All you have been handed so far prepares you for one day.

Antenatal classes. The hospital bag. Breathing, positions, what to expect in the room. All of it aimed at a handful of hours.

The day after is the one that shapes them.

And the years after that. Who they become is settled in ten thousand ordinary minutes — half past five, the third time of asking, the evening you have both had enough.

The bond between the two of you is the biggest single influence on the child you are carrying.

Paige Lamoureux

The way you are with each other is the first weather they know.

So it begins with the two of you rather than with the cot. It is learnable, at any point, by anybody who wants it — including people whose own house was loud.

A child welcomed into emotional safety, whose worth is guarded from the first breath, has an entire life that unfolds differently.

Paige Lamoureux

A boy whose tenderness is still intact at thirty.

A girl who has known her own worth since before she could speak, and can tell in a second when a room is wrong. Both of them built in the years nobody was watching.

ITOSHIGO protects that wonder from the very beginning, before the world has had a chance to correct it into a more convenient shape.

Paige Lamoureux