Every sunrise brought us nearer to her arrival. Our daughter.

Now that the gender was no longer a secret, the entire family carried a new kind of excitement. Liam, most of all, couldn’t contain himself. True to his word, he had the nursery repainted pink, smirking the whole time as he reminded me that the neutral color had been a “waste of paint.”

Soon after, tiny pink gifts started appearing out of nowhere. Not new purchases, I realized he’d been stockpiling them all along. Blankets. ...