I've spent half my life driving these roads, but this month, every pothole felt like a personal insult. I'd watch her in the rearview mirror—Daffodil, looking smaller even as she grew larger, her face pressed against the glass as we bypassed the steelworks and the terraced rows. She was tired. Not just the "long day" kind of tired, but a deep, cellular exhaustion that seemed to pull at her spirit.

"Another one?" she'd sigh as I helped her into the car for the hundredth checkup. "Peter, I think they know my blood type better than I do by now."

"They're just thorough, love," I'd say, keeping my voice light while I adjusted the heater to blast directly at her feet. "They want to make sure the little bird is ready for her debut. Think of it as a dress rehearsal."

The hospital was a maze of fluorescent lights and the smell of antiseptic, a world away from the woodsmoke and stone of the cottage. I'd sit in the waiting room, leafing through six-month-old magazines, watching the other fathers. Most of them looked terrified or bored. I just felt a fierce, quiet protective streak. I wasn't just the driver. I was the one ensuring that when the "drift" started to cloud her eyes in the sterile hallways, there was a familiar face to pull her back.

The crib arrived on a Tuesday afternoon, delivered by a cheerful man in a van who took one look at the narrow cottage doorway and said, "Good luck with that, boys." Peter and I stood in the living room, staring at the flat-pack box that was somehow both enormous and deceptively simple.

"How hard can it be?" I said, pulling out the instruction manual. It was a single sheet of paper with diagrams that looked like they'd been drawn by someone who'd never actually seen a crib, only heard one described in a fever dream.

"Famous last words," Peter muttered, already pulling out pieces of wood and a terrifying number of screws in three different sizes.

Mama sat on the sofa, her hands resting on her belly, watching us with barely concealed amusement. "You know," she said, "we could just ask someone who's done this before."

"Absolutely not," Peter said firmly. "This is a rite of passage. Men have been building beds for babies since the dawn of time. We're not going to be defeated by Swedish engineering."

"It's Danish, actually," I said, squinting at the label. "IKEA knock-off."

"Even worse," Peter grumbled. "Right. Step one: Attach panel A to panel B using dowels C."

We stared at the pieces. There were at least six panels that could arguably be called "A" or "B," and the dowels were in a bag with approximately seventy other components.

"This one?" I held up a piece.

"No, that's clearly panel D."

"There is no panel D in the instructions."

"Then they've given us the wrong instructions."