When Fang Qiao woke up again, it was already daylight.
The warm morning sun shone into her hospital room through the gaps in the light blue curtains, gentle and not glaring.
Fang Qiao turned her head and saw one of the twins sleeping in the crib next to her hospital bed. His fair fingers were clenched into a small fist and placed to his lips, his lips twitching from time to time, as if he was dreaming of something wonderful.
Cheng Baidong was changing another baby's diaper at the foot of the bed when he noticed Fang Qiao as soon as she moved.
"You're awake."
He picked up the little one and let him sleep on his shoulder. Then he pulled back the curtains surrounding the bed, walked to the head of the bed, and bent down to rock the back of the bed.
This is a double room. The patient next door is a woman in labor who goes to the doctor's office after getting up and is not in the room.
Currently, only their family is in the ward.
Cheng Baidong asked her softly, "Wife, are you hungry? There's millet porridge in the thermos."
"I'm not hungry yet." Fang Qiao shook her head. "I need to go to the bathroom."
"I'll hug you."
The first time you go to the toilet after giving birth is an indescribably unpleasant experience.
After more than ten minutes of fussing, when she came out of the bathroom again, the woman in the next bed who had just given birth had already returned.
Fang Qiao was in so much pain that her forehead was covered in cold sweat. She didn't even notice that there was someone next to her. It wasn't until Cheng Baidong held her and she lay back on the bed that Fang Qiao felt like she had come back to life.
She let out a long sigh and said, "Now that I have both a son and a daughter, I'm not having any more children. It's too much suffering."
“Okay, no more babies.” Cheng Baidong naturally had no reason not to agree. He filled a basin with clean water and added some hot water from the thermos to make it a lukewarm temperature. He then used a towel to wipe Fang Qiao’s face.
Fang Qiao sweated a lot during childbirth yesterday, and the stray hairs on her forehead were stuck to her skin in clumps. He carefully wet the stray hairs with a towel, combed them out, and then combed them together with the hair at the back of her head into a low ponytail.
He did these things gently and meticulously, which made the new mother in the next bed extremely envious. She nudged her husband's belly with her elbow, signaling him to learn from him.
After breakfast, Fang Qiao held her two babies in her arms and breastfed them one after the other. She had plenty of milk this time, which started to overflow from the late stages of her pregnancy. The two newborn brothers were small and had small appetites. On their first day, they only ate about 15 milliliters at a time, which was more than enough to feed them.
After the two little ones finished eating, they fell asleep again.
Fang Qiao carefully examined their appearances and found them to be exactly the same no matter how she looked at them.
She rested her chin on her hands and asked Cheng Baidong, "Which one of them is the older brother? Which one is the younger brother?"
Cheng Baidong couldn't recognize him just by looking at his face. Fortunately, the nurse who delivered the baby had tied a red string to the older brother's foot. Cheng Baidong pulled back the swaddling clothes and saw the red string on the older brother's foot. He said to Fang Qiao, "The one with the red string on his foot is the older brother. The one without the red string is the younger brother."
Fang Qiao: "Shall we use the name we discussed before?"
Cheng Baidong nodded: "Okay, I have no objection."
And so the brothers' names were decided: the elder brother was Cheng Ningchuan, and the younger brother was Cheng Ningyue.
Around noon, Xiao Jing took the bus with An An and Tian Tian, and came with Chen Guizhi.
She couldn't take care of two children by herself, so Chen Guizhi came specifically to help her.
An'an can already call out "Mama". As soon as she enters the house and sees Fang Qiao, she keeps calling "Mama, Mama" and reaches out her hands, wanting Fang Qiao to hold her.
Fang Qiao helplessly reached out and touched her little face: "An'an, Mommy isn't feeling well and can't hold you. Let Daddy hold you."
An'an understood, turned her head and reached out her hand to Cheng Baidong. Cheng Baidong took her into his arms and hugged her, telling her to call him "Dad".
An'an kept her mouth shut and tilted her head back as far as she could, refusing to call out. This made Chen Guizhi burst into laughter, teasing her, "You can call me 'Mom' but not 'Dad,' that means you haven't seen enough of the world. You're not close to me."
She patted Cheng Baidong on the shoulder and said, "You, don't always rush to work. Kids are more affectionate towards you the more you play with them. Otherwise, if you go to work before An'an wakes up in the morning and don't come home until she's asleep at night, it would be strange if she only saw you on Sundays.
Cheng Baidong learned a lot.
Sweetie tilted her head and asked Fang Qiao, "Auntie, are they little brothers or little sisters?"
“They are two little brothers,” Fang Qiao introduced them to her. “The one in the small bed on the left is the older brother, named Chuan Chuan. The one in the small bed on the right is the younger brother, named Yue Yue.”
Sweetie looked at the crib on the left, then at the crib on the right, and exclaimed, "Oh dear!" She said with distress, "They look exactly the same, I can't tell them apart."
Fang Qiao comforted her, "It's always like this at first, you'll gradually be able to tell the difference."
At noon, Chen Guizhi had to go back. Cheng Baidong was going back to complete the procedures for paternity leave. After buying lunch for Fang Qiao and Xiao Jing, he drove his Jeep and took her back to the factory.
The logistics department doesn't start work until 1:30 PM, and by the time Cheng Baidong finished completing the paternity leave procedures, it was already 2 PM.
Most employees at Heshan Pharmaceutical Factory are dual-income households, so the paternity leave for men is relatively lenient, totaling twenty days, which they basically spend taking care of their wives for most of the month.
After completing the formalities, Cheng Baidong drove back to the hospital as fast as he could.
He parked his Jeep in the hospital courtyard and, instead of rushing back to the obstetrics and gynecology ward, went first to the andrology department on the third floor of the outpatient building.
"Doctor, I'd like to ask about tubal ligation."
"Ligation? Who gets a ligation?"
"I!"
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