"What is taking so long? You'd think that in eight years of medical school these people would learn how to arrive in a timely fashion."

"Mmhmm," Amy mumbled tiredly as she allowed her head to fall back onto the pillow. Fifteen hours of labor can do that to a girl.

Barely twenty minutes a mother, and Amy felt at once dead exhausted and so deliriously happy she could fly. It had been the most grueling experience of her life, but the moment she had looked upon that slimy, squirming little lump of baby, she had been in love.

Poor Sheldon, on the other hand, looked down at his child like he hadn't quite processed the reality of the situation yet. He had stayed stone still from the moment of birth, staring bug-eyed at the infant wailing in Amy's arms, and when she had turned to him and asked if he wanted a turn he had instantly responded by requesting a cleaning.

So here they were, Sheldon sitting in a chair beside her bed, hand in hers as he continued to spout off a Christmas list of complaints. The walls were too white. The chairs were too hard. The nurses were too peppy. If it wasn't for the palm trembling ever so slightly in her grasp, Amy would have thought that his new status of fatherhood had done little to affect him thus far.

Just as Sheldon was going on a tangent of how the pathogens of inferior-minded women who had birthed here previously would surely infect their progeny, Amy opened her eyes and turned her head to face him. "It's okay to be nervous, you know."

Sheldon halted mid-sentence to look at her, and she could just make out his blue eyes shining with unbridled fear before diverting his gaze downward, like he knew what she could see.

"That is frankly ridiculous," he said faintly as he toyed around with her wedding ring. "Sheldon Lee Cooper does not get nervous."

Amy only smiled and squeezed his fingers in silent reassurance.

Minutes passed in pensive quiet, and still no baby. Amy knew her husband was getting increasingly agitated with each tick of the clock, though outwardly he showed no sign as he stared straight ahead and continued his habitual glide of his thumb over her knuckles. His ministrations had nearly lulled her into a light sleep when his hidden doubts abruptly pierced the evening air. "Will I be a good father, Amy?"

She opened her mouth to answer, but was prevented by the door swinging open to at last present the main event.

"And here we are!" The nurse singsonged cheerily as she pushed a bassinet inside (Sheldon's derisive glance to Amy spelled her out a single word like a neon billboard: peppy). "This wingless angel has been waiting very patiently to see her parents."

Sheldon instantly straightened in his seat and pulled on his shirt, like he was on a first date and wanted to look his best. The little girl yawned in her sleep and tilted her head away, clearly unimpressed.

The new father cleared his throat, trying to look unaffected by the child wrapped in a hospital blanket just a foot away. "I, uh… resent your implication that my daughter is a likely fictional creature from religious lore. I can assure you that she does not come from heaven, but from the duel effort of my spermatic fluid and my wife's reproductive bowels after we-"

"Sheldon," Amy hissed harshly, mindful of the baby. But she knew that Sheldon was feeling out of his depths with this unfamiliar territory, and was coping with the only two things he could unquestionably rely on: his intelligence and severe bluntness.

Swallowing at his wife's tone, a chastised Sheldon turned again to the nurse. "Your services are no longer needed. Thank you and good night."

Amy sighed, knowing that was the best she was going to get from him, but the nurse's cheshire grin didn't even falter. "Of course. I'll leave you three alone, just give a buzz if you need anything."

As promised, the woman then turned tail and walked promptly out of the room. But Sheldon remained in his spot far after the door swung shut, eyes locked on the cradle before him.

"Sheldon?" He didn't respond. "Sheldon, you can't live your whole life without holding your daughter."

His head snapped towards hers, gaze sharp and metallic. "I could try. I can easily perform my paternal duties without laying a finger on her. You satisfy her immediate needs of feeding and changing and other forms of physical nurturing, while I support her intellectually and psychologically from a safe distance-"

"That's not how you want to do it and you know it," Amy said. She gestured towards their child as she slept peacefully on. "If you can handle the love and care of making a baby, you can handle that of holding one."

Sheldon's gaze traveled to the bassinet, holding it there for a long moment before returning to his wife. Then with a quick pat of his free hand onto the one held by his other, he let her go and rose from his chair to approach the baby girl.

He stood before his daughter almost timidly, staring in a mixture of awe and uncertainty. He extended his hands and moved them closer and closer… before retracting them and trying again from a different angle, and the cycle would continue.

"Don't worry, Sheldon, you've done this before," Amy soothed. "You won't drop her."

Sheldon reeled back as if he'd been burned. "This is entirely different from holding my nephew for two minutes! This one- this one's mine. I'm going to be responsible for everything this child grows up to be, I'm going to influence every facet of her life, so how can you just sit there and claim that someone like me isn't going to damage this perfect little-"

The subject of the conversation chose at that very moment to awaken with a whimper, then a wail. Sheldon instantly reverted to panic mode. "What do I do, Amy? How do you turn it off?"

"Sheldon!"

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry!" Without another thought Sheldon hurriedly scooped his daughter up and held her to his chest, awkwardly rocking his body back and forth in a clumsy attempt to placate her. The baby kept on screaming.

"Shh, shh, it's okay," he began softly, head bent close the girl's face. Amy didn't dare breathe, quietly witnessing the first real encounter between dad and daughter. "Uh…"

Staring down at his child's sobbing face, Sheldon looked as though he wanted nothing more than to end anything that could cause her pain. Slowing his movements to a gentle sway, Sheldon shockingly broke his own rule when he opened his mouth to sing.

"Soft kitty, warm kitty…"

The cries began to soften.

"Little ball of fur…"

Her face smoothed out from its previously scrunched expression of crying.

"Happy kitty, sleepy kitty…"

Her eyes cracked open, revealing her eyes for the first time. Sheldon's voice faltered, and for a moment Amy thought that despite his compulsive need for closure he would forget to finish the song.

But at last: "Purr, purr, purr."

The wails were now nothing more than sniffles, and Sheldon was nothing more than a puddle of hippy-dippy emotions at the feet of his little girl. Completely enraptured, he raised a hand to wipe a stray tear from her cheek as he wandered over to Amy and sat on the edge of the bed beside her. His eyes never left the child in his arms once.

"Hi," he said softly to his daughter.

Amy rested her chin on her husband's shoulder, and together they took in all of their baby's features. A smattering of brown hair; one tiny button nose; rosebud lips that mirrored Sheldon's; a striking chin undoubtedly inherited from his mother; and the grayish-blue eyes of a newborn, shaped exactly like Amy's own.

"She's gorgeous," he whispered, turning to Amy for just a moment before he was drawn back to study the face of his baby girl. "She looks like you."

Amy was sure that the beam on her face could light planets.

She looped an arm through his and Sheldon shifted back so he was sitting fully on the bed, her cheek now on his shoulder. "She still needs a name."

The two had planned everything concerning the birth to the last detail, but the one thing they could never agree on was a name. Amy's picks were too romantic in Sheldon's opinion, while Sheldon's were quite odd, as they were often names of science fiction characters.

"Amelia," Sheldon said. Amy glanced up in surprise at his choice. "She's one of the companions on Doctor Who."

Here we go again. "I told you, Sheldon, no character names. That means no Uhura's, no Padme's-"

"For the record, I had suggested Leia, not Padme," Sheldon clarified. "You honestly think I would name my child for someone from the prequels?"

After shaking his head in exasperation, Sheldon explained further. "You want a fairytale kind of name, I want a sci-fy kind of name. Amelia Pond is both. She's intelligent, strong in her convictions, unbelievably patient, always loving-" he cut himself off for a moment, suddenly growing shy. "Plus in the show they usually called her Amy."

Sheldon's attention was back on the baby to hide his embarrassment, but just then Amy's was solely on him, so touched she wanted to cry. If he needed Doctor Who as an excuse to name their child after her, she wasn't going to question it.

She leaned over so she could run a hand along the side of her daughter's face, and trying to hide the new thickness to her voice said, "That sounds perfect."

Sheldon turned to face her, a slow grin stealing his features. "Really?"

Amy nodded with a matching expression. She had no idea what she had done to deserve all this, so she had only the promised usage of a George Foreman grill, the threat of a hidden dirty sock, and the assurance that coitus was off the table to thank for where she is now. "Really."

Her husband swooped down and planted a smacking kiss to her temple, and the two exchanged looks of pure, unadulterated joy before returning to the teeny tiny bundle that had changed their lives forever.

"Well then, Amelia Farrah Cooper, you are the first in a line of intellectually superior, benign overlords to guide humanity to a brighter tomorrow." Sheldon lifted the baby up higher to bestow a kiss to her head as well. "You might want to hold off on that 'till you're a bit older, but I have faith in your patience."

He smiled over at Amy. "You were named for the Girl Who Waited, after all."