This is all just self ship stuff so it’s okay not to read it. ☺️ It’s just an expanded on version of the not so little family post for my self ship with Reiner.
When we found out that I was pregnant for the first time, Reiner was ecstatic. He had been hoping for it after all but I was nervous as hell. Of course Reiner took it upon himself to buy every parenting and pregnancy book that he could get his hands on, only for him to get frustrated when finding contradicting advice in various books.
“Seriously,” Reiner said as he slammed the book he was reading closed, “why can’t they all just tell you to do the same thing? How am I supposed to know which way is right?”
I look over at him with a small smile, setting aside the yogurt parfait that Reiner had painstakingly made for me earlier. “I think that’s because we’ll figure it out as we go along,” I said with a shrug, reaching out to turn his face toward me.
A slow smile started to tug at the corners of his mouth as he looked at me, nodding. He placed a hand on my stomach, which was still the same soft belly it had been before we found out I was pregnant since I wasn’t showing yet. Reiner took a deep breath before placing a soft kiss on my lips.
“You’re right,” he said, tossing the book aside. “I just hoped to have a hang of it before the little nugget got here.”
“That what we’re calling him or her?”
Reiner grinned as he shifted to lay down on the couch so he could rest his head in my lap. He was a bit cramped on the couch but he never asked me to move, just curling his long legs up a little more as he looked up at me. “Why not? We should call the baby something other than ‘it’, right?”
I reached for my snack again to finish it off but between bites, I played a little with Reiner’s hair. “Nugget it is.”
It wasn’t long before he started panicking though because the closer we got to the baby being born, the more he wondered if he was cut out to be a dad. His own father hadn’t been a part of his life after all and Reiner began to wonder if he would mess up the child’s life by not being a good enough father.
He had long talks with my dad and his uncle and other people to get a better sense of what he was getting himself into but he never once regretted his decision to start a family with me. In fact Reiner was so confident that I could pick up the slack in the areas where he might be lacking. I reminded him that he did a wonderful job of being a big brother figure to his cousin, Gabi, and that while there wasn’t a huge age difference between him and Eren or Armin, he had been a good big brother figure to them too. The only difference now was going to be that this was our child but he already had it in him to be a good, strong role model.
When Amelia was born, Reiner cried more than I did. He was so happy but he worried that he would hurt her when he held her. He just kept commenting about how he couldn’t believe how tiny she was (the doctor kept reminding Reiner that Amelia was actually average for a baby) and Reiner couldn’t understand how we had made something so tiny and beautiful, although he would always add that Amelia had to take after me because she was so perfect.
He slept with the baby monitor on his side of the bed and for the first week, Reiner didn’t get much sleep. He wanted me to sleep through the night as much as possible so he tried to catch every little cry Amelia made to make sure she had whatever she needed. He was surprised at how quickly I was able to tell the difference in the way Amelia cried if she needed a diaper change or needed to be fed or just wanted to be held. Reiner soon, however, was able to pick up on the differences too and he was the most attentive but nervous dad.
“She’s tiny,” Eren said, watching as Amelia got some tummy time on a blanket on the floor. “At least she takes after her mom. If she took after you, she’d be one ugly kid.”
“Eren!” I peeked my head in from the kitchen to see Armin sitting on the floor, shaking a rattle at Amelia while Eren watched from the couch. He looked up at me and shrugged.
“He’s right,” Reiner added, moving as soon as he heard Amelia fuss a bit. He scooped her up easily and laid her on the couch. “She gets her looks from you. Actually she gets a lot from you.”
I shook my head to return to making lunch for us. Soon Eren was joining me in the kitchen, gesturing toward the fridge. I frowned slightly, not knowing what he was asking about.
“Reiner said to get a bottle for Amelia,” he said, shrugging. He watched as I grabbed the bottle of pre pumped breast milk, taking it when I handed it to him.
“You two are good parents, you know,” Eren added as he started out of the kitchen. “Just don’t tell Reiner I said that.”
When I found out that I was pregnant again, Reiner and I felt more prepared. And then came the news that I was having twins. They ran in my family but were kind of rare so I hadn’t expected to find out that we would be having twins. Reiner seemed calm until we got home. In fact, he was so concerned that we didn’t tell anyone that it was going to be twins until I was much further along, especially since I ended up on bedrest for the last couple of months. That actually wound up scaring Reiner to the point that he refused to let me hold Amelia at all toward the end of the second pregnancy.
When they were born, we worried a little about being overwhelmed by having 3 in diapers. Luckily Amelia was getting closer to hitting an age where she’d be walking and she was eating mostly solid foods. She was even drinking out of a sippy cup and had started trying to talk and feed herself with finger foods by the time the boys were born. Of course my parents and Reiner’s mom stepped up a lot once Mathias and Milo were born to help out whenever they could but for the most part Reiner and I were able to mostly handle things on our own. It helped that Amelia was so well behaved though.
Reiner and I took turns getting up for the kids whenever one of them fussed at night but Amelia was sleeping through the night by the time her brothers were born so it was mostly changing and feeding the boys.
We were confident parents by the time Isobelle was born. Amelia was potty trained and while the boys weren’t there yet, they were still getting closer to that point by the time we added another baby to the mix. Of course once Mathias and Milo were up and walking, we had to double down on some of the baby proofing of the house. They weren’t just more curious than Amelia had been; they were downright trouble together. In fact they were often sneaking out of their pay pen if someone wasn’t keeping a close enough eye on them. They didn’t misbehave too much but they were a handful and even as they reached toddler age, one would play lookout while the other tried to get something that they were told they couldn’t have.
Luckily for us Amelia was good at helping to keep an eye on her siblings even at the age of five, which was around the time that Everett came along. By this point, all of the other children were potty trained (or close to it with Isobelle still in pull ups) and they were all walking and talking. It was slightly more chaotic, especially once Reiner and I were fully outnumbered by the children but we were so used to having a baby around that it wasn’t difficult for us to keep up with all of them. Plus we had help from family and friends more often than not, with even Eren and Armin or Annie or Porco and Pieck offering to watch the kids if we needed a break.
When I found out I was pregnant one last time, Reiner and I thought we had it all in hand. Of course the last pregnancy was a bit rougher on me. I had the worst morning sickness and the doctor was a little concerned about my blood pressure. Because of this, Reiner doted on me throughout the pregnancy and he made sure that I didn’t try to do too much. By this time though we had 3 in school and only 2 at home still. With the help we got from family and friends, things went as smoothly as we could have hoped for. Theodore was a bit premature (and the smallest of the babies I’d had) but he was a healthy baby.
Reiner did worry a little more about Theodore but like his siblings before him, he progressed through each milestone on time or even early. It helped that Amelia liked to sit and read to her younger siblings once she learned how to read and Theodore had 3 older brothers who always included him in whatever they were playing even if he was still too young or small to be able to play along.
(Also Amelia being called nugget stuck and even as she grew up Reiner called her nugget. Mathias and Milo were our peanuts. Isobelle was our bug. Everett was our bean. Theodore was our jelly bean. And yes, Reiner will still refer to each of them by those nicknames whether they like it or not. And Theodore went from being the smallest to the biggest of the kids, standing at 6’ tall as a teenager and he could pass Reiner’s height by the time he’s done growing.)
