The pregnancy was high risk.

I spent months visiting specialists and counting weeks as though they were treasures.

By the time the babies arrived, I knew the names of half the nurses in the neonatal unit and could tell from a monitor’s smallest change whether I should call for help.

The babies were premature.

They needed the careful, ordinary work of medicine, not miracles.

Mason spent longer in the hospital than the others, and Wyatt learned to feed consistently only after a frustrating series of starts.

Delilah seemed determined to prove she could sleep through anything.