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The memory of my daughter's birth is one of my most precious memories, but it's different than other memories because I remember hard labor and childbirth in a much more intimate way than I remember other experiences. I remember them as I experienced them from within myself.

Before I gave birth, the thing I most wanted to know was how well I would bear the pain. My friends and family had all used pain medication, so they shuddered while they wished me luck in giving birth naturally, but none of them could explain the pain they experienced. I imagined that I would be more consciously aware of the pain than I actually was.

I spent my nine months of pregnancy transforming my growing love for my new daughter into strength to face my fear of the pain. As it turned out, only the last five hours of the twenty-four I spent in labor were hard, and those five flew by.

"This is all it is?" I said to my husband while we walked around our neighborhood pausing every two minutes so I could relax during contractions that were little more intense than the earlier, less frequent ones. The pain I felt with my contractions slowly swelled and receded. The contractions hurt, but they didn't stop me from walking and talking. I could almost describe them as invigorating (probably because I was so excited that the time had come.) After our walk, I called our midwife. Before checking in at the hospital, I went into the bathroom. Seeing that I was pregnant, a woman showed me a picture of her young baby. She never knew I was in labor.

Not long after settling into our room, the intensity of my contractions increased dramatically. After that, I don't remember much of what went on around me until after I gave birth. I was aware of little other than a continuous, generalized sense of pain (no longer of individual contractions, although my husband said that my facial expressions suggested rising and falling pain), and of my self-assurances that it was the pain of physical exertion, not of injury, that it was necessary, that it would be over when it was over, and that my baby was working too.

I understand why it was difficult for other women to explain labor pain, because it was different than any other kind of pain. I imagined it as a soft pain that rocked through me and surrounded me. I couldn't see what was happening outside of myself, because the pain blurred it out, and all of my energy was focused on staying relaxed and letting my body work. I moved around following the cues of my body, searching

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