Simi my love

Chapter 12: The year After

One year after Ayaan was born, Simi had a brief existential crisis about the state of her

life.

She was no longer a working woman in a competitive marketing department. She was a

stay-at-home mother who sometimes smelled like baby vomit and couldn't remember the

last time she'd had a full night's sleep.

She was happy. She was also exhausted in a way that transcended physical tiredness.

"I think I'm dying," she told Damilola one evening, after Ayaan had finally gone to sleep

after screaming for three hours straight.

"You're not dying. You're just tired. You have a one-year-old."

"Remember when I used to be a person?" She was sitting in the bathtub, because that

was the only place Ayaan wouldn't follow her. "Remember when I had a job and a salary

and I could go to the bathroom without an audience?"

"You can still be a person," Damilola said, bringing her a glass of wine. "You can be a

person and a mother. They're not mutually exclusive."

"It feels mutually exclusive right now."

But he was right, as he usually was. By Ayaan's first birthday party (a massive affair

organized by Chief Mrs. Adeyemi despite Simi's protests), Simi had started to feel like

herself again.

She'd joined a mother's group. She'd started writing again—just for fun, not the serious

fiction writing she'd done before. She'd gone back to the gym (where Damilola dutifully

watched Ayaan in the childcare area). She'd cut her hair short in a way that made her feel

powerful and efficient.

And then she got pregnant again.

"Absolutely not," she said when the doctor confirmed it.

"Absolutely yes," Damilola said when she told him. "We said we wanted multiple children."

"We said that before we had one child! Before I understood what it meant to be

responsible for a tiny human 24 hours a day!"

But by month two of pregnancy number two, Simi had accepted it. By month four, she was

buying little outfits for the new baby and imagining Ayaan as a big brother. By month six,

she was already thinking about names.

"If it's a girl, Zainab," Damilola suggested.

"No. Too similar to my best friend's name. It would be weird."

"Dara?"

"Too serious."

"Blessing?"

"She will be a blessing, but Blessing is a terrible first name."

They settled on Amara—"grace" in Yoruba. If it was a girl, they would call her Amara. If it

was a boy, they hadn't decided yet.

The pregnancy was harder the second time around. Maybe because she was chasing a

toddler while growing another human. Maybe because she was older. Maybe because her

body already knew what was coming and was protesting.

Her mother moved in two weeks before her due date and immediately took over Ayaan's

care with military precision.

"This woman will rest," she told Damilola firmly. "No work, no stress, no running around. If

the baby wants entertaining, you entertain it. If the house needs cleaning, you clean it. My

daughter is making a human, and that is priority."

Simi wanted to protest, but she was too tired to fight. So she rested. She watched Korean

dramas. She took naps. She felt Amara kick and flip and generally make her presence

known.

Amara decided to arrive at 3 AM on a Saturday, almost exactly a year after Ayaan had

arrived. She was even more angry than Ayaan had been, which seemed like an excessive

amount of anger for a five-pound human.

She was perfect.

"A daughter!" Damilola was crying again, as he had when Ayaan was born, as he

apparently would every time they had a child. "We have a daughter!"

Amara was smaller than Ayaan, more delicate. But she had a cry that could probably wake

neighbors three blocks away, which Simi found oddly endearing.

"She's your daughter," Simi told Damilola. "She has your temper and your command of the

room."

Ayaan met his sister the next day, accompanied by both sets of grandmothers (Chief Mrs.

Adeyemi and Simi's mother had formed an unlikely friendship based on their mutual

obsession with grandchildren).

"Baby sister," Ayaan said with the gravity of a two-year-old. Then he tried to touch her

face, and Simi had to stop him.

"Gentle," she said. "Very gentle."

By the time Simi and Amara came home from the hospital, Damilola had already set up

the nursery, prepared bottles, washed all the baby clothes, and meal-prepped for the

week. He'd also hired someone to come clean the house twice a week, which Simi would

have protested if she weren't so grateful.

"I've got this handled," he told her when she tried to help with dishes one day. "You focus

on recovering and bonding with the baby."

"I feel useless."

"You literally just created a human. You are not useless. You are valuable and tired and

you need to rest."

With two children and support from Damilola's family, life took on a different rhythm. There

was chaos and mess and mornings where Simi felt like she was barely keeping her head

above water.

But there were also moments of pure magic.

Moments where Ayaan would help feed his sister and call her "baby Amara" with the

protective authority of an older brother. Moments where both kids would be sleeping and

Damilola would pull Simi close and whisper, "We made this. We built this life together."

Three months after Amara's birth, Simi was sitting in the compound garden with her

laptop, writing. She'd started a novel—a semi-autobiographical story about a girl who

moved to Lagos with nothing and found everything she didn't know she was looking for.

Damilola found her there, surrounded by cushions and iced water and the baby monitor.

"What are you writing?" he asked, kissing the top of her head.

"Our story," she said. "Well, a version of our story. Fictionalized, but with the important

parts true."

"Will it have a happy ending?"

She looked up at him, at their home, at Ayaan playing with toy cars in the grass while

Amara slept in the stroller nearby.

"It's having it," she said. "Right now. This is the happy ending."

He smiled and sat down next to her, looking out at their life.

"I was thinking," he said. "Mama suggested we think about adding to the family."

"Your mother is insane."

"Probably. But what do you think? About one more?"

Simi considered. A year ago, she would have said absolutely not. But now, with Amara

finally sleeping through the night and Ayaan becoming more independent, she felt like she

might have room in her life for another small human.

"Ask me in six months," she said. "When I'm no longer covered in breast milk and baby

drool."

He laughed and pulled her close. "Fair enough."

She worked on her novel for another hour while he watched the kids. The story had started

as a way to process everything that had happened—the move to Lagos, the meeting with

Damilola, the journey from precarious employment to partnership.

But as she wrote, she realized it was more than that. It was a story about finding yourself

when you thought you were lost. About believing in love even when you didn't believe you

deserved it. About home not being a place but a person.

It was their story. And it had turned out more beautiful than she could have ever imagined.