Michael whispered one afternoon, his finger tracing the shape of the screen as the monitor showed a tiny, moving blur. "Look at the hands. The fingers are so long. Do you think he's going to be a dancer? Or a pianist? Oh, look, did it just kick?"
The doctor smiled gently, moving the wand. "Looks like a very healthy, active baby, Mr. Jackson. Everything is perfectly on track."
"Hear that, beautiful?" Michael said, leaning down to press his forehead against yours, his face lighting up. "Healthy. Perfectly on track. You're doing such an amazing job."
As the months pressed on, your palate became an absolute, escalating nightmare of spice that completely baffled Michael. He ate a famously clean, mild diet, so watching your cravings evolve into a literal inferno genuinely bewildered him. It started out innocent enough in the first trimester with you dipping extra-spicy jalapeño pickles into vanilla bean ice cream.
"Mama... what are you doing?" Michael had asked, taking a cautious step backward from the kitchen island, his nose wrinkling. "Spicy pickles and ice cream? That’s going to hurt your stomach, beautiful. Please let me get you something else."
You had paused, a piece of pickle sticking out of your mouth, and leveled him with a deadpan glare. "Michael. If you take this jar from me, I will actually kill you."
Michael froze, swallowing hard and quickly backing away. "Okay, okay... keep the pickles.."
By the second trimester, the pickles weren't enough. You were dousing your morning eggs in habanero hot sauce, making the entire kitchen smell like pepper spray. Michael would sit across from you at the breakfast table, wiping his mouth with a cloth napkin, his dark eyes wide with horror as he watched you calmly eat without even breaking a sweat.
"Beautiful, please," he would plead. "I can feel the heat from over here. My tongue is burning just looking at you. Are you sure the doctor said this was okay? I'm gonna call him. I'm calling him right now."
"Sit downn," you sighed, taking another spicy bite. "The baby likes it."
By the third trimester, it reached its peak. You were straight up eating raw bell peppers dipped in spicy mustard as a midnight snack. Michael walked into the kitchen at two in the morning to find you standing by the open refrigerator, crunching and pouring mustard happily. He looked so genuinely traumatized that you finally had to ban him from the kitchen while you ate.
Along with the spice came the legendary mood swings and an overwhelming, sudden need to sleep like a bear in hibernation. You would crash in the most random spots around the massive estate. Michael once found you fast asleep on the floor of the walk-in closet, curled up on a pile of his oversized sweaters.
Another time, you fell asleep directly on the dining room table mid-day, your head resting on a placement. The kids had walked in, and Michael had immediately put his finger to his lips, whispering, "Shh, don't wake the bear, or she'll bite our heads off."
He wasn't entirely wrong. When you weren't sleeping, the pregnancy hormones made you incredibly snappy. One afternoon, Prince and Paris were being particularly loud, racing their toy cars down the long hallway while Michael encouraged.
You threw open the bedroom door, looking like a wild-haired entity wrapped in a duvet. "If I hear one more toy car crash into a wall, I’m throwing all that shit away," you snapped, your voice booming.
The hallway went dead silent. Prince and Paris froze, clutching their toy cars, while Michael slowly lowered his hand from cheering. He cleared his throat softly, giving you a sheepish, apologetic smile. "….We'll take the race track outside. Go back to sleep, beautiful."
Though slightly scared of you, the older kids were absolutely fascinated by your growing shape, though it created a hilarious new dynamic in the house. Prince took his self-appointed role as your little "security guard" entirely too seriously.
"Don't move, Mama!" Prince would yell, sprinting across the living room the moment you tried to stand up from the sofa. "Dad said you're not allowed to go too far. Stay there, I'll get the pillows!"
"Prince, I just want to go wash up," you would laugh, completely stuck as the little boy stuffed three extra cushions behind your back.
Meanwhile, Paris was constantly trying to paint your pregnant belly with washable watercolors or picking out hilariously dramatic, sequined outfits for the baby. Prince and Michael would frequently get into hushed, intense arguments in the hallway about who was allowed to carry your snacks up the stairs, both of them trying to out-protect each other while you just listened them from the bed, thoroughly entertained.
Most of the time you remained relatively chill, but the hormones also made you incredibly, fiercely clingy. If Michael had a brief meeting in the next room with his managers, you would stand in the doorway wrapped in one of his oversized flannel shirts, staring at him until he noticed you.
"Mikeee," you whined softly, tugging on his sleeve the second he stood up. "You've been talking about numbers for an hour. Come back to the couch."
"I'm right here, beautiful, I'm coming," he would laugh, completely abandoning his paperwork to lie on the couch with you, pulling the blankets over your shoulders and rubbing your back while you held onto him like a koala. "See? I'm not going anywhere."
By the final month, you had grown beautifully large and heavy, and Michael’s protective instincts became a silent, hyper-vigilant shadow. Whenever you were resting and made even the slightest movement to sit up, Michael would instantly stand up as well.
"Don't move, don't move, what do you need?" he would ask quickly, his hands hovering over you.
"Honey, I was just getting a glass of water," you groaned softly, reaching for the edge of the cushion.
"I'll get it. Sit back down, put your feet up," he quietly murmured, gently pressing a hand to your shoulder to keep you resting. "Ice or no ice? Lemon? Tell me what you want, I'll be right back."
You both deliberately decided to wait until the birth to find out the gender, which sparked a sweet, silent rivalry in the house. Michael was secretly, deeply hoping for another boy, a little brother for Prince and Blanket.
Nearly every night, he would curl up on the mattress beside you, sliding his slender frame down until his cheek was resting gently against the high, round slope of your bare belly. His large, warm hand would splay securely over your skin, and the moment he felt a sharp kick against his palm, his face would light up with a radiant, breathless smile.
He would press a tender kiss directly to your stomach, his voice dropping into that sweet, raspy whisper as he softly sang Beautiful Boy into your skin. "Close your eyes, have no fear... the monster's gone, he's on the run and your daddy's here..."
What Michael didn't know was that you and Paris had a secret pact. Paris wanted a little sister more than anything.
"We need another girl, Mama," Paris had whispered to you earlier that week, sitting cross-legged on the rug while you folded baby clothes. "There's too many boys. Prince is loud, and Blanket just cries. Let's pray for a girl."
"I'm praying with you, sweetie," you had giggled softly, holding her tiny hand. "Don't tell your daddy, though. He's entirely convinced it's a boy."
By early January 2004, the beautiful private birthing suite on the ranch was completely prepared, but you had grown profoundly stubborn and tired of being restriction-bound. Against Michael’s gentle protests, you insisted on cooking a big, home-cooked family dinner in the main kitchen, wanting to feel like a normal human being again.
But on one particular afternoon, you found yourself completely alone in the massive kitchen. The house was weirdly still, with nothing but the soft, gentle tunes of your music playing on the radio in the background. As you reached across the counter to grab a wooden spoon, your grip slipped, and the spoon clattered against the floor, rolling beneath the island.
You let out a heavy, exhausted sigh and, clumsy from the sheer weight of your belly, bent down to retrieve it.
Pop.
A sudden, strange sensation echoed through your lower abdomen, followed instantly by a massive, warm splash that soaked right through your shorts, forming a wide puddle on the kitchen floor. You stood up completely straight, your eyes widening in shock.
A heavy, dead beat of absolute silence fell over the kitchen. You froze, staring down at your feet, entirely on your own. "Oh fuck," you muttered to the empty room. Reality set in quickly. The baby was coming.
Panic flickering in your chest, you turned and began waddling as fast as your heavy body could manage, moving through the cavernous, echoing hallways of Neverland. The house felt suddenly, terrifyingly massive.
"Michael?" you called out, your voice bouncing off the high ceilings. "Grace? Is anyone home?!"
You checked the game room. Empty. You hurried past the library and the private theater, your breath getting shorter. "Hello?! Please, someone!" you shouted, your voice progressively getting higher and more panicked the more you found nothing but empty rooms, wondering where the hell everybody went.
Suddenly, a sharp, white-hot contraction gripped your lower abdomen. You gasped, stumbling slightly, and had to tightly grip the edge of a doorway to keep your feet. You closed your eyes, breathing heavily through your nose as the pain truly kicked in, making you realize you couldn't keep searching this huge house forever.
Right as tears of frustration started to prick your eyes, you heard the heavy front doors click open in the grand foyer. In walked Michael, looking completely relaxed, humming a light tune to himself as he set down a small bag from a toy store.
"Mikey!" you gasped out from the hallway, leaning heavily against the wall, your hand clutching the lower curve of your stomach.
He snapped his head toward your voice, his eyes instantly widening as he saw the sheer distress on your face. He dropped his keys, sprinting across the polished floor toward you. "Honey! Oh my god, what's wrong? What happened?"
"My water broke," you choked out, the pain and the stress of searching the empty house finally catching up to you. "There's…there's a puddle in the kitchen. I couldn't find anyone, Mike."
Michael’s face went entirely white, a soft, panicked gasp escaping him. "Oh my god... okay. It's time. It's happening," he said, his hands shaking slightly as he looked around the room, trying to force himself to stay calm. "Don't panic. Let me get the bag—actually let's just get you moving slowly, okay?"
You had tried to stay strong, but watching his eyes widen with that protective, anxious rush was the final straw for your overwhelming pregnancy hormones. Your chest tightened, your bottom lip began to tremble, and big, heavy tears started spilling over your eyelashes. You let out a small, emotional sob.
Michael stopped instantly. The moment he saw the tears on your face, his expression softened with pure empathy. He stepped in close, wrapping his long arms around you and pulling you securely against his chest, letting you bury your face in his shoulder. "Oh, don't cry, beautiful, please don't cry. I've got you. I'm right here," he murmured, his voice thick with a sudden rush of emotion as a few tears of his own spilled over.
The two of you stood there in the middle of the foyer, a little bit of emotional crying mixed with a sudden, watery laugh from you against his neck.
"I'm fine, Mike, I'm just crying because it's finally happening!" you sobbed out, letting out a ridiculous laugh.
"I know, I know," he chuckled softly, rubbing your back and squeezing you tight. "Look at us, we're a complete mess. We're going to have a baby, Y/N. Right now. Let's get you over there."
He carefully helped you walk, keeping a steady, solid arm around your waist and carefully wiping your cheeks with his thumbs the entire walk over to the medical suite.
The subsequent twelve hours of labor were intense, but the moment the real work began, Michael’s anxiety solidified into an absolute, protective strength. He stayed right beside the pillows, letting you grip his hands, whispering sweet reassurances until a sharp, healthy cry shattered the quiet morning air at exactly 6:14 AM on January 12, 2004.
Sean Michael Jackson was born into the world, proving that Michael’s nightly lullabies had won the silent bet. He was a beautiful, healthy baby boy, his skin flushed pink as the midwife placed him gently onto your bare chest.
Michael sat right on the edge of the bed, a massive, radiant smile on his face as he wrapped his arms around both of you, a few quiet tears of relief slipping down his cheeks. "He's here," Michael whispered, his voice trembling with awe as he looked at the baby. "He's really here, Y/N. Look at our beautiful boy."
Before the kids were brought in, the room fell into a deeply tender, private lull. The midwife had discreetly stepped out, leaving the three of you alone. Michael carefully helped adjust your gown, his long, gentle fingers keeping you comfortable as you held little Sean skin-to-skin against your chest.
Michael sat close, leaning over to trace the baby's tiny, downy-covered shoulder. He looked completely mesmerized, a soft, happy sigh escaping his lips. "This feels so different, Y/N," he whispered, his eyes locked on the baby. "With the others... there was so much media noise, so much isolation and fear outside the doors. But here... with you... I've never felt so safe. Thank you for giving me this."
You smiled up at him, shifting the baby slightly so Michael could get a better look at his face. "He's beautiful, Mike. And you know... I really think he has my nose. And definitely my chin. He looks just like me."
Michael blinked, a highly amused, loving smirk instantly twitching at the corner of his lips as he stared at the baby, then up at you. Little Sean was a literal carbon copy of Michael as a child—the exact same large, soulful doe eyes, the same tiny bow-shaped mouth, and the exact same facial structure.
"Oh, absolutely, beautiful," Michael teased softly, his shoulders shaking with a quiet laugh as he completely played along with your delusion. "He's your twin. Didn't get a single gene from me."
"I knew it," you murmured proudly, entirely gaslighting yourself while Michael just smiled, his heart bursting with love as he let you believe it.
A few hours later, the room was entirely peaceful, the golden winter sun streaming through the windows as you sat up in bed, holding the tightly swaddled baby. Michael quietly opened the door to let the older children in.
Prince and Paris walked on their absolute tip-toe, while Blanket was carried securely in Michael's arms. Prince and Paris scrambled up onto the edge of the mattress, their faces filled with an intense, quiet reverence as they peeked over the edge of the blue blanket.
Paris tilted her head to the side, her big, expressive blue eyes scanning the baby’s incredibly tiny, wrinkly features, his little button nose, brown ears and his microscopic hands tucked tightly against his chin. A soft, beautiful smile broke across her face, completely forgetting her wish for a sister the moment she saw him.
She turned her head to look up at her father, whispering softly, "Daddy... he’s so small. He looks like a little peanut."
Michael let out a sudden, delighted gasp, a breathless laugh escaping his lips as he sat on the edge of the bed and set Blanket down next to your legs. He looked at Paris, then down at Sean, his eyes crinkling with absolute, radiant adoration.
"Oh, Paris... that’s perfect," Michael murmured, his voice thick with a profound, peaceful emotion as he leaned down to press a tender kiss to the top of your head, his hand sliding over yours to touch the new baby.
"A little Peanut. That’s exactly what he is."
wasn’t gonna post this but knowing that someone out there hates this series is fueling my drive to keep this goin
