What I will tell you is that at 3:03 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, my feet in stirrups, Dr. Cardiff standing before me in a puffy mushroom-top hat and with a bunch of nurses at her side, I pushed out my Little Star. She slid from my body with a bellow that matched my own. For that matter, that matched her grandmother’s and great-grandmother’s, too. They victory screeched like a team of conquering Valkyries when the next generation made her way into the world. They celebrated her arrival. They celebrated my bravery and the bravery of all people who share the ordeal of giving birth.

This was the Larssens at their best. Not the arguments or the ridiculous jokes or the shoe flinging or anything else. This.

Dr. Cardiff was stalwart through it all. She was the one to catch Cassiopeia, whooping aloud at a fine, healthy, robust seven-and-a-half-pound, hairy-as-heck infant. My kid was fuzzy all over. A Hispanic yeti kid, just like her Hispanic yeti mommy. We could Nair it up together in the weirdest bonding experience ever.

I’d teach her how to bleach her mustache when she was older if she wanted. It’d be grand.

Cassiopeia was slimy and red and fierce when she met the world. She was placed on my belly immediately upon vacating my body, to keep her body temperature up. They cleaned her up right there on top of me, placing a cap on her head and a heated blanket over her chubby body as they fussed over her and me—yes, her blanket was pink, it had finally caught up with me, and I didn’t care one bit. They clamped her cord in two places and cut between it, taking a sample of blood to test her blood type. O negative, like mine, which was a weird bit of pride but I wasn’t exactly operating at full potential. They suctioned her tiny nose free of goop. I stared down into her murky eyes and started sobbing my brains out that she was real. That I’d made the journey and it was officially the next phase of my life. Mom joined me in the weepies. Devi, too. Only my grandmother remained stoic, but when they helped me move the baby into position so I could breastfeed her for the first time, I swear I saw her eyes get glassy.

“Her head’s all pointy,” I said, watching the little mouth working on my nipple. She’d latched immediately, which was good. I’d read about other moms having a hard time with it but that wasn’t one of my trials. “Not that I’m complaining. Just more making an observation.”