Six weeks have passed since our big day, when Dot entered our world and became such an active part of our family. I almost can't remember what life was like without her, but then again the time has flown by. A new baby consumes every part of the day and night-really! But this is a birth story, not a new baby story, so I'll focus on that.

At 3:00 in the morning on March 15, I got up out of bed to go to the bathroom, and my water broke! I knew this was the real thing: water gushed everywhere, unlike the little trickles I'd had over the past few days (I had gone to the hospital four days before because I thought my amniotic fluid was leaking-it probably was-but the doctors did not detect anything, so I was sent home). My husband, Josh, woke up and sleepily wandered to the bathroom. Seeing the light on in the study, he asked me what I was doing. I said, "My water just broke." He was really surprised! We decided to go back to bed and to call our doctor in the morning, since we didn't want to go right in to the hospital, and I wasn't feeling any contractions. We were hoping to catch a bit more sleep, but we both had a difficult time sleeping, since we knew we'd be having a baby that day!

At 8 am, I was having some contractions, but they were mild and unevenly spaced apart. We called our doula, Amanda Blake, and told her about the situation. When the doctor's office opened, we called them and they asked me to come in to be checked. We asked if we should bring our hospital bag, but they assured us that we would have time to go back home to get it. When I was checked, the doctor said that I had indeed ruptured my bag of waters, and that I would need to go immediately to the hospital, and that I would not be able to go home. That was frustrating, as there were a few last minute things I needed to get together. Now my husband would have to leave me at the hospital and go to get everything himself. We called the doula again, and asked her if she could meet us at the hospital in an hour or two, after I was settled in. Still no difficult contractions, and they were irregular.

At the hospital, St. John's, I was checked again and my husband and I, then Amanda and I, walked the halls and hoped that I would progress into labor. If I didn't progress by midnight, my doctor told me that she wanted to put me on pitocin. I was hoping to have as natural a birth as possible, so I wanted to avoid pitocin, since I had heard that it can make contractions much more difficult to bear. By late afternoon, it was looking as if the pitocin was probable. We told Amanda to go ahead and go home, and that we'd call her if we needed her, but that she should plan to come back after midnight, since we'd definitely need her then.

No progress by 10 pm meant that we should just try to sleep, so we did. At midnight I was hooked up to the IV with pitocin, and before 1 am I was having contractions. They weren't awful at first, but they were much stronger than any I'd had before. By 3 am, the contractions were hard and regular. They would spike immediately, starting very strongly, and then fade. The next few hours were very difficult, but Amanda and Josh helped me out so much. I sat on the edge of the hospital bed, and when a contraction started I would stand and lean on Amanda, swaying, while my husband pressed on my lower spine with a tennis ball. The room was dimly lit, music was softly playing, and it was just the three of us. Around 4 am a doctor checked my progress for the first time, and said that I was 3-4 cm dilated, 100% effaced, and at -1 station. They told me that this meant that I was in active labor. I said something like, "Fuck yeah, I am in active labor!" Really and truly, the contractions were as difficult as they ever would be. When I heard that I was only 3-4 cm dilated, I felt a little discouraged-we still had so far to go! But we just kept on as we were.

At 7:45 I was checked again, and I was fully dilated and +3 station, which meant that the baby was on its way! That is only 1 cm from birth! Dr. Ross, my regular doctor, was called, and she said she was on her way. I had already been pushing towards the ends of my contractions, just a little, mostly because I felt like I couldn't help myself from doing so. I was moaning a lot, but still no epidural. It looked as if I wasn't going to need one. At 8:30, I officially started pushing, and Dr. Ross arrived just before 9 am. My baby was born at 9:08 am.

We didn't know the baby's gender beforehand, so my husband was the one to announce (after a bit of hesitation), "It's a girl!" Dorothy June Paddison (Dot) was crying immediately, super healthy and strong, and within minutes she was placed on my chest. My husband was crying with emotion, and we were all so happy to be together, even though my doctor had given me an episiotomy against our wishes. Dot nursed immediately, and she was quiet and alert most of the day, looking at everything with her dim vision, and snoozing on Josh's chest. I was very weak all day-it took the help of two people to get me out of bed to walk the fifteen feet to the bathroom-but by the next day I was strong enough to walk the halls of the hospital and was discharged by noon.

My husband and I agreed that hiring Amanda, our doula, was the best decision we made with the pregnancy. We all worked as a team, and made it through a tough labor that wasn't quite how we'd imagined it would be. I felt calm and very positive that we could do it all the way through, and I think my prenatal yoga teachers, Jessica and Ciela, really helped me to be prepared, both mentally and physically.