Chapter 20
The pregnancy was hard.
I was thirty-seven years old.
I had high blood pressure.
I had gestational diabetes.
I spent the last three months on bed rest.
But none of it mattered.
Because every time I felt that little kick inside me, every time Daniel put his head on my stomach and talked to our baby, every time Mia came in and sang lullabies to my belly...
I knew it was all worth it.
The whole family waited on me hand and foot.
Liam built a crib and a changing table and bookshelves for the nursery, all by hand.
Jenna decorated it—soft yellows and greens, animals painted on the walls, a mobile of stars and planets hanging over the crib.
Mia picked out the name.
"Olivia," she said, very seriously. "It means peace. And our family has peace now. So she has to be Olivia."
We couldn’t argue with that.
Olivia Grace Bennett was born on a warm August morning, after thirty hours of labor.
She was perfect.
Seven pounds, four ounces.
Ten fingers.
Ten toes.
A full head of dark hair.
And the loudest, strongest set of lungs I’d ever heard.
When they put her in my arms for the first time, I cried.
I cried for the girl I’d been.
May you like
I cried for the woman I’d become.
I cried for all the women who’d never get to hold their babies because of domestic
