Emily came into a world that was already different from the one Weston had been born into.

By the time she arrived, we were no longer the same parents. We weren’t operating on trust and routine anymore. Rather, we were operating on questions we didn’t have answers to yet, but couldn’t ignore either.

Weston had already begun to change, and even though we didn’t fully understand what was happening, we knew enough to hesitate. So we did things differently.

Where Weston’s early care had followed the schedule without question, Emily’s didn’t. We delayed. We paused things we would have accepted without hesitation before. And over time, the difference became visible.

Emily didn’t go through the same kind of collapse. She didn’t lose herself the way Weston had. But that doesn’t mean everything was untouched. There were signs — quieter, easier to miss if you weren’t looking for them. Slow development. Subtle shifts. Things that might have been dismissed as personality or variation if we hadn’t already lived through something so much more severe. She wasn’t the same as Weston. But she wasn’t unaffected either.