With my first daughter, (c-section) I didn't get to hold her for up to two hours :( But I remember hearing her wail and thinking "Oh good lungs, and she's breathing!" With my second daughter, VBAC, I held her within minutes and thought "I never want to forget this moment, this love, this smell, this relief - I had a successful VBAC."

I was shocked at how painful the cervical checks were. I remember screaming at a nurse "get your f*$%ing fist out of my f*$%ing vagina!" I was also shocked that the nurses seemed to think that they didn't need my permission to be up in there.

I did it. And I was a grown up now. And love, pure love...

I didn't know that it wasn't as bad as everyone made it sound....including the above entry. None of that stuff happened to me. My midwife told me "you'll know" when I was in labor and "first baby's always take a while"...sure danged enough...3:07am on January 24th it began..9 minutes later another contraction. 7 minutes later....wait a second...I thought she said this "ALWAYS" takes a while?! 5 minutes later another one...SONOVA!! What is happening...somewhere in there I showered because I refused to be gross for however many days I would be doing this "take a while" labor. The showering stopped labor...have I mentioned water relaxes me to the point of "stupor" and I had planned on a water birth and no drugs? Crappity, crap, crap, crap.... Well...as soon as I came out of the shower it was "game on" again. But still at 5 minutes. I called my midwife...she listened to me try to talk. i say try because every 5 minutes...then 3 minutes...then "you'd better come to me now"...she was asking me stuff, trying to get me to talk through my lightening fast pants. Not sure where the hell those came from. I never went to birthing class...it just happened. I felt like a caged animal at the zoo when...on the 11th hour my midwife and a midwife in training watched me pant through a contraction...the midwife in training asked my midwife "Did you teach her that?" My midwife said "No she's been doing it since she was at home...instinct I tell you. A body knows what it is doing...we just need to get out of its way." Midwife in training *scoff* "Tell that to the OB's." I could have missed their Hallmark moment, but I am glad THEY had it. What I wanted to know by the 15th hour was WHY wasn't my son OUT. I was literally falling asleep between my 1 minute contractions. I always thought people were lying when they said they were that exhausted. Guess not...that's called "Karma" ladies...write it down...send the memo out. Ya know how people learn just enough of something to "make them dangerous"...yes...I am THAT person. I asked them to "check my station". Ladies...don't ask for that. You THINK YOU want that...but you DON'T want that... What happens is...they kinda...push it back in. At least, that's what she did to me. She kinda pushed on my sons head and GAWOOOOSH!....."Hmm...I wondered about that..." as she took a bath in the amniotic fluid my son's GIGANTIC head was hoarding for the second coming (What else do people save stuff for?? I dunno either!). "Well, that ought to do it." Apparently when all the fluid isn't out...dilation doesn't really do its job. Who knew... So....pretty quickly I was at 9. Did I mention...I was only 2 cm for 15 hours? I'd tell you my day was a blur but that is a total lie. Now comes the great part. I heard "Ok, it's time to push." I thought WTHell...didn't they just say "9 cm"?? Yeah, they did. But all of the sudden my son was in "distress". To this day, they have never told me what happened. But...there I was...pushing. It was pretty much me and my husband doing our thing. Counting, pushing...breathing. I kid you not...the midwife and the two nurses were having a conversation all their own. Something about the renovations happening in the summer to the hospital...as in they'd finally be complete. Yay you...can we please focus now? Apparently his head was coming out...I was in the zone... He was out in 28 minutes. My midwife was proud....which, in retrospect seems a little odd...but hey, everyone has their quirks. He didn't make a sound. I couldn't see much except his HUGE eyes. These HUGE blue eyes just locked with mine. He didn't cry at all. We just stared at each other...then he stared at my husband for a couple minutes too. We all understood what was happening....this was a reunion...not a discovery. In fact the first thing that came out of my mouth was "There you are...it has been so long." I had coached myself (because I was weird and a worrier) that I didn't HAVE to love him right away...I told myself I didn't know him, I would have to get to know him and learn how to love him. Right...yeah...I was one of those dorks. Psssssh! I loved him from the first moment they handed him to me and I love him more every day. I wasn't sure what we had just gotten ourselves into but I knew we also didn't care. We'd figure it out together.

To be honest, the first time I held my daughter it struck me that I had no idea what to do. I went from a 33 year old confident women to a blubbering mess. Thankfully my mother was there to guide and teach me, just I as will want to be there for my 2 girls. I also never understood how I could love someone so unconditionally. Motherhood has definitely changed me for the better.

My first labor and delivery was shocking enough. It went against the grain from the morning of. I went into labor on my due date after being told by many tittering older women that that doesn't ever happen. I was shocked to discover that my body produces more than enough pitocin and that when combined with more from my nurse that it was possible to have a contraction last 25 long minutes. My first was born with his umbilical chord wrapped around his neck. It was the action of a wonderful doctor that prevented me from having to go through C-section. I didn't know that you could massage a babies scalp to get a stressed heart to even out. So my first was nothing short of miraculous. He was perfect, wrinkle free, completely missing the cone shaped head that everyone prepared me for. He was beautiful and I loved him more than anything I had ever claimed to have loved before. Now my second labor and delivery was equally shocking. I had my second...on his due date. I learned that it is possible to have a bad anesthesiologist that enjoyed torturing women by making the experience as painful as possible. I learned that my husband is stronger than any man I've ever know. I was also shocked to discover that not one labor and delivery experience is alike. I found out that it's perfectly acceptable in the South for a Doctor to stroll in the room looking dashing in jeans and cowboy boots and deliver a baby like he was going to dinner. My Doctor was amazing. He was chipper and precise which are not two adjectives that seem to go together. He also saved me from having to go through C-section. Our little Moo's head was turned to the side. I also learned that in a bind there are two different sized forceps. My Doc skipped the smaller set. The most shocking thing of all during my second visit to labor and delivery was discovery that your heart is capable of growing exponentially with the entrance of a new life. That the new growth of that heart is immediately filled with a love you've never expected till the point you feel it my burst from it. Becoming a mom, whether you have held that child inside of you for 40 weeks or you've dreamed of that child being placed in your arms for the first time, is the most shocking and joyous experience any of us could hope to experience. It's miraculous to say the least.

I got to hold my daughter for all of ten seconds after she was born. Immediately after she came out, the nurses whisked her away to the incubator because when my water broke there was meconium in it and during my labor, her heart rate would get dangerously low whenever I would have a contraction. I watched as they deep suctioned her since she had aspirated the meconium and bagged her with oxygen. As my doctor was sewing me up, the nurses were taking her out of the delivery room not even looking at me. I said loudly, "Can I hold my baby?" The nurse holding her handed her to me saying, "Only for a minute". I looked at her while a million and a half thoughts ran through my mind. She was really quiet and just looking at me. She had a look on her face that said, "I had a really bad day, mommy". I remember simultaneously thinking worried thoughts since they were taking her to the NICU and thinking that she was perfectly round, pink and perfectly perfect. The first thing I said to her was, "Wow, you're really pretty." After that, I didn't get to hold her again until a week and half later.

Perhaps it was the epidural sneaking into my cerebral space, but while my son wiggled and stretched in my arms, and his little blue cap fell across his brow, all I could think was, "Maybe I did have that amnesic fling with Fox Moulder, because this thing is definitely alien!" - I was a little freaked out. In the end, I had a doughnut, he had a milkshake; we figured each other out.

How I would fight a dinosaur with my bare hands if it came to that to give her time to run away. Just how, wow, suddenly I'm ready to sacrifice my life if necessary (Still hope I never have to, though!)

"To learn that contractions do not, in fact, feel like menstrual cramps. Cramps are dull pain. Contractions feel like someone just placed a blazing hot cast iron skillet on the inside of your uterus." GAH!!!! I'm not yet a momma, so sadly I feel I can not add anything, BUT just felt the need to say that statements like these validate why I think women are the strongest of the species :)