Although lots of babies go past their due date (it's only "estimated," after all), the folks at HealthPartners Riverside start getting remarkably antsy once you're past 40 weeks. I was seeing a midwife, Dorothy Wallavand, and she scheduled me for a non-stress test and an ultrasound, just to make sure the baby was still content in there. The ultrasound showed amniotic fluid volume to be on the low side of normal, and Dorothy asked if I wanted to induce labor immediately, or wait and watch. I said I'd prefer to wait (though I had PUPPP and was quite uncomfortable). I really didn't want to have an induced labor, because pitocin-induced contractions are supposed to be a lot more painful, and because if you're getting pitocin you have to have continuous fetal monitoring and although I'd be able to get up and move around during labor (Fairview/Riverside has a telemetry unit) I wouldn't be able to get into the shower or bath, something I thought I'd find very comforting.

I had another appointment scheduled for Tuesday, September 19th, with another round of ultrasound/non-stress-test/prenatal checkup. This time, the ultrasound showed a VERY low amniotic fluid volume and Dorothy said we needed to induce immediately. I was about 2 or 3 cm dilated at that point. She said that the midwife at Fairview would give me Cytotec to ripen my cervix, and then once the cervix was ripe, they'd induce with pitocin.

I was kind of upset about this. Especially because I asked if I could go home and get some lunch, and Dorothy said that no, I could go have lunch first but I should go somewhere close so that I could go to the hospital right away. I couldn't believe it was REALLY that urgent, though, because Ed and I had cooled our heels for about an hour and a half between the non-stress test and when we saw Dorothy. And the baby looked fine on the non-stress test (once she woke up -- Molly had an unerring sense for when she was being asked to perform for an NST and would promptly go to sleep for a half hour whenever I was hooked up to the machine).

Anyway, Ed and I went to Bruegger's for bagels, and then Ed went home to get my stuff and meet Noelle, our doula, while I went to Fairview to check in. One hitch was that Ed and I had driven over separately that morning, because we had planned to go to work after the appointment. I had been able to find a parking space in one of the Fairview lots, which was incredibly inconvenient to the appointment at HealthPartners Riverside but turned out to be highly convenient to Fairview. Ed had parked at a meter. So Ed drove his car home, and Noelle picked him up and drove him back to the hospital.

The midwife at the hospital was less urgent and more reassuring about the situation than Dorothy had been. First of all, they hadn't actually expected me until mid-afternoon, so I COULD have gone home for lunch. Second, they said they'd give me the Cytotec that afternoon, in two doses several hours apart, and that then I could go home for a good night's sleep before coming back for a pitocin induction in the morning. Among other things, this meant that I had the option of going home and trying something like black and blue cohosh or castor oil to bring on labor, once my cervix was ripe.

Cytotec, incidentally, is a heart drug. This is an off-label use for it. (The traditional way to ripen a cervix is with prostaglandin gels; the midwife said that Cytotec works better.) This is the sort of thing I want to know, how did they figure THAT out? Because if you're taking it for your heart, I'm pretty sure you take it orally. If you're getting your cervix ripened with it, the midwife takes a quarter-tablet and sticks it up next to your cervix. Not the sort of thing I'd expect them to just stumble across. (Salon magazine ran an article about this practice a couple of months back, in which a couple of high-risk inductions ended in total disaster when they used Cytotec. It was a scary article, but honestly, the cases described were situations where an induction was a bad idea anyway. Mother Jones also had an article about this recently. I have mixed feelings about the use of this drug -- for me, it worked quite well. If they had to induce me, I'm glad they did it this way.)

Since I'd assumed I was going to be at the hospital through the time I'd be having a baby, I made Ed and Noelle bring ALL the stuff I'd set aside for labor, from my birth ball to this squatting stool I'd rented from Noble Birth. Plus my bathrobe--I realized once I was at the hospital that I wanted my bathrobe, because it was FREEZING. They barely made it, carrying all that junk. I felt kind of bad, since Ed and I ended up having to carry it all back to my car a little later, then bringing most of it back, and then I didn't end up using half of it. The boom box, for instance. It never even occurred to me to turn on any of the music I'd brought. Anyway, Noelle sat with us while they explained their plans for inducing labor and asked some questions that Ed and I were too distracted to think of. Once they'd given me the Cytotec and we were basically just killing time, she went home, saying that we should page her if we needed her or if I wanted anything.

They gave me a first dose, and I had to lie down for about an hour so that the stuff stayed next to my cervix and was not assisted elsewhere by gravity. Then Ed and I had about an hour to kill. We walked down to North Country Co-op, where I bought a little bottle of black cohosh. They didn't have blue cohosh (they said I could get some from Seward Co-op). Then we browsed at a bookstore for a little while, then walked back to Fairview.

At some point, Noelle called to check in, and I asked her how much black and blue cohosh you were supposed to take. She wasn't sure, but had a midwife friend she said she'd call. It turned out that the friend had a homemade tincture of the relevant herbs, which she offered to let us have. Noelle offered to pick it up and bring it over that evening when Ed and I got home from the hospital. (Note: I've since read that a study showed that either black or blue cohosh -- I can't remember which -- can pose a really serious danger to the baby. "Natural" doesn't necessarily mean safe. Be informed, if you're thinking about trying to induce labor yourself.)

After my second dose of the Cytotec (or maybe before my second dose, after some fetal monitoring? I can't remember), Ed and I decided we wanted to go get dinner. We couldn't just take off--I needed to go back to the hospital so that they could do a little more fetal monitoring and make sure the baby was still happy. We had about an hour, so we went to Perkins. While we were walking to and from Perkins, I started to notice that I was getting a sort of menstrual-cramp feeling during contractions. (I'd been having contractions for weeks, but they'd been the painless kind, never getting more intense.) When we went back to the hospital, I was pretty sure I was in early labor.

Before sending us home, the midwife, Georgeanne, said that she'd talked to the obstetrician on duty and he'd noted that she should tell me that the MOST prudent course was for me to stay at the hospital overnight for intermittent fetal monitoring (though I'd almost certainly be fine going home). I said I wanted to go home--I wanted to get a good night's sleep, and that would not happen at the hospital. To make sure I got a good night's sleep, she gave me a couple of sleeping pills, some stuff she called Visteril, which she said I should feel free to take if I had trouble falling asleep. I told her about the menstrual-cramp contractions, and she said that when I came back in the morning, it might not even be necessary to use pitocin--they might be able to start labor just by breaking my bag of waters. Again, that was an intervention I didn't really want, BUT it would be preferable to pitocin, and I didn't want to risk the baby's safety by refusing the induction point-blank.

As we gathered up our stuff, the nurse looked me over and said, "I bet none of that will be necessary. I think you'll be back before my shift is over at midnight. Go home and get as much sleep as you can."

I didn't end up going straight to bed when I got home. I had a snack and called Noelle, to ask her about the Visteril; everyone at the hospital had insisted that there were NO downsides to the drug, but hospital staff will also tend to downplay the drawbacks of epidurals as well. (Actually, that's not true. At Fairview, they tend to downplay the drawbacks of intrathecal morphine, while playing up the drawbacks of epidurals -- they much prefer you to get intrathecal morphine, which they pioneered the use of. For some legitimate reasons--it doesn't immobilize you the way an epidural will--and some less legitimate reasons, like that it's what they're used to doing.)

Noelle sighed and said that she'd taken Visteril for various things and it mostly made her feel kind of loopy. She suggested I take a warm bath and TRY to get to sleep without it first. The contractions were getting stronger, and my big concern at that point was that if I took the Visteril, I'd be in active labor before it wore off, and I didn't want to be loopy and in active labor. She asked if I wanted her to bring over the tincture, and I told her not to -- I didn't think I would need it.

(The really funny thing about the Vistiril: I found out much later, like the next day, that the antihistimine I'd been taking for this horrible pregnancy-related rash I had was in fact the exact same stuff. Which means it wouldn't have made me drowsy, since I'd gotten used to it and no longer experienced the sedating effects.)

I did take the bath, and went to bed. And THAT was when the contractions suddenly got a lot more noticeable. Ed and I talked for a while, and then he turned off the light. About two minutes later, I asked him to rub my back, so he turned the light back on. This was at about ten-thirty in the evening. I told him when I was having contractions, and he was really startled by how close together they were, so he timed contractions for a while. They were about a minute long, about three minutes apart, and very regular. At this point, Ed asked if I wanted to think about heading back to the hospital.

So, I got up and put my clothes back on. By now, the contractions were too strong to talk through easily. Early labor has been described as "the worst menstrual cramps ever" and that fit what I was experiencing pretty well. I had assumed that I would not have back pain unless I was having back labor, which I wouldn't have because the baby was positioned so that her spine was out against the curve of my belly -- but as it turned out, I had back pain anyway (and this is normal). I had Ed call Noelle again. (When he hung up, he said that he thought she didn't think we should be going back to the hospital quite yet -- but I was rapidly hitting the point where I didn't want to spend time riding in a car, because I wouldn't be able to move around, and this preference was only going to get stronger.)

The fact that it was late at night meant that we were able to find a good parking space. We got to the maternity ward (the "Birthplace") at about two minutes past midnight, which meant that we had to check in again, since it was a new day. I re-signed the consent forms for myself and the baby. Noelle had beaten us to the hospital, and she helped us carry our junk down to the room. (This time, we didn't try to bring the boom box or the pillows, though we did bring the squatting stool, the birth ball, my bathrobe, and the suitcase with all sorts of other junk in it that we didn't use.) I changed into a hospital gown, and the midwife on duty, a woman named Deborah (Debbie) Bergman, came to check my cervix. She said I was four and a half centimeters dilated and fully effaced (or something really close, I forget).

They don't insist on constant fetal monitoring at Fairview, but they do like to monitor you for twenty minutes when you first arrive. Also, I had to have an IV for Beta Strep. (Some women are "colonized" by a strain of strep that isn't particularly dangerous to them but can be passed to the baby while it's being born. The odds are low that it will be passed to the baby, and even lower that the baby will get sick, but if you draw that particular card, the baby gets VERY sick.) I didn't have to lie down for the fetal monitoring, which was good, because I was much more comfortable standing up, leaning on something. Noelle set up the birth ball with a cloth over it so that I could comfortably lean on it while it was sitting on the bed. They tried to put the IV in my left hand and missed the vein, or something -- it hurt quite a lot, and I yelled and burst into tears. Unfortunately, the person putting in the IV didn't realize right away that she was the one hurting me, because I was having a contraction at the same time. She felt really bad when she realized. When she switched to my right hand, she got it in without incident. She put in a heparin lock, which would allow them to do a second IV in four hours without re-sticking me. (They try to get two IVs of the antibiotic into you during labor.)

Fairview is currently participating in a cord-blood collection project, where cord blood from all eligible consenting couples is collected and banked. We were asked if we'd be willing to participate and we said sure (basically, this means that they take the placenta when you're done with it--and I didn't have any plans for the placenta, though I understand there are people who like to take it home and bury it under a tree or something). So they had a woman from the American Red Cross come in to explain the project to us in more detail. At some point, though, she mentioned that some people aren't eligible, and this clicked in for Ed if not for me. "Could you check on that?" he said. "Because, Naomi isn't eligible to give blood." My blood is banned from the blood banks because I spent a year in England in 1986-87, and thus I might be at risk for getting mad cow disease. (There's no hard evidence that mad cow disease causes Kreutzvelt-Jakov, and even less that K-J can be passed through a blood donation...but oh well.) The lady from the Red Cross checked, and sure enough -- I couldn't donate the baby's cord blood.

RIGHT after this conversation, the contractions suddenly got a whole lot more painful. I know that's when it was, because Noelle had commented on the whole England-makes-your-blood-evil thing and I was going to tell her about how this was because the FDA and the Red Cross had dropped the ball so badly on the whole HIV thing, they're gunshy--but I never managed to tell her because I got so emphatically distracted.

During the previous contractions, I'd been making noise -- first sort of low, steady vocalizations, which got louder and higher as the contractions got more intense. I actually found "vocalizing" to be really helpful, to help me relax during the contraction and keep my breathing even. (Also, as a bonus, it meant that everyone in the room knew I was having a contraction then and didn't try to ask me questions.) Now, I got a lot louder, though it was still the steady tones. I felt almost like there should be some position I could get into that would make the pain stop, but nothing I tried (standing, kneeling, sitting on the birth ball) helped. Noelle and Ed were taking turns rubbing my lower back; the pain was almost a burning pain, radiating down my legs, and I kept changing my mind about whether it was helping to have my back rubbed or not. At one point, I batted Ed's hands away, then a second later said, "No, no, keep doing what you were doing." Basically, this was because each contraction was getting a little more intense, and I was blaming the position change or the backrub for it, when actually it was just that the labor was progressing.

At some point, I said that I wanted to try getting into the shower. Noelle and Ed set up the shower with a chair for me to sit on, and sprayed water on my back. Ed had even brought swimming trunks, so that he could get into the shower with me. (We got that idea from one of the Birth Videos they showed in our childbirth education class.) Around this time, the contractions got REALLY painful. It's difficult to describe the pain. It wasn't like the pain I had after surgery for appendicitis, or the pain I had the time I burned my hand on the waffle iron. (With the burn, I felt okay so long as I had my hand on ice; if I put the ice down for a few seconds to, say, go to the bathroom, it would hurt so badly I'd get lightheaded.) With these contractions, there wasn't much of anything I could do for relief (the way there was with the burn) but it wasn't a sort of pain that felt external, if that makes sense. It wasn't like the dentist drilling on a nerve without anesthesia; I think (not having experienced it) that would be much worse. It was a natural sort of pain. Which didn't make it a whole lot more fun.

I made a LOT of noise during that part of labor. In a meeting with Noelle before the birth, she asked what I wanted her to do if I asked for drugs -- did I want her to try to talk me out of it. Because sometimes women would ask for drugs when what they really meant was, "reassure me," or "this isn't working, I need to try something else." I said that if I asked for drugs, I would really mean it. So in the shower, I kept my word on that, and didn't say "I want drugs." Instead I said things like "I can't do this" and "this hurts." (At high volume.) Also, "oh no" (each time I felt a contraction starting). At one point I asked what time it was, because I really wanted to be sure that time was passing. I was really afraid that I was in enough pain that time would have stretched out, and only ten minutes would have passed since I'd last looked at the clock. Actually, it had been about an hour and a half -- it was 2 a.m. That helped for a while.

Finally (I think this was at 2:30 a.m.), I said that I wanted the midwife to check my cervix. I had decided that if my cervix were not at least 7 cm dilated, I was going to ask for pain medication, because it was REALLY hurting. For that I had to get out of the bath, and the hospital room was freezing cold, which was really upsetting at the time. Fortunately, I had my nice green bathrobe which Noelle and Ed helped me to put on. I got on the bed and the midwife checked my cervix -- and I was at 8 cm.

That was a HUGE relief. (Noelle said, "I THOUGHT that looked like transition!") Transition labor happens between active labor and the pushing stage, and it much more painful than active labor. My biggest fear was that what I was experiencing was not in fact transition, and that I still had transition to go. Knowing that I was at 8 cm was a big relief, because I had only 2 cm more to go. Even if I had wanted drugs at this point, it would have been too late -- by the time they kicked in, I'd have hit the pushing stage, when you don't want them. (Before they can give you an epidural, they have to give you an IV of fluids so that your blood pressure won't drop, and THEN they give you the epidural, and then you have to wait a while for it to kick in. Intrathecal morphine is faster but still takes time. This was one of the interesting paradoxes of labor for me; really, even the beginning of transition was too late to ask for drugs. And before transition, I honestly didn't need them. Obviously, I didn't NEED them during transition, either -- I mean, I survived the experience. But during active labor, I wouldn't have asked for them even if I hadn't planned for an unmedicated birth, because it wasn't that painful for me.)

Apparently endorphins are supposed to make your memories a bit fuzzy -- probably a survival-of-the-species thing, since otherwise many women would never have a second child -- and I suppose that's kind of true. I don't remember the pain so much as I remember yelling about it an awful lot. And my throat was raw the next day from all that yelling. (After the birth, when we were being taken upstairs to the maternity ward, I asked the nurse if the labor/delivery rooms were soundproofed, or if I'd woken up everyone in my area. She hesitated and then said, "Uh, we don't have a lot of women here tonight, so we just didn't put anybody else down at this end. The rooms aren't soundproofed. They probably should be...")

Anyway, I think I sat on the birth ball for a bit. The midwife said that when I got the urge to push, I should let her know and she'd check my cervix to make sure I was fully dilated. Sure enough, not long after that, I started feeling the urge to push.

(I should note, for those readers who haven't had children, that the phrase "urge to push" is nowhere near strong enough. "Compelling and single-minded need to push" would be rather more accurate. I don't think there's ever been another time in my life when I've felt such a total biological need to do something. Even when I was nine months pregnant and had to pee really bad — that had NOTHING on the pushing urge.)

In a discussion on a women-only bulletin board I participate in, I noted (in a topic about pregnancy and birth) that hospitals no longer insist that maternity patients have enemas. Someone asked, "But doesn't that mean that when you push, you might poop?" Someone else answered that yes, sometimes people pooped, but this really wasn't that big a deal; hospital staff are used to dealing with far nastier stuff than a little bit of poop.

And yes, when I got the urge to push, I not only pooped but peed. All over my bathrobe. I didn't even VAGUELY care at that point. Ed says that no one in the room, from Noelle to the midwife, seemed the least bit disturbed by this.

The midwife checked my cervix and said that I was at only 9 cm. This meant I was supposed to NOT push. This was almost impossible. Noelle helped me blow through a couple of contractions. (You take a breath and blow THAT out as hard as you can instead of pushing.) Then the midwife said I could go ahead and push, and she'd pull the lip of my cervix over the baby's head. This sounded vaguely painful to me, but then the contraction came, and I pushed, and she yelled, "There you go! Your baby's on its way!" That was at 3 a.m.

I pushed on my side for a while, and other people held up my leg. Ed says this was really something to watch, because they could see the baby's head coming down almost immediately -- a little patch of dark hair with a curl at the top. It was apparently really frustrating to watch, because the little head would slide down and almost out, and then it would slide back. Pushing is normally a "one step forward, two steps back" sort of deal, but Ed said it seemed more like ten steps forward, nine steps back. (It's a good thing it works this way, honestly, as it gives the tissues time to stretch.) After one push, though, the little curl stayed outside. Just the curl. Ed said this was the most amazingly cute thing (and the one point in the process that he wished he had a camera).

When I heard that my baby's head was in sight, I asked if I could touch it. Someone guided my handed down and about two inches inside, I could feel the hair. "That's the head?" I said, incredulous. Yup. That was the head.

A few minutes after that, I heard the midwife say, "Naomi, I'm going to cut an episiotomy." I yelled, "No! No episiotomy!" (I had said in my birth plan that I didn't want one, and if that meant that I tore, that was okay.) "I'm not doing this because I like doing episiotomies," the midwife said (she sounded kind of exasperated). "I'm doing this because the baby really needs to be born QUICKLY." "Let me try squatting," I said, and heaved myself up into a squat. I figured that gravity might help to get the baby out faster.

I found out later that what had happened was that the baby's heart rate had suddenly plummeted from the normal 130-160 beats per minute down to 70. When I got into a squat, though, the heart rate went back up, so the midwife didn't press the issue -- though she did send for some people to take the baby to the NICU if it was needed. (She had probably already done that, come to think of it. I can't remember. She announced their presence to me at some point, but I can't remember when and anyway Ed says they'd been in the room for a while at that point.)

I pushed from a squat for a while, but I was having a hard time holding myself up. The squatting stool I'd rented from Noble Birth would have been really useful at this point, but I didn't think to ask for it and Ed and Noelle didn't think to offer it. So I switched to kneeling, and then the midwife suggested I get back on my side, so I did. Then she suggested I try pushing on my back with my legs pulled up, which I did. I had not planned on pushing on my back, but Dorothy had noted at my appointment when we went over my birth plan that sometimes it works to get the baby out when nothing else will, so I shouldn't totally rule it out. Also, at this point, though I knew that something had been wrong with the baby a few minutes ago, I didn't realize that the problem had resolved, so I was willing to do whatever they told me to get the baby out (even an episiotomy, if it was really necessary). (I should note that the midwife, Ed, and Noelle had all told me that the baby was okay now, but this information had failed to penetrate through the haze.)

Somewhere in here, my water broke. Ed and Noelle differed on how this happened -- Noelle thought the midwife broke the bag of waters, Ed thought the midwife had been planning to but then the waters broke by themselves right as she was picking up the amniohook. This was JUST before the baby was born.

The midwife told me to do little pushes, and Noelle said, "Breathe your baby out," which meant it was crowning. I pushed with little pushes, and then Ed yelled, "Oh my god, the head's out," or something along those lines. (Actually, it might have been "Congratulations, you're the mother of a baby's head.") One more push, and the body was out. I didn't feel the head coming out, but I did feel the body kind of squirt out -- a really weird feeling.

Apparently there are some women who feel the head crown and describe a "ring of fire," a burning sensation. Other people find that their perineum is rendered numb by pressure from the baby's head. I can't really say which I was -- just that I don't remember feeling ANY pain during this part. It's funny, because this is the part of birth that sounded the scariest beforehand, and it was nowhere NEAR as difficult as transition labor. Interestingly, one of my pregnancy books, "The Girlfriend's Guide to Pregnancy," written by someone who had an epidural for both births and highly recommends it, describes being told to push as "the scariest moment of my life." I've concluded that the biological purpose of transition labor is to give you perspective on the pushing stage.

The midwife assessed the baby (I found out later that the Apgars were 8 and 9). "Is it a boy or a girl?" I asked, trying to raise my head to see. "Don't know -- haven't looked," the midwife said. Apgars done, she had Ed take a look and announce the sex. "We have a daughter," Ed said.

They handed her to me. She was starting to squall by now, and squirm around. She had a full head of dark hair, which looked curly (though that was partly due to all the junk in her hair from her trip). Really big ears and feet. Still some crud on her (also from the trip), which she added to by letting loose with a whole ton of meconium as they were handing her to me. She was the most beautiful baby I'd ever seen.

Molly was also very alert. (One of the benefits of a drug-free delivery is a very alert baby when you're done.) I nursed her, though not right away, and she latched on and sucked really well. (By the next day, unfortunately, she'd forgotten how to latch on.) Near the end of the first hour after she was born, we let them give her the Vitamin K shot, though not the eye ointment (I'd had myself tested for the relevant VD, just to make ABSOLUTELY sure she wouldn't need it). We didn't let them give her a bath, though, because we wanted to keep holding her. (Someone -- the nurses or Noelle -- helped us give her a sponge bath to get rid of all that meconium.)

I had to push a couple times, not very hard, to get the placenta out. That didn't hurt at all, though again, it felt weird, kind of like delivering Molly's body had.

They asked Ed if he'd like to cut the cord, but he declined, so they had me cut it, instead. (They put the scissors in my hand and put the cord in the open scissors, so the effort involved was pretty minimal.)

I had torn during delivery -- the tear was about as bad (according to the midwife) as an episiotomy would have been. She stitched me up, which was slightly uncomfortable (despite the local anaesthetic) but not too bad. The nurse also vigorously massaged my belly a bunch of times, which was painful and annoying. (It's to prevent hemorrhage, so you know, I put up with it, but it was still annoying.) And they put an ice pack on my perineum, which felt pretty good.

They also weighed and measured Molly. She was 8 pounds, 4 ounces, and 22 inches long. That length didn't include her feet. She had huge feet for such a little baby. Her head was 14 1/2 inches around.

After a couple of hours, we needed to move to a new room, which wouldn't have the fetal monitor and all the other labor/delivery stuff, but would have a fold-out chair for Ed to sleep on. Someone helped me into the bathroom to pee (which was surprisingly difficult) and then into a wheelchair for the trip. Molly had to ride in a bassinet. They helped us pile all our stuff onto a cart, which I think Noelle wheeled for us.

The new room was about the size of a closet. Before going to sleep, I called my mom, then my dad. (We couldn't call Ed's parents because they were on a river cruise on the Columbia River -- we didn't tell them for a couple of days, actually, because it took us that long to figure out how to get hold of them.) We went to sleep a little after 6 a.m. They came and woke us up at 7:30 to tell us that we had to move to a new room: the plumbing had broken in the room we were in. Fortunately, the new room would be much larger.

The first day after the birth I felt pretty worn out and sore. Getting out of bed was an effort, peeing was an effort (fortunately, I didn't have to do it often -- the wonders of not having a baby crowding your bladder anymore), etc. I tried to nap some but hospitals really aren't very restful places -- just as you've gotten to sleep, they come in and want to check your vitals, the baby's vitals, etc. Also, I had pulled muscles everywhere -- in my stomach, in my arms, in my legs. I joked to Ed that I should have done warmup stretches when labor first started, to decrease the pulled muscles. Maybe next time I'll remember. (Probably not, seeing as I'll forget to do warmup stretches before helping friends move.)

My mother came to visit that afternoon and got to hold Molly, who she happily dubbed "the Mollywog." Ed and I thought that was an incredibly cute nickname and promptly started using it.

I had expected to want to go home after 24 hours, but I ended up staying for the whole 48. Hospitals aren't very restful, but the service is really good. The food sucks but you don't have to do anything but fill out your menu request card and then eat whatever shows up. And the nursing staff was really nice, and very attentive, despite all the horror stories I've heard (and to some extent experienced in the past) caused by nursing shortages. (One night I was cold, and called the nurse to ask for an extra blanket. She brought extra pre-warmed blankets for both me and Ed.)

One thing that really blew my mom away was how much things have changed for fathers. When I was born, Dad had to dress in surgical scrubs just to hold me. . Now, they provide a fold-out bed for the fathers (though the nurses call it "the torture chair" for good reason -- it's not a COMFORTABLE bed), and all the fathers get little wrist bracelets that match the babies so that they can take the babies out of the nursery. (Molly "roomed in," and on her two trips to the nursery to get weighed, either Ed or I went with her.) Mom summed up the difference by describing to Dad that when she visited, Ed's shaver was recharging on the sink in the bathroom.

The second day after the birth, I felt a lot more recovered. I didn't want to go on any three-mile runs or long-distance hikes, but my bottom was a whole lot less sore and I had a bit more energy. And within a couple of days of checking out, I felt almost back to normal. (Well, tired, but my perineum really wasn't sore anymore.) Ed and I went on a longish walk that weekend (Molly was born in the early hours of Wednesday morning), and I came back feeling like I'd overdone it a bit, but I could probably have done a similar walk a few days later and felt fine (except that I'd gotten a steroid ointment for my feet -- the PUPPP still hadn't completely resolved -- and I wasn't supposed to wear shoes or socks on my feet while I had the ointment on them). Evidence suggests that women who are allowed to tear naturally heal faster and with less pain than women who have episiotomies, and my experience would back that up.

Was the unmedicated birth worth it? Well, in retrospect, I'd say yes. (If you'd asked me at the time...well, I didn't ask for drugs, but I'm still not sure I'd have said yes.) One of the reasons I wanted an unmedicated birth was because I thought I'd recover faster without drugs. If I'd had drugs, I don't think I'd have been able to avoid an episiotomy. I certainly would not have been able to heave myself up into a squat. They might have needed to do an instrumental delivery. As it was, I was able to resolve the problem with Molly's heart rate by changing what I was doing, which was very empowering (at least in retrospect -- at the time, I didn't know that what I'd done had worked). And a week after the birth, I felt almost fully recovered.

Molly was a sweet newborn, as well as being beautiful; her preference was to eat all day and then sleep for four-hour stretches at night. She cried very little, and had a little quavering cry that sounded like a little bird. Ed and I held her almost all the time, just because she was so sweet that we hated to put her down.