The Sand Bride - Side Story 2.11

* * *

Labor began toward the evening on the day the news arrived that Esther’s mother was fully recovering.

Entrance to the Inner Palace was strictly forbidden, and only midwives moved in an orderly fashion, carrying basins of clean warm water and boiled cloths. Esther, terrified by the pain of her first labor, could not even breathe properly with a face turned white with fear, but she gradually relaxed under the treatment of the experienced midwives.

The baby born after nearly a full day was a girl. Esther lay in bed for a week after the birth, groaning, and after regaining enough energy to move around, she wanted to see the baby.

The baby, brought in an servant’s arms, was different from the sight Esther had seen right after giving birth. The wrinkled, wet, red skin she had first seen—looking more like a strange monkey than the baby Esther knew—had long since disappeared. The daughter looked like a sleeping newborn with a truly gentle face.

But that wasn’t the only reason Esther couldn’t take her eyes off the baby. The servant asked Esther carefully.

“Would you like to hold her?”

Esther nodded.

The servant placed the baby, wrapped in blue silk, into Esther’s arms. Although she had nodded, Esther received the baby with flustered hands.

Having been born an only daughter and having had no opportunity to look after young children nearby, she didn’t really know how to hold a baby.

“You just need to support the head area slightly.”

The servant familiarly corrected Esther’s posture and gave a faint smile.

It was unknown if this baby would be recognized as the King’s child, but she was strictly the first descendant among the three leaders, and the child of the legal wife whom the Sayar cherished without end. Even if she wasn’t recognized as the King’s child, her future would flow smoothly and precious.

While the servant wore a gratified smile, Esther gazed blankly at the baby. The baby had the fair skin of a Southerner, of course, and bore a striking resemblance to Esther’s turquoise eyes, but one thing—the pitch-black hair without a hint of light—belonged to Karzhen.

However, Esther ultimately rejoiced, because when the baby opened her eyes, she looked up at her with eyes so identical to her own and then laughed brightly.

Seeing that smiling face, Esther recalled the words her mother had said during her childhood—that Esther herself had smiled while looking at her mom when she was a baby. In that gentle appearance, she could forget her worries about the baby’s future.

‘This child is mine.’

Esther kissed the baby’s soft cheek and smiled faintly.

‘Yes, she is my child.’

Esther continued to observe the baby while awkwardly breastfeeding. She was a truly gentle baby. The baby, who nibbled and suckled without ever biting, looked more and more like her the closer she looked. Even having a tiny mole on her ear was exactly like Esther’s mother.

Of course, at Esther’s words later, Karzhen grumbled that it was a delusion, asking how a newborn could possibly smile. But Esther firmly believed that the baby had smiled. It was because the baby resembled Esther and her parents so much more.

And so, thanks to her mother’s innate tenderness, and the appearance she had inherited, the baby was able to grow up in the room beside the largest room of the Inner Palace—that is, in the room next to where her mother, Esther, resided.

Normally, by custom, a child would be sent to a wet nurse to be raised as soon as they were born, but this was the result of Esther’s stubborn insistence that she would breastfeed and look after the child herself.

Karzhen opposed that opinion, as he did with most things, but as always, he ultimately could not break Esther’s will. Having her desperate request to stay in the North Palace to raise the child rejected was the most he could achieve.

* * *

Many things had changed since the baby was born, but perhaps the biggest change of all was her own body.

Esther thought so as she slowly rubbed her b****t area with a cloth she had soaked in warm water.

The baby she had given birth to was gentle. She had heard that when breastfeeding, some babies would bite or gnaw on the n*****s until they bled, and others were so sensitive that they wouldn’t fall asleep easily, requiring servants to take turns watching them. However, Esther’s baby ate well, slept well, and did not wake easily.

But at some point, the baby, who had stopped nursing well, was weaned much earlier than average. Because the baby wouldn’t eat even when forced, Esther’s b*****s—which were more swollen than before she gave birth—ached so much she couldn’t sleep. The engorged areas were hard, and even the slightest stimulation caused a groan to escape her lips.

After enduring the pain for several days, Esther secretly asked an older servant for a solution. She was told she had to relax her b*****s with a warm, wet cloth and massage them to let the milk out. The servant offered to bring someone experienced in such matters, but Esther shook her head in horror.

Esther was far too shy to let someone else do such a thing. She was embarrassed enough just washing her body; the idea of having someone massage her b*****s to express milk was something she wouldn’t do even if a knife were at her throat……. No, she would absolutely never do it unless such an extreme situation actually occurred.

So, the method she chose was to try it herself in secret on a night when she heard Karzhen would be late, but it wasn’t going well.