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One can plan for the birth of their choice, but it sometimes takes more than planning. For me, I had to go bit off the chart to carry out the plan for our second childbirth. We used on demand nursing as birth control, and Jamie did nurse every three house around the clock for most of his first year. But I found myself pregnant and due just a few weeks after his second birthday.

After nursing Jamie until his second birthday (a month before Julia's birth), we almost gave up hope of ever having our second baby at home. Until the end this baby seemed to love being right side up, which for home-birth, is upside down, or breech. But we learned that for anything of first rate quality we must fight, so fight we did.

Jamie had decided to wean himself "cold-turkey" on his second birthday. "Bad-milk", he splattered it everywhere. His sweet bluish milk had turned into a thick, greenish substance called colostrum. He would have nothing more to do with the stuff or the comfort zone. One consequence of this baby-led weaning was no more practice contractions. I wasn't in as good shape physically and there must have been plenty of room in there, since Jamie weighed over ten pounds. The day Julia was due she had turned breech again.

Although we had a lay midwife for our firstborn, Jamie, we'd now gone "professional", for our midwife was a CNM, or certified nurse midwife who worked out of Siler City's Chatham Family Birth Center. We were told the baby would have to be born within two weeks of the expected due date or we'd have to go in to the center for the birth.

So, when they examined me on December 23 and found the baby had flipped again, they tried external version (turning the baby by pushing her around from the outside) and were successful. We prayed and prayed she would stay put until the birth. (Mark convinced me we were having a girl.) I'd talk to her, calling her Julia, "Now, you just be a good little Julia baby and I'll nurse you and love you, and you'll be so happy."

After waiting until the very last day, January 7, Mark said I could take castor oil. So we played a sporadic game of Monopoly as I kept running to the bathroom that Friday night. The trotting stopped around midnight as did the contractions, but they say castor oil only sparks labor if it's ready to ignite. So I slept peacefully amid a few mild contractions and woke up disappointed on Saturday morning. Mark took us for walking in the park and for ice cream, and we came home almost despondent. We were in our

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