This is the birth story of my daughter Kyra Lena.  On Christmas Day, I discovered that I'm pregnant with my second natural child, my third total counting my stepson.  In preparation for the new baby's arrival, I guess it's fitting to remember the first time I welcomed a new life to the world.

Two weeks before my due date, I interviewed a pediatrician, pre-registered at the hospital, and finished the paperwork regarding my stepson's custody trial .  My husband and I went to sleep talking about my accomplishments and joking about how we needed more time.  We woke to my water breaking, as though on cue, with the 6 AM alarm.   

 I remember feeling great excitement and anticipation.  I sensed that my child's birth would simultaneously shatter my preconceived notion's about myself and the people-pleasing persona that I created during my adolesence, but it's only now, nearly one year later, that I'm feeling the effects of that revelation.  At the time, I was focussed on timing my contractions the way I'd learned to do in Bradley Classes and on holding as still as possible while my husband hastily created a plaster caste of my pregnant torso in the chaos of our loft's kitchen.  We arrived at the hospital 6 hours later, but I was only dilated to a one.  Thus began what would become a record-breaking 39 hours and 42 minutes of labor.  Since I failed to dilate, I was given the hormone oxytocin to strengthen my contractions.  However,  I successfully managed my pain without an epidural and achieved my goal of a narcotics-free birth.

There is no way I could have survived and avoided the epidural and/or a cesarian without my husband's support,  so the whole experience is really as much his triumph as it is mine.  He spent hours walking up and down the hospital halls with me leaning against his back.  He held me close and breathed with me, directly into my mouth, during every contraction.  He spent the night with his head beside the toilet on the cold bathroom floor when I sequestered myself in the warm shower because that helped the pain.  He removed my parents from the hospital room when their fear became an impediment to my experience, and he called in his aunt Julie and our childbirth instructor Rachel when he needed help to keep me calm and on track.  When the pushing stage began, he talked me through the process and kept me covered in olive oil so that I successfully avoided the need for an episiotomy and did not tear at all.  Finally, he caught our child and became the first to announce that we had given birth to a baby girl.  He held her up--bloody, kicking, and screaming in raw, healthy beauty, and my relief at the reality of her perfect existence became as tangible as the birth plan posted proudly upon our door.

 I got to hold her for an hour before the hospital staff took her to the nursery for her preliminary examinations and first bath.  During that time, I embraced her and rejoiced in the unusual notion that she had not come from me, but rather through me, and is not so much mine as she is a divine expression of  love given form inside me.  Every breath she takes is pure joy.