Two kids, you play man-to-man. Three, and suddenly you're outnumbered and forced into zone defense, not to mention a Toyota Highlander with a third row. Micah was Jeff & Schuyler’s third daughter, the one they never planned to have.

This week, Jeff tells the birth story of his third daughter, born in the same Williamsburg basement as Lolli - except he doesn't remember it. Sleep deprivation wiped the day clean, so he handed the mic to Schuyler and her mother, Grannie Annie, whose handwritten account fills in the rest.

What unspools is the family's defining cautionary tale, the "Prada handbag" - their shorthand for a first-world problem dressed up as principle. A blocked ureter, a kidney swollen to the size of a cantaloupe, thirty pounds lost over a month of crawling on all fours. And at the end of it, a baby born still sealed in her caul, the talisman sailors once paid a fortune to carry against drowning.

This is the third episode of Diaries of a Dance Dad, an audio memoir series in Jeff's own words. It spans the full arc of parenthood: the inhale of birth and early chaos, the grind of no sleep and travel with kids, the gut-punches of failure, and the slow exhale of letting go.

Order the Diaries of a Dance Dad audiobook & hear the tales that bookend my paternal journey from cradle to empty nestdom at onecommune.com/dancedad

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