Every minute of this day is still crystal clear in my memory..

I chose Friday, March 11 to be induced, and arrived at Arnold Palmer Women's & Children's Hospital an hour early for my 5am appointment. There were no delivery rooms available, so we sat in the waiting room until 7:30. Since no one seemed to need a c-section that morning, they set me up in the recovery room so they could get the pitocin drip started.

Two other girls shared the room, though we were separated by curtains. Girl on My Left was mentally disabled and could not cope with the pain. They had a really hard time holding her still long enough to insert the epidural. Girl on My Right did not speak English and her interpreter spoke a very limited amount of English, but after a while they managed to convey to the nurses exactly how many gunshot wounds she had and how many years ago they occured.

In their diaries they probably wrote about Girl in the Middle whose mother did not trust the hospital one inch.

I almost got a terrible nurse (in the few minutes we spent together she knocked several things over, dropped several things, and jammed a few needles in the back of my hand without success), but luckily she had to help someone else and I ended up with Lisa for my own personal nurse. Lisa was awesome and calm, a few months pregnant with her third child, and put up with my Mom pretty well.

Mom was convinced that I was going to end up having a c-section, just like my sister-in-law Sammi and sister Alice, and that a c-section would be the end of the fucking world or something. She was also convinced that drugs were the reason people have c-sections and had a lot of comments and sarcastic questions for Lisa regarding the pitocin drip, the epidural, and pretty much everything else they did.

They broke my water with what looked like a knitting needle. That didn't hurt at all.

I originally intended not to get an epidural, until I found out that I had severely underestimated the pain of labor. All my false contractions over the previous couple of months had been no worse than bad menstrual cramps. Turns out real contractions are more like being squeezed to death by your own body. It hurt like a sonofabitch.

Mom was very disappointed in me for not going natural, but Lisa and the doctor assured me that the drugs would not hurt anything and that I was smart to let modern medicine make things easier for me.

At first the epidural wasn't doing much for me, so they gave me a double serving of pain medication and after that I could not feel anything below my waist. I also couldn't move anything below my waist. I kind of felt like the lower half of my body didn't exist any more, so it didn't bother me to have anyone looking at it. I even gave permission for a student to insert the catheter (under supervision).

Then the baby's heart rate dropped and they gave me an oxygen mask while they checked her out. Mom freaked a bit, of course, convinced that I was killing my baby with the epidural, but it turns out that the baby was in distress because I had just dilated to 9 inches all of a sudden and was almost ready to give birth. They cleared out a delivery room for me, wheeled me over and set me up on a special comfy delivery bed. The monitors showed that I was having really strong contractions right on top of one another, but I couldn't feel a thing. It was great!

I didn't want anyone other than medical personnel with me during the actual birth, so I sent Mom into the hall. She didn't like it, but she didn't fight me too much. I wasn't lonely, with three nurses and the doctor to help me.

Lisa coached me on how to push ("put your chin on your chest, take a deep breath, hold it, and push as hard as you can for ten seconds. Whoa! Don't push that hard!"). I could only pause long enough for a quick gasp between pushes, but when I got the hang of it I realized I didn't need to do the whole chin-tucking, breath-holding thing, because my abs and pelvic muscles were strong enough to push the baby out pretty fast. Go figure.

It was only a few minutes before the baby's head was coming out and the doctor said he was going to do an episiotomy. I grimaced and said "only if you think it's absolutely necessary." Of course, he decided it was.

An episiotomy, if you are lucky enough not to know, is when they cut your vagina to make it easier for the baby to come out. I did a lot of reading on it, because it's a little bit controversial. Medical professionals say it is necessary because otherwise you might tear and it would be messier and heal slower than a straight incision, plus there is the danger your perinium will tear all the way to your rectum, which is bad.

So they gave me a nice, neat incision on the edge of my vagina. Then the baby came out and my perinium tore all the way to my rectum. I didn't know that until two days later, though, when I asked a nurse why I was in so much pain down there.

It took about two months for my perinium to heal, partially because I was having too much sex. A couple months after that I got drunk as hell and had some really, really rough sex and tore it again, from both sides. It's been almost a month now and I haven't had sex since, and kind of feel like I don't ever want to have sex again. Also plan to avoid the delicious combination of whisky and root beer for the rest of my life. (The baby was visiting her grandparents that night, in case you were wondering, you nosy bastard.) I envy my sister her c-section a little bit. Other than having her tattoo sewn back together crooked, she is completely fine.

That is the only complaint I have about the whole childbirth process, though, because the rest of it was wonderful, wonderful, wonderful, and I really loved my doctor and Lisa and the other nurses who held my legs while I pushed.

I expected it would be gross, and it was, but it didn't bother me at all. The doctor was holding my wailing baby, and she was so beautiful, even covered with blood and wax. For a split second I thought her intestines were on the outside, but by the time I said "What the!" I realized it was just the doctor's gloved fingers. Heh. He cut the cord, wrapped her in a blanket, and set her on my stomach for a moment. I burst into tears as soon as I saw her and have been intensely in love since that moment. It was very special and I'll never forget it.

Stroking my daughter's curly, wet hair, trying to soothe her entrance into the cold, bright world, it took me a minute to notice that the doctor had his entire arm inside me, scraping out my uterus. His hand bumped my belly from the inside. That was weird.

One nurse took the baby away to clean her, weigh her, put ointment in her eyes, and do some basic tests while the doctor sewed me up. I called some people on my cell phone. Mom burst into the room and started snapping photos. They handed the baby back to me, dry and tightly wrapped, with a bottle of formula to bring her blood sugar up to normal levels. I've been a Mom ever since, and it keeps getting better and better.