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False Labor?? Yeah Right!

Having a human being grow and develop inside of my body was both miraculous and trying. The nausea and disgust at what were normally pleasant smells lacked something to be desired, but when that storm passed, I used the long-time excuse of eating for two as my ticket to devour all of my favorite foods. As my baby grew, and my pregnancy began to show, it all started to become more real; the fluttering in my belly turned to hard punches, kicks, and sometimes stretches. My anticipation grew in the later months of my pregnancy as I wondered who my child was going to look like, what kind of personality my child would have, if the two of us would get along, and I had even begun to look thirty years into the future to wonder what kind of person by baby would grow to become.

The fear and concern that existed early in my pregnancy due to an unexpected conception soon after my wedding dissolved into the excitement of wanting to see my child. Once I found out that my baby could hear what was going on outside of my womb, I would spend hours reading to my belly. I would play music and spiritual lectures in a tape player and place the headphones on my stomach. I would even hold one-sided conversations with my child when I didn't have anyone else to talk to. I constantly watched labor and delivery shows on television and tried to force my husband to watch as well, but he obviously didn't have the same interest in viewing other women's babies emerge from their birth canals as I did. Coming up to my due date, I didn't really know what kind of birth I would have, because I understood that childbirth was different for each woman and for each birth. But I soon came to know that giving birth to a child would be the most painful, spiritual, and uplifting experience I could ever imagine to have in my life.

On Saturday, March 8th of 2003, I began to feel pains in the lower part of what used to be my abdomen. I thought maybe they were due to me holding my water to keep myself from going to the bathroom twenty times an hour; I also thought that maybe my pants were too tight, since the elastic was stretched to capacity. So I continued to traipse around town collecting decorations for my baby's room, walking around the track three miles a day, and trying to deny that I was in pain. After all, everyone knows that babies come right on time and not a moment sooner than the due date, which for me was two weeks later. I had gone to a child birthing class and had learned

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