was diagnosed.
After that, Cam had worked with her on her schedule in every way she could.
By the time I'd been put on bed rest, Harmony's mother had finished chemotherapy and was doing much better, so Harmony was free to help more at the shop. When she'd graduated high school in May, I'd still been recovering and unable to work full-time, so she'd stepped in.
Now, she was doing the same thing I'd done at her age—she was living at home, commuting to college, and working part-time.
I fully intended to ask Cam if she could take over my assistant manager position at the new Crave location because now that I had Lydia, I wanted to stay at the original store since it was in Farley rather than thirty minutes away.
I had a feeling she would say yes.
Despite doing everything Dr. Stubens told me to do when my blood pressure started to rise, I ended up in the hospital after my seven-month visit. They monitored me closely for a week and realized that there was no way I was going to carry Lydia to term.
My blood pressure kept rising and I developed a persistent, agonizing pain in my right shoulder. After a final urine test, Dr. Stubens decreed that I was having a baby that day.
Within an hour, my little girl was introduced to the world.
For the rest of my life, I would never, ever forget the look on J.J.'s face when he heard her first cry.
We'd both been so scared going into the OR, worried if she would be strong enough to survive being born seven weeks early.
It seemed Lydia was determined to show us all what she was capable of. Within hours, she was off the CPAP machine. Three days later, she was taking a bottle. At twelve days old, they let us take that teeny, tiny baby home with us.
She weighed four pounds when she was born. When they weighed her the next day, she was three pounds and twelve ounces. The nurse in the NICU explained that she'd been swollen with retained fluid at birth and had lost a few ounces due to that.
But she started gaining weight quickly after she got home.
Probably because I followed Malcolm's advice to the letter. I was able to breastfeed and I wanted to, which he said was good since mothers of preemies produced exactly what their babies would need. He also told me to wake her up every two to three hours, even if she was sleeping well, because she was so little that she wouldn't be able to wake up on her own and she couldn't afford to lose any more weight.
Now, six months later, you wouldn't be able to tell that she'd been born early. She was chunky and had rolls of fat on her thighs and chubby cheeks.
She was absolutely beautiful.
I realized I'd been standing in front of the mirror with a mascara wand in my hand for the last few minutes and put the wand back in the tube.
After a quick brush through my hair, I walked out of the bathroom and found J.J. leaning over the bed where our daughter lay, wearing nothing but a clean diaper.
"Almost ready, huh?" I asked, leaning a hip against the footboard.
He looked up and grinned at me. "Uh, yeah. Sorry. We were playing and got distracted." He turned back to Lydia. "See? You got Daddy in trouble."
She waved her arms and legs in the air and gave another shrieking laugh, as if her Daddy being in trouble was the funniest thing ever.
I suppressed my own laugh and scooped up her clothes from the end of the bed. In a few short minutes, I had her fully dressed in a plaid tunic and jeggings that showed off her thick thighs. Tiny brown boots followed.
"Oh, God. She's adorable," J.J. said, picking her up and blowing on her belly. Lydia smacked the top of his head and laughed again.
She was the happiest baby. Even after she was born, she rarely cried unless she was hungry or wet.
"My mom and your mom are meeting us at the pumpkin patch in twenty minutes," I reminded him. "And you're still not wearing a shirt or shoes."
"Shi—uh, shoot."
J.J. handed Lydia to me and hurried to the walk-in closet.
True to his word, J.J. had found someone to design an addition to my house, which had turned out to be a master suite. We now had a large bedroom, a walk-in closet, and a large, airy bathroom with both a