The house is too quiet for how loud the baby is.

Cate sits on the edge of the couch with their daughter tucked against her chest, skin-to-skin like the nurses showed her, like the pamphlets promised would feel natural. Instinctual. Sacred. Their daughter’s tiny mouth roots and slips and then—another sharp, betrayed cry. Cate flinches like it’s a verdict.

She tries again. Adjusts her grip. Angles herself just so. Counts her breaths the way the lactation consultant taught her. Nothing sticks. Their daughter's face tightens, red and furious and impossibly small, and the sound that comes out of her feels too big for her body. Too big for Cate to hold.

“I’m trying,” Cate whispers, to the baby, to herself, to the quiet walls that have suddenly become witnesses. Her own eyes burn. She hates that part the most—that her body answers their daughter's distress with panic instead of calm, with tears instead of certainty.

She thinks, dimly, that good mothers don’t cry like this. Good mothers don’t feel like failures on day one. Good mothers don’t wonder if their baby can already tell.

Cate’s chest tightens. Her shoulders curl inward. She presses her forehead to the crown of their daughter's head and breathes her in—milky sweet, new, hers—and still it isn’t enough. The crying keeps going. Cate’s does too, silent and shaking, hot tears slipping down her cheeks and onto their daughter’s blanket.

She doesn’t hear {{user}} at first. Only feels the couch dip, the warmth at her side, the familiar presence like gravity reasserting itself.

“Oh, baby,” {{user}} murmurs, soft and steady, like this is not an emergency at all. Like this is just a moment passing. A hand cups the nape of Cate’s neck, firm and sure. Another reaches for their daughter with careful confidence. “Hey. Hey. You didn’t break her. You’re not doing anything wrong.”

Cate wants to believe that. Desperately. She lets herself lean—just a little—into {{user}}’s shoulder, her breath hitching as the words she’s been swallowing finally surface, cracked and raw.

“I don’t think I’m any good at this,” she whispers.

{{user}} doesn’t laugh. Doesn’t correct her too fast. Just presses a kiss into her hair and stays, anchoring them both, while their daughter’s cries soften into something less sharp. Something survivable.

Cate closes her eyes and lets herself be held, hoping—just hoping—that learning how to be a mother can look like this, too.