"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them." - Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Love in the Time of Cholera

for six or so months, from the day (specifically july 24th, mike's 32nd birthday) we finally told people that we were expecting (after getting approved for welfare health insurance, acceptance into the birth center, & our own growing excitement for our little weiss) until baby harry was introduced into the world, i was given lots of kindhearted advice & unnecessary warnings about how my delivery was probably going to take place. especially when it was disclosed that i was going to a birthing center, where it is understood that there is lots of hippie, pro-women mumbo jumbo & no epidurals of any kind. needless to say, i received a colorful array of responses, ranging from: "i don't know how you're going to do that. it's supposed to hurt like hell. like the worst pain ever. & you can labor for so long. so you could be in agony for days. & what if something happens with only a midwife there? no doctor?! can they handle everything? but hey, cool! congratulations! good luck!" to: "giving birth is orgasmic!" enough said.

contractions are little laboring episodes that cannot aptly & appropriately be described. it's like trying to make someone feel a migraine, who has never experienced the extreme tension in the temples, how even dim light & dull noise makes your head pound, how even the subtlest of movements can induce paralyzing nausea. but migraines, like contractions, are so easily dismissed & forgotten when they are over. the intense pain felt by the whole body with each cramp lasts only as long at the uterus contracts. then there is a brief & sudden period of euphoria, like a cold beer on a hot night at a phillies' game or sitting next to a hot wood burning stove while seeing the snow silently fall outside the window nearby. or like when a migraine dissipates, with the help of aspirin & caffeine, & i am able to blissfully go about my day, almost instantly forgetting i was crippled for most of the morning. the trick to handling the intense time within each contraction, according to the sweet, informative teachers of my birth class, was to concentrate, breathe through them & somehow find solace in knowing that, at most, they will last only 90 seconds. one exercise they had us do was squeeze ice cubes in our fists for increasing increments of time, resting an entire heavenly minute between each grievous grip. although melting ice cubes clutched in your hands isn't completely comparable to contractions, it was a remarkably relevant lesson in understanding how truly painful the cramps are when you are living in that moment, but also how much relief & rest there is when they are gone.

unfortunately, all that flies out the proverbial window when your uterus is hurriedly preparing your body for baby elimination mode. mike came back in the house after preparing our car for the drive to the suburbs in bryn mawr, about 1/2 hour drive from our house in west philly. i had just gotten off the phone with the midwife on duty at the birth center, & she had told me to come on in. i had also called my extremely excited & confused mother, who couldn't believe i hadn't warned her earlier so that al, her boyfriend, could dig out his car, & extra long driveway, & make it to the birth center from new jersey before the baby was born. i frantically explained to mike that we had to leave right then, that the baby was coming faster than i had imagined, that it really really hurt.

mike took my freshly packed birthing bag & gently lead me down & across pine street, which was covered in piles of snow. i don't even think our road had been plowed yet, a common courtesy of the city of philadelphia. i gingerly got in the passenger's seat, & i felt my body telling me not to sit down. it definitely wasn't a comfortable position for my laboring body. i moaned long & low through the pain, just like i was taught in the classes, which i think freaked mike out, a lot. he knew, at that point, that i was feeling some crazy shit. he pulled out of the parking spot cautiously but with quick determination. luckily, as we turned off of pine street, the other roads were cleared at least once over. & there was hardly anyone crazy enough to be driving under such dangerous conditions. he turned on the hazard lights, paused briefly at each stop sign & red light, & carefully proceeded through them. although mike was driving slowly, the infinite ice bumps on the road made the journey even more difficult. i remember trying desperately to half squat over the seat while bracing my right arm on the ceiling & the left on the rear of the seat so that my achy lower back & cushioned derriere wouldn't have to feel the added bounces.

we made it to the birth center in record time, considering the remnants of the recent blizzard. i was introduced to kathy, the midwife on duty, & my super pregnant nurse. besides mike & my mom, they would be the only other 2 people with me when i deliver. as kathy was showing me back to my room, she explained that there was only one other woman there that morning & that she was coming along excruciatingly slowly. she had been laboring since the previous day & hadn't progressed. ohhhh lordy! i thought. please don't let that be me!

so allow me to gush about the birth center for a bit: it's basically a large house down the street from the bryn mawr hospital. on the second floor, there is the office, waiting room, & check-up rooms where women go for prenatal, gynecological, & postnatal care. the basement consists of a large room where couples go for their birth seminars & the mandatory introductory class. the ground level most resembles a home. there are 3 "bedrooms" - distinguished by color - adjacent to full private bathrooms. each bathroom comes equipped with a large jacuzzi tub, which is the birth center's natural version of an epidural. towards the back of the building, there is a kitchen for parents & relatives to bring & store food, for those unforeseen long laborers. & beyond that, a dining area & living room, where extended family & visitors can wait, and celebrate, in the comforts of a home.

i surprisingly & happily got the blue room, which is what i had secretly hoped for since it is my favorite color. i immediately took off my pajama bottoms, that i hadn't gotten a chance to change out of, & kathy reached in & felt my cervix. i was dilated to 8 centimeters! which to those of you who aren't familiar with such birthing jargon, is only 2 centimeters from pushing time. which means i was really far along already. she asked if i wanted to get into the tub, & i thought that sounded like a pretty good idea. the contractions had been getting stronger, so allowing the warm, pulsating water to envelope my body was like getting a hug from your mama after falling off your bike as skinning your knees. i closed my eyes & let myself melt into the water. i tried to feel each moment of peace in it's entirety before the contractions shot through & terminated any sense of serenity. kathy told me that she was going to check in on the other unfortunate future mother & to let her know when it was time to push. i wrinkled my brow in confusion, felt my uterus prepare itself again for delivery & asked, "but how will i know?" she stopped at the door, turned & looked at me confidently, smiled & replied, "you'll know."