I was eight months pregnant when my sister-in-law mocked me in front of dozens of guests at her anniversary party simply because she could not have children of her own, and when exhaustion finally forced me to sit down after standing for hours on swollen feet, she and my mother-in-law laughed loudly enough for everyone nearby to hear and shouted

Two days later, the hospital staff allowed Dererick to wheel me down the sterile, brightly lit corridor toward the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Every bump in the hallway felt tender against my healing surgical incision, but my heart was lighter than it had been in years.

When we reached the NICU, the nurse buzzed us through the security doors and led us to Incubator Bay 4.

There she was.

My tiny daughter lay inside a clear, temperature-controlled incubator, surrounded by a tangle of thin monitoring wires and a gentle nasal CPAP tube resting softly beneath her tiny button nose. She was impossibly small, her skin pink and translucent, her tiny chest rising and falling in a steady, rhythmic pattern.

As I reached through the circular port of the incubator and gently brushed the back of my index finger against her tiny hand, something miraculous happened.

Her microscopic fingers curled instantly around my finger, locking onto it with a grip that was astonishingly strong for a baby born prematurely under such violent circumstances.

"Look at that," Dererick whispered, a watery laugh escaping his lips as he wrapped his arm around my shoulders. "She knows her mom is right here."

Just then, the heavy double doors of the NICU swung open, and the quiet atmosphere of the unit was shattered by the sound of hurried footsteps and frantic whispering.

I looked up.