The birthing room had become a second nursery—warm, dim, smelling of linseed oil and the faint metallic tang of the dilators resting in their sterilizing bath. I knelt on the padded floor, my knees sinking into the cushion Daddy had placed there, my belly a firm curve that pressed against my thighs when I folded forward.

Daddy stood beside the steel cart, lifting the largest dilator from its bath. It glistened, the pink silicone gleaming under the low light. The same one from before—the width of a newborn's crown, the shaft long enough to press against my cervix.