I am working on a real blog post right now, courtesy of my wonderful husband, who sent me out of the house tonight with instructions to go somewhere and write something. I love that man. He understands me. But in the meantime, here is a quick video Dan shot this evening of Isaac's progress on his current goal in life, which is to grab and eat one of the elephant toys that dangle from his bouncer. We're going to have to throw a parade for him when he finally succeeds.

I love having kids. I truly do. But there are moments in my life as a parent that are only redeemable because I think "This is going to be funny later, and I am going to write about it." This is the story of one of those moments.

Kate and Dangles, January of 2010. Photo by Daniel Meigs

Wednesday morning, Kate, Isaac and I met some friends at the Sprayground. We had a fun time, which for Kate meant putting on a swimsuit, sunscreen and water shoes in order to barely get wet. I got some good conversation in with friends. Isaac took a nap in his stroller. Around 12:30, we loaded up and went home.

Two weeks after Isaac was born, I posted on Facebook about how we had attempted our first family-of-four outing and the process of getting in the car had been such utter chaos that we drove along for a pretty significant amount of time before we realized that while we had remembered to put both children in the car (Points!) we had failed to buckle Kate into her car seat. (Major points deduction!) Since then, we have gotten more of a routine down and it's not quite such a circus when we all leave together. Me going places with both kids by myself is still a bit of a work in progress. Leaving the house is OK; it's getting back in the car in public parking lots that feels a little scary to me. Getting Kate in the car first seems like the thing to do because then I don't have to worry about her stepping out in front of a moving car. But it's July in Albuquerque and our car is perpetually oven-hot, so then I face this weird dilemma of whether to put Isaac in the car too or leave him in the stroller, unattended in a public parking lot, while I start the car so the air conditioner gets going. No matter what order I do those tasks in, there's a pretty big delay between both kids being in the car and us actually leaving because I am loading up all our stuff and our Big Honking Infant Stroller. On Wednesday I got all of this accomplished, pulled out of the parking spot and realized that YET AGAIN I failed to buckle Kate's car seat. The good news on that one is that Kate has now learned that her parents are absent minded idiots, and so she goes ahead and tells me when I don't buckle her in.

We pulled into our garage with a few minutes to spare before nap time. Isaac was starting to fuss because he was hungry and Kate, who had lunch at the Sprayground, was saying she wanted to eat a banana in her big girl chair over and over and over like this: "I wanta bananainabiggirlchairabananabananabanana!" It was a little distracting, but eventually I got everyone in the house and settled with the food of their choice. Isaac and I were on the couch in the living room and Kate was in the kitchen enjoying her much-requested banana. This was the state of affairs for maybe ten minutes and then I told Kate that it was nap time and she should find her monkey. You know the monkey, right? Dangles the Monkey? The one she takes everywhere? That one.

Let me tell you a few things about this monkey. Dangles was a gift from a good friend of ours who incidentally is also named Kate. When our Kate was 10 months old, she happened on the monkey in a pile of stuffed animals that had previously been sitting in her room unused, picked it up, and hasn't parted with it since ... that she knows of. When it became apparent that she had chosen this monkey to be her constant companion, we did what several really smart parents we know advised us to do and bought a couple of backup monkeys. One benefit of this is that every few weeks I slip into Kate's room while she's asleep, put a clean monkey in her crib and take the dirty one out for a run through the washing machine. That's nice, because you would not believe how filthy a stuffed animal can get, but the real point of the backup monkeys is insurance. I am not actually sure if Kate could go to sleep without Dangles. I don't want to find out.

Photo by Daniel Meigs

In the process of buying our insurance monkeys we learned that Dangles, while made by a very prominent toy company, has been discontinued in the sense that they aren't making any more of him. At the time, there were still quite a few of them available online, so we bought two, bringing our monkey total up to three. Well, some time last year Dan and Kate returned from an errand minus a monkey. With no idea where the little guy got left behind, we were down to two monkeys, leaving us one backup in case of emergency. Which brings us back to last Wednesday.

I told Kate to get her monkey so we could go get ready for nap time, but she couldn't find him. No big deal. I started looking around the house. No monkey. I looked in the car. No monkey. I rechecked everywhere I had looked. Nothing. I thought back to the last place I could remember having seen Dangles ... in the stroller on the way out of the Sprayground. Maybe he got put in the trunk with all of our bags? Nope. Now I was starting to get worried. What if I dropped him in the parking lot? I went back in the house and asked Kate if she knew where she had put Dangles. No, she said.

Since it was nap time, I didn't have much choice but to deploy the decoy monkey, who thankfully was ready and waiting in the guest room closet. I just acted like I found Dangles, put Kate down for her nap and then got down to the business of seriously tearing up my house looking for this ridiculous monkey. Kate has a weird habit of hiding things -- usually small things -- in a few key places in our house including the pantry and certain drawers and cabinets. She doesn't usually hide Dangles. Still, I checked all her usual spots, to no avail. After yet another run through the car, the trunk and all of the bags we took with us that morning, I called the business office at the community center where the Sprayground is located. I am not sure I have ever felt sillier than I did explaining to the woman on the phone about how I needed her to go check lost and found for a monkey. "He's very important to my daughter, and I need to get him back if we left him," I told her. I actually got a little choked up, thinking that maybe Kate's little friend was lying on the asphalt somewhere because of my air-headedness. (Some day I am going to write a book about motherhood, and it is going to be called "One Thousand Ways to Feel Guilty." This will be one of the chapters.) The woman was really nice and took my phone number, but when she called back she said she had looked everywhere and hadn't found him.

Right around then Dan called to check in. I filled him in on the Great Monkey Crisis. We agreed that the thing to do was to start looking for a new one to buy online. Being down to one monkey just is not smart, since it leaves no margin between us and complete catastrophe. So I got online and started shopping. OK now remember how I told you that we realized a couple of years ago that Dangles is technically a discontinued item? Turns out they weren't kidding about that. Amazon had one for sale -- one -- and they wanted EIGHTY DOLLARS for it. I reported this fact to Dan via email and then decided that I needed to take a break from the whole situation. Lie down on the couch. Do some deep breathing. Over a monkey.

There are a lot of moments when it is a good thing that Dan is a much less neurotic person than I am. He calmly spent a few minutes checking around online, persevering beyond the initial sticker shock of Amazon, and found two monkeys available at much more reasonable prices on eBay. I have never bought anything on eBay in my life. I realize I am the last person on the face of the planet who isn't buying things there, but I don't completely understand how it works, and I am vaguely suspicious of the concept of PayPal. I mean, how is the money changing hands? Is this just the idea of money we're exchanging here? And why do I want to be giving total strangers my mailing address? I don't know. But I overcame my paranoia, got all set up with an eBay account and set to making my first and probably last purchase --- a stuffed monkey, brand new from a seller in Great Britain for about thirty bucks. Yes! International monkey transactions! Currency conversions! Weird mailing instructions! I navigated all of it, got a little congratulatory email from Ebay confirming my purchase and closed the lap top, rather impressed with myself. Crisis averted. Time for a break. I got up, walked into the kitchen, and opened the cabinet under the sink to look for a pitcher to make myself some lemonade.

And
instead
I
found
THE MONKEY!

Y'all. I didn't know whether to cuss or laugh. Two hours of my life. Frantic phone calls. Thirty bucks. Ebay. All because Kate put the monkey in a cabinet and forgot about it. On the other hand I suppose it's entirely possible that she knew where the monkey was the whole time and was just messing with me.

Maybe this is her way of paying me back for forgetting to buckle her in.

This is the second installment of Isaac's birth story. Part one, which gives some background on our decision to have a midwife as a care provider in this pregnancy is here.

At 3 a.m. on the morning of April 23, Dan and I walked out of our house into a freezing cold spring night and got in the car, on our way to the hospital to meet our son. At 5:22 a.m., two hours after we arrived at the hospital, Isaac was born. It is no exaggeration to say this is the story of the craziest, most intense two hours of my life.

First, let's back up to 2 p.m. the previous afternoon. I had my 39 week appointment with my midwife, who told me that I was 3 cm dilated and 75 percent effaced. I had been having contractions of varying discomfort levels for weeks, so while I was glad to hear that I was making some progress, I wasn't convinced it meant I'd be in labor any time soon. I went six days past my due date with Kate and was prepared to wait this time. But it wasn't like I was happy about it. The last month of the pregnancy felt like a slow march through thick mud. I was exhausted, huge and ready to just have this baby already. So when my midwife offered to do a membrane sweep to help things along, I was all for it. As I left the appointment, my midwife had me set up an appointment for the following week. "But I'd be surprised if you don't have a baby before the weekend is over," she said. I laughed. Clearly she had not paid attention when I told her how I go way past my due date. Silly midwife.

When I started having regular contractions a few hours later while fixing dinner for my mom, Dan and Kate, I still wasn't convinced this was it. As was the case with Kate, I had a bout of false labor a few days before, and I knew that these kind of contractions can stop just as suddenly as they start. So we went ahead with our usual evening routine of dinner, a bath for Kate, bedtime singing and stories.

By the time Kate was down for the night around 7:30, I was still having contractions, so I figured I might as well get a few things done around the house and round up the remaining things I'd want in my hospital bag if we went that night. Since I had made a great little labor play list, I put on my i-Pod and listened to that while my crazy pregnancy hormones made me clean the bathroom and the contractions got stronger. When I was done with that, I went in the living room and sat on my inflatable exercise ball and folded laundry while Dan and I watched The Office and 30 Rock. Both were exceptionally funny, and I was still comfortable enough to have a sense of humor. I laughed a lot, which I figured was not a good sign for real labor being anywhere in sight. I seemed to recall my sense of humor failing me when the real pain started last time. So I told my mom and Dan that we should all just go to bed. Sure, the contractions were still happening, but I'd wake them up if there was anything we needed to do about it.

Notice how incredibly boring this story is so far. I'm about to fall asleep reading it. I'm sure you are too. Trust me when I say that things got more interesting soon. But first everyone, myself included, went to bed around 10. I actually slept off and on while still having contractions strong enough that I'd notice them before I'd fall back asleep. Then around 1 a.m. I realized that for a half hour or so I had been awake more than asleep and was starting to feel like the contractions were intense enough that I would deal with them better if I got up. So I did.

Now a word about my birth plan. Having spent about 10 hours in Triage Hell when I was in early labor with Kate, my goal this time was to spend as little time at the hospital as possible. It's not like the contractions were going to hurt any less at the hospital, I reasoned, and I'd rather just be at home until I was ready for someone to give me some drugs. And I did want those drugs. As I mentioned in the prequel to this birth story, I had done a lot of reading about childbirth in the wake of Kate's birth, both educational stuff and actual birth stories. The things I read advocating natural childbirth had made a big enough impression on me that I seriously considered trying to go without an epidural this time. There seemed to be a lot of evidence to support the idea that the ability to choose a delivery position other than flat on your back could make the delivery easier on the mother, and that made sense to me. But here's the thing: I am a total wimp about pain. Seriously. And every time I'd try to think about whether I could handle natural childbirth, I would remember that fact and laugh at myself for even considering it. So I would labor at home as long as I could, which I figured would be about ten minutes, and then I'd go to the hospital, get some drugs, and read a book until it was time to have the baby. When people would ask about our birth plan, I'd always end with "Unless I have some crazy fast labor this time." And then I would laugh.

So now it's 1 a.m. and I'm hanging out in our spotlessly clean bathroom, breathing through contractions. They really did hurt, but maybe because I had just recently been asleep and was relaxed and all alone in the quiet of the house, I was not feeling too stressed out about them. I brought my exercise ball into the bathroom with me and was sitting on it, resting between contractions, and not thinking about very much at all. I also wasn't timing the contractions, just noticing in a vague way that they were getting closer together and longer. When I was pregnant with Kate, Dan and I took a childbirth preparation course and our instructor said that if you can comfortably talk through contractions, you're probably not that far into labor. "That's a nifty piece of advice," I remember thinking. And it is. Unless you're by yourself and not trying to talk to anyone. This is what I learned around 2:30 a.m. when Dan woke up. We'd had had a brief chat when I got up from bed around one. I told Dan I was getting a little uncomfortable, but that I didn't think it was going to be time to go to the hospital anytime soon, and to go back to sleep while he could. So an hour and a half later I walked back into our bedroom to get something off my nightstand and woke Dan up when a contraction started and I was leaning on the bed breathing through it. When it was over, we had the following conversation:

Dan: "How far apart are these?"
Me: "I don't know. (I throw my cell phone in his general direction with perhaps a little more force than necessary.) You time them."
Dan: "When are we supposed to call the practice?"
Me: "When they are about three minutes apart."

Two contractions later, Dan determined that they were three minutes apart and maybe a little less than that. So he got up out of bed. Another contraction started and doubled me over.

Dan: "I think I'll just go ahead and gather up a few of the things we need and ..."
Me: "OH MY GOSH SHUT UP! JUST SHUT UP!"
Dan: "Yeah. I'm calling the practice now."

Clearly we had passed the able-to-talk-through-contractions stage at some point I failed to register and had entered the irrational-yelling-at-anyone-who-dares-to-talk-during-a-contraction stage. This did not make our phone conversation with the midwife on call for our practice go very well. Dan was on the phone trying to answer questions, and any time he would ask me something I would tell him "I don't know!" or the ever-so-helpful "Don't talk to me!" Somehow it was concluded that we would just come on in to the hospital.

Dan went to wake my mom up and let her know that we were leaving. He started putting our bags in the car. I changed clothes and put my shoes on in addition to a jacket in APRIL, thank you New Mexico. My mom came into the room and I was giving her some last minute information about Kate's schedule when a contraction hit. I breathed through it and started talking again and then suddenly there was another contraction. A really hard one.

"That didn't seem like three minutes," my mom said. No, it didn't. And on the 10 minute drive to the hospital I watched the clock on the dashboard and realized that suddenly, these things were coming about two minutes apart. Maybe less. And they hurt. A lot.

"I just hope I'm far enough along to get an epidural" I said to Dan. And I laughed. Again.

We parked our car in front of the hospital entrance and left it there, since it was 3 a.m. and it didn't seem it would be in anyone's way. Dan said he would come back and move it once I was settled in. On the way to the elevator we had to stop twice so I could hang on to Dan during contractions. Same thing as we walked through the doors of the labor and delivery floor and into the line of vision of Lola (not her real name), who turned out to be my labor and delivery nurse. Later, Lola would tell me that she had seen me coming, "With your pillow and your purse and I thought 'That girl isn't EVEN in labor.'" Oh, Lola. If you had only known.

But at the moment I am not noticing Lola because I am meeting the midwife on call for our practice. She has a resident with her, and the two of them ask me a few questions. We actually have a really nice chat and everything is very low key. I have a contraction and turn around to lean on Dan and breathe through it, which I apparently do with some measure of control because the midwives comment on how well I'm coping. They say they'd like to check to see how far along I am before the next contraction. So I get myself on that awful short, high little triage bed and the resident does an exam during which a kind of confused look comes over her face. Now I will later come to give this woman high, high marks for her bedside manner and presence of mind during what's about to start happening, but as a patient you don't want to see someone looking confused when they are examining you. I am thinking this when suddenly it's my turn to look confused.

"I'd say you're at seven centimeters," the resident announces. I laugh. She has to be wrong. I tell her she's wrong.

But she isn't wrong. The attending midwife confirms what she said. And suddenly the room takes on a very different tone. Lola the nurse appears to start an IV for a set of antibiotics I have to have because I'm Group B Strep positive. The attending midwife steps out to notify the charge nurse that we'll be needing a room immediately. When she gets back we talk a little about what my delivery with Kate was like and she and the resident take turns trying to estimate how big Isaac is, which is apparently a kind of game people who deliver babies play to amuse themselves. They both peg him around 7 pounds. I laugh. Seven pounds. I wish. No, I tell them, Kate weighed 8 pounds 8 ounces, and I don't have seven pound babies. We agree to disagree. The midwife asks me if I had been planning on a natural delivery.

"I was planning on an epidural," I tell her in my most polite "Woman, are you crazy?" voice. And I will give her credit for this -- she was honest. She said they'd start the necessary lab and paperwork for an epidural immediately.

"But all of that takes a little time, and it's possible that by the time we're set up, you'll be so far along that we'll have to forego the epidural. If it's any encouragement, you are progressing really quickly, and I think he will slide right out."

I think this might have concerned me a little more if at that moment Lola the Nurse had not distracted me by utterly failing to place the IV, poking me about six times in the process. I was not impressed, but perhaps in retrospect I should thank her for giving me something to focus on other than the thought that OH MY WORD we might be about to have a natural delivery. Still, Lola and I did not get off on the right foot what with that whole IV thing, and so I was even less inclined to be patient when she started asking me ninety-nine questions required for admission to the hospital.

Let's hit the pause button on this whole thing for a moment so I can tell you a hilarious true fact: I answered all those questions when I pre-registered for the hospital. I did this two weeks before Isaac's due date in the admissions office downstairs, in the middle of the day, during business hours. I did this specifically because, as I told the woman behind the desk who helped me with the paperwork, and I quote: "I sure don't want to answer all these picky little questions when I'm in labor." Then I laughed. "Ha ha!" I said. NEVER LAUGH, PEOPLE. If you learn anything from this story, that should be it. Because I answered most of those questions again while in labor, and everything was so chaotic that it wasn't until hours later that I remembered I should have just told them that I pre-flipping-registered.

At some point the midwife came back to say that a delivery room was ready for me. Here's another interesting fact: It turns out that those awful little triage beds have wheels on them, and I'm glad because at some point between walking into the hospital on my own power and going through the triage process, the contractions I was having had definitely gone up a notch or 12 in intensity and I am not sure I could have walked down the hall. They were coming so fast together there was almost no break in between. The next few minutes are a little hazy to me, and the next thing I remember is being in a real hospital bed and listening to Lola continuing to rattle off questions, which was just as annoying as it had been in triage. I did pretty well for "What is your social security number?" I held it together for "Have you received adequate prenatal care?" But when we got to "How much weight have you gained during this pregnancy?" right in the middle of a contraction, I totally lost it. "ARE YOU KIDDING ME? I DON'T KNOW!" is all I managed to get out. What I should have said was "Seriously, at this point, does it really matter how much weight I've gained? Enough to hurt you if I could get up off this bed, that's how much, lady!" But even though I was not at my most articulate, Lola somehow sensed that this would be a good time to cool it with the questions already. Yep. Nobody asked me aaaaaanymore questions.

It's a good thing too, because right then my water broke.

I think that was the exact moment when I knew we were about to have a baby the old fashioned way, sans drugs. I also knew that once my water broke, things were likely to get really intense, really fast. I'm glad I knew that, because it prepared me in a minimal sort of way for what happened next, which is that the next contraction I had was so unbelievably, body-rockingly strong that I discovered what would be my main coping mechanism for the admittedly short duration of the labor: Screaming. I have never made that kind of noise in my life. A few hours later when we were on the mother-baby floor filling out paperwork I realized that my voice was hoarse and my throat actually hurt from the screaming. In between contractions I would think how horrible this must sound for people down the hall from me and that I should apologize or try to hold it down or something, and then the next one would come and I would scream even louder. It was the only thing that helped.

I am pretty sure that from the time my water broke until the time Isaac was born was less than an hour. During that hour, our midwives were champions. Since it was apparent that I was not going to make it long enough to have an epidural, they jumped in and started coaching me, and coaching Dan on how to coach me, with breathing suggestions and ways to cope through each contraction. This made such a huge difference for me. I really started out hearing a voice in my head telling me that I could not do this. I mean, people train for natural childbirth. They take classes. They develop strategies. They learn self hypnosis. I hadn't done any of that! I wasn't qualified to have this baby this way! Who did I think I was? This was not a very helpful voice. And it made it that much more important for the midwives to keep talking to me, telling me that I could do it, that I was doing it, that I was strong. I was on my left side, holding on to the bed rail with one hand and breaking Dan's fingers with the other during contractions. The resident put pressure on my back which felt wonderful. And for the space of a few contractions, I got into this strangely remote place in my own mind. The pain was still terrible, but for some reason I could hear myself thinking really clearly. Given how crazy everything had felt to me just a few minutes before, it was surprising to suddenly have all this clarity. I'm not saying it was blissed-out enlightenment or anything I'd want to experience again, but it gave me a couple of minutes to stop freaking out and get my mind focused for what I now realized I was about to have to do -- get this baby out.

That little period of time felt like suspended animation to me, but it was really probably only a few minutes long because not that long after my water broke, I started feeling incredible pressure. Sure enough, I was 10 cm and it was time to push. I say "it was time to push" as if I made some voluntary decision to start doing that, but that's not really how it went. It was more like my body was throwing itself completely into the process of pushing, whether I wanted to help or not. It was totally involuntary. I have never experienced anything like it. When that started happening, I also got really unhappy with the position I was in on my side. I started to move to lie flat on my back and just couldn't do it. It felt terrible, like I would die if I had to stay in that position, but I couldn't think of what else to do.

In a lot of the birth stories I read, the phrase "listening to my body" came up a lot. And I rolled my eyes. But suddenly I was in this situation that I never intended to be in, and that phrase came to me. Actually one of the midwives said it to me. "Do whatever feels good to you. Listen to your body!" In a more self-possessed moment I might have said that what would feel good to me would be some DRUGS, but sarcasm seemed like a waste of breath at that point. So I turned around in the bed and rested my weight on my hands and knees, thinking I was just doing that in order to find some other position. Surprisingly it actually felt a lot better to stay that way. However it also momentarily made the contractions stop, and I completely panicked and started asking if this was OK, if I could be in this position. The midwives assured me that this was a perfect position to be in. They raised the head of the bed up so that I could lean on it, which was really helpful, and then the contractions started again.

Looking back, I know that I pushed for less than 15 minutes, which couldn't have been more than 10 contractions, and that at that moment I was so close to the end that it was all but over. Still, that part feels really long in my mind just because of what a psychological uphill battle it was to gear up to push each time, to push harder even though it made the pain worse, and to not get discouraged when I would feel the baby's head move down and then back up again. I knew that was normal, I had read about it, but oh my goodness it made me think he was never going to come out.

Now I would like to take a moment to acknowledge what an incredible trooper Dan was. We did NOT prepare for this, people. Our basic philosophy about baby birthing has not changed since Kate was born. That philosophy, in case you didn't read about it or have forgotten, is called "Heck no, we don't want to see the placenta." Or anything else for that matter. When I was thinking about trying to have a natural birth on purpose, Dan was supportive, but I think there was a certain sense of relief for him when I decided to just have the epidural. But when it became obvious that we were not going to be having the kind of birth we had planned, he was incredibly calm, and that helped me. He still parked himself up by my head and told the midwives he didn't want to see anything, but I appreciated his head-of-the-bed policy because I needed him up there with me, to keep telling me I could do it. It was actually really brave of him to sit right there. Believe me, it wasn't pretty. Lesser men would have run away.

So back to the end: After one particularly long contraction, the midwife told me that the baby was going to come out in one more push, she just knew it, and when he did they were going to hand him up to me, so to get ready to hold him. I sincerely thought she was lying to me, but if she was, it worked. I put everything I had into pushing when that next contraction came, and then he was out. Everyone cheered. I collapsed on the bed in total relief and exhaustion, and true to her word, the midwife handed the baby up to me immediately.

That's how we met our son. He was pink and perfect and so wide awake and alert, staring back at us with big eyes. The midwives were saying how pretty he was, and what a beautiful birth it was, but I could hardly hear them because I was shaking all over and my ears were ringing. Turns out all those women I laughed at while reading birth stories are right about the high of natural childbirth. I felt great. I felt like electricity was running through my body. I felt like I could fly. Mostly I just felt amazed that I had done it.

Our son was born right as the sun started rising over the mountains. He latched on and nursed for a half-hour while we looked at him and laughed with the midwives and said over and over again that we couldn't believe everything that had just happened. After a while, they weighed him, and when he came in at 8 pounds, 5 ounces, we laughed about that. See? No seven-pound babies for us! I had to rub it in since the midwives had been right about everything else. Lola went to the window and opened the blinds. Sunlight filled up the room, and I thought how nice it was of her to do that. Then she went to asking me more danged questions. Always with the questions. But I didn't mind so much this time.

What was the baby's name, she asked, poised to make his little hospital bracelet. His name is Isaac Daniel, we said.

And Isaac means "laughter."

Epilogue: Last week I went back to my midwife for my followup appointment. Mostly we talked. She wanted to hear the whole birth story, and was so pleased to hear how well everything went for us. I did not have the hemorrhaging I had with Kate, and I have just generally felt so much better so much more quickly after Isaac's birth that it has truly felt like a miracle. Again, we give the glory to God for answered prayers.

My midwife asked me if I would plan a natural delivery for our next child after having experienced it both ways. To which I said "What next child? I am never doing that again! We're done!" OK, not really. The truth is that I don't really know what I would plan for any future births. I don't consider myself a natural childbirth diehard, and if I were faced with a long, difficult labor again I might go for the drugs. My labor with Isaac was really only very painful for a few hours, and I have no idea how women endure that kind of pain with no end in sight. What I do know is that we will be choosing a midwife if we can. I cannot place a value on how big a difference the women who cared for us during the pregnancy and birth made for us. When I left my midwife's office last week, she hugged me. So did her nurse. These are people who really invested themselves in us, and I am profoundly grateful for that.

With Isaac's pregnancy and birth, I learned that things can be different a second time around. If any of the women reading this take one thing away from this story, I hope that is it. A difficult experience does not have to define childbirth for you. If you aren't happy with something, make a change. Every birth is different, and you have no control over that. What you can control are the choices you make. Read. Inform yourself. Don't settle for a caregiver who doesn't want to be a real partner with you or makes you feel like they don't have time for you. Whether you see a midwife or a doctor, find someone you can communicate with and who listens to you.

Lastly, if you're shooting for a natural birth, I give you this encouragement: If I can do it, anyone can do it.

At 3 a.m. on the morning of April 23, Dan and walked out of our house into a freezing cold spring night and got in the car, on our way to the hospital to meet our son.

That is how I will start the story of Isaac's birth when I get there. But in the final weeks of this pregnancy and particularly since his birth, I have been reflecting on what a completely different experience the last nine months were compared to when we were expecting Kate. In both of our childbearing experiences, we have been incredibly blessed to have healthy, uncomplicated pregnancies and safe deliveries. That really is what matters most and we give all the glory and praise to God. However, from a logistical perspective, the biggest difference between this time and last time was the model of care that we chose for this pregnancy -- a midwife instead of an OB-GYN.

While I was pregnant with Isaac, I was surprised by the questions I got about this choice. Would the midwife have a doctor helping her at the delivery? (No, not unless I need a C-section for some unforeseen complication.) Did my midwife send me to get checked for gestational diabetes? (Of course.) Would my midwife let me get an epidural if I wanted one? (I'd like to see her try and stop me.) And we'd be having the baby at a hospital, right? Really? (Yes, really.) It became apparent to me that there are a lot of misconceptions about the work and qualifications of midwives. The most common misconception I came across was that midwives only attend home births. I am all for home birth. I know a lot of people who choose that setting for their deliveries, and if you want to have one, I think you should be totally supported in that. It's a really personal decision, and as a couple Dan and I know we're not up for that. The midwife who took care of Isaac and I was part of a large practice split evenly between midwives and OB-GYNs who do hospital deliveries. Still, the questions I got made it clear that people really do think only doctors are qualified to deliver babies.

The questions also made me realize that not everyone lives in a state where midwives are well integrated into the health care system, and that New Mexico is actually pretty progressive in this area. According to the American College of Nurse-Midwifery, in 2004, the most recent year for which statistics are available, there were 177 midwives at 119 nurse-midwifery practice sites here in New Mexico, and certified nurse midwives delivered 7,977 babies, 35 percent of the babies born statewide. To pick out another state for a not-so-random comparison, my home state of Mississippi reports just 25 midwives attending at 3 percent of births in the state. Without spending too much time on the many and complex reasons for the state-to-state differences, what I'm hoping to accomplish with this little narrative is simply to talk about what my experience with a midwife was like so that anyone who isn't familiar with the model of care can hear at least one personal story about it. Because I believe information is good. Journalism. It's hard to get out of your system.

One thing I want to make clear is that OB-GYNs do very important work. Right now, I am following online the stories and prayer requests of two friends whose babies have been born prematurely due to various serious issues that arose during pregnancy, and I am thankful that they and their babies have had gifted, compassionate doctors managing their care. Should I ever have a pregnancy that is less than straightforward, I will seek out the services of an OB-GYN in a heartbeat. But in the United States, we structure pregnancy care in a way that funnels even healthy women and babies to an OB-GYN, a specialist and surgeon who is trained in the management of medically complex pregnancies. In most of the rest of the developed world, healthy women having healthy pregnancies are seen by midwives, and OB-GYNs are reserved for women who need their expertise. Again, there are a lot of reasons for this that people other than me have addressed much more eloquently than I could do. (There's a great documentary called The Business of Being Born.You could start there if you want to learn more about this issue.) As for me, to tell the first part of Isaac's birth story properly I feel I have to back way, way up and talk for a while about some of the things we experienced during Kate's birth that lead to us making different decisions this time around. There will be some recurring characters from that birth story, so if you want to read it to start with, go here. And now, Part One of Isaac's birth story, which I call "Why I Broke Up With My OB."

A final note: I realize that by doing this, I am forever alienating my remaining three male readers. I'm sorry guys. I know. I'll try to make it up to you later. Feel free to excuse yourselves. I totally understand. OK. So ...

Part One

When I found out that I was pregnant with Kate, we were on a Christmas trip visiting family in Mississippi and Texas. We had been talking about starting a family for a while, but I had not given any thought to what I wanted for prenatal care. Thus began chapter one of our first pregnancy story, which, if it had to have a title, would be called "How Not to Pick a Doctor." Here's what I did. The first morning we were back in town, in 10 minutes I found between getting ready to go to work and getting in the car, I did a quick Internet search to see what OB-GYNs our insurance would cover. I definitely wanted a female doctor, which narrowed the field considerably. Like down to one. Her professional bio was impressive (Ivy League, spoke several languages fluently, etc.), and so that morning I slipped out of my office to make a phone call and get the first available appointment ... three months away. Perhaps this should have been my first red flag, but I was too flabbergasted to really process much. I did ask the receptionist if there was anything I should be doing in, you know, the entire first trimester of the pregnancy. Anything the doctor usually told new patients? Prenatal vitamins? "Nope!" she said. "See you in March!"

When I did finally meet my doctor, three months later, I really liked her. She was very intelligent, personable and obviously very good at her job. This is what I gathered about her in the ten minutes I spent talking to her during that first appointment, and to this day it's still all I know about her even though I was her patient for nine months. I realize that a doctor's job is not to become my best friend. But the tenor of office visits in this practice seemed designed to impress upon you, the patient, that everyone was in a big hurry, most especially the doctor. I quickly learned that if I had questions I had better write them down and fire them off while the doctor was moving through her checklist of things to do during each of my prenatal appointments. Once she was gone, I was left to communicate with her via her nurse, a woman who greeted me at every appointment by asking if I was pregnant month after month until I was so huge that the question was absurd. It didn't exactly make me feel like I had a personal connection there.

Me near the end of my pregnancy with Kate.

Aside from some heavy duty morning sickness in the first three months, we sailed through the pregnancy. As the summer of 2007 wore on (and on and on and on it seemed to me, giantly pregnant in the hottest months of the year) we began making plans for the delivery. I had chosen my doctor because she was a woman, not considering that since the rest of her practice consisted of male doctors, there was a pretty good chance there would be a male doctor at my delivery. I wasn't thrilled about this. With apologies to the many gifted male OB-GYNs of the world, my feeling is that the only man I really want in my delivery room is my husband. The rest of you I don't want to see. But since we couldn't control that, we did make the very good decision to hire a doula through the hospital's in-house doula program. (Score another point for living in a progressive state -- this program was very affordable and the doulas were well-respected by the medical staff at the hospital rather than being treated like intruders into the process.) At least I would have one female professional in the room.

And if you read Kate's birth story, or if you want to head on over and read it now, the doulas surely did earn their money. The short version is this: I was in labor with Kate for more than 24 hours. It was long, slow and frustrating. I had an epidural after about 16 hours, which incidentally is also about the first time I saw a doctor from my practice. Then in the last half hour, a male doctor who makes a brief and mostly humorous appearance in the birth story as I wrote it then materialized out of nowhere to deliver the baby. He was very competent. He was courteous. He did good work. But I have had more warm personal encounters with cashiers at the grocery store than I had with that man. I do know that it had been a very long day on the labor and delivery floor. We gathered from the nurses that some unheard-of number of births were taking place at once, and it's possible he was just exhausted. Still, if your job is to bring life into the world I would hope that you actually enjoy it on some level, and that didn't really seem to be the case for this guy. Maybe he would have made a better accountant. He had the bedside manner for that.

The story as I wrote it then ends when Kate was born, and there are some good reasons for that. The main one is that I am not really one for disclosing super personal facts online. That sounds hilarious considering that I blog under my real name and have basically chronicled our entire marriage with photos on this blog. You'll just have to trust me that there is plenty I don't write here. But what happened after Kate was born actually had a big impact on my decisions down the road, so I'm going to briefly sketch it out here. Look away if you are squeamish.

In the moments after Kate was born, we were totally elated and relieved. We got a quick look at her before she had to be whisked to the side of the room to be checked out by a neonatologist because there was meconium in her amniotic fluid, no doubt caused by the stress of the long, difficult labor. The specialist handed her back to us as soon as she could, but in the meantime we began to notice that my doctor and the nurse working with him did not have the look of people who feel that things are going well. I say we noticed this because they weren't talking to us, only to each other, which was very disconcerting. After a few minutes, Dan asked directly what was going on and we were told that I was hemorrhaging, and they were working to stop that, but that they were also arranging for a transfusion, as it was beginning to look like one might be necessary. Shortly thereafter, things did improve and the transfusion was called off. But we were in that delivery room for a long time after Kate arrived, and it was because our very competent but not very communicative doctor was working on me. When it was all over he gave instructions that I was to be kept for observation before being transferred to a room on the mother-baby unit, and we sort of flagged him down and asked what had gone on. He gave us a brief and not especially reassuring rundown on what my issues were and then left. We never saw him again.

In Kate's pregnancy I became very anemic. I was given iron supplements, but the only conversation I had with anyone from the practice about that was with the nurse, who called to tell me my blood work indicated the anemia and that I should go get some iron. Anemia on its own is a really common, non-serious complication in a pregnancy, but mine didn't respond very well to treatment, and when I lost the amount of blood that I did during the delivery, it became a significant problem. Interestingly the most informative and helpful conversation I had about that fact was with a midwife who checked me out when I was in the hospital, read my chart, and then gave me some advice about how to help my body build itself back up. Even so it was a really long time before I could exert myself physically at all without becoming completely exhausted. That combined with the normal sleep deprivation that comes with having a newborn fueled what I now believe were a few months of mild postpartum depression. I was so happy to have Kate in our lives, but I also felt physically terrible, emotionally worn out and afraid that I would never feel OK again. Meanwhile I felt guilty for feeling that way. I went to my six week checkup, which was as much of a blur as my prenatal appointments had been, and that was that. It never occurred to me to mention any of what I was feeling to my doctor. Why would I? We didn't talk.

When I write it all out like this, it sounds like it must have felt like a bad experience at the time, and I must have been really upset about it all. Really, I wasn't. It was my first birth experience, and I had nothing to compare it to. For all I knew, everyone felt this way after having a baby. But in the two years between Kate's birth and when I got pregnant with Isaac, I did a lot of thinking about what I wanted to be different the next time around. Clearly, setting out without any real goals had been a mistake -- all I wanted was a female practitioner, and in the end I didn't even have that at my delivery. Obviously, I was going to need to take a lot more ownership of my care. Maybe it's something to do with being an English major, but for me that process started with doing a lot of reading. In talking to other women, I noticed that the ones who had been cared for by midwives seemed consistently happier with the experience they had. So I read about midwifery. I read about the history of childbirth care in the U.S. I read birth stories, lots of birth stories, mostly from people who had natural births, which I still had no interest in having. Holy cow those women were crazy, going on about the high of natural childbirth. "Whatever, hippies!" I thought. But it was informative. It made me realize that things could be different. More than anything, it made me wonder why I should choose to see a doctor when I am not sick. And when I found out that I was pregnant in August of 2009, I didn't even look for the phone number of my old OB-GYN practice. Instead I called a friend who had told me how much she loved her midwife.

I knew I had made a good decision five minutes into my first appointment. My midwife came in and sat down. In a chair. It didn't seem like she was in a hurry. She asked me where I was from, and how I felt about being pregnant. She asked about my previous pregnancy. Had I had any complications I wanted to talk about now? Did I have any major goals or desires for this pregnancy? How did I feel about my previous birth experience? How did my toddler feel about the new baby news? Did I like staying at home with Kate? We talked for probably a half an hour. It was shocking to me. I kept expecting her to jump up and run out of the room. And maybe she's just really good at her job and she couldn't care less about all that information, but by the time I left I felt like this was someone who going to really be there for me in the next nine months. That was a great feeling.

Around the same point in my pregnancy with Isaac. I would like to thank Kate for keeping me on my feet non-stop during this pregnancy. Thanks to her, I gained about 20 pounds less this time than I did when I was pregnant with her. Two-year-olds would make excellent personal trainers.

To wrap this up, my entire prenatal experience was different during this pregnancy. I told my midwife up front that avoiding the severe anemia and hemorrhaging that I experienced in Kate's pregnancy and delivery was a big priority for me, so from the start I was on iron supplements and eating in a way to try to help my body absorb as much of the nutrients I needed as possible. When I still had trouble keeping my levels at a good place, we got even more aggressive with the iron, and while that wasn't a fun process for me (Iron does awful things to your system), it gave me some confidence that I was at least doing what I could to be in better shape this time around.

As the final weeks of the pregnancy rolled around, we had a lot of conversations about what I wanted for labor and delivery. I didn't want to be induced. I wanted to labor at home as long as I could because last time around we were at the hospital for hours before there was any reason to be. Once I got to the hospital, I wanted an epidural. A good one. When I was done listing my demands, my midwife filled me in on the plans to help avoid a hemorrhage -- what medications would be on hand, what they were for, and what I would experience if they became necessary. I was still really anxious about the possibility of going through that again, but the communication helped me know that if it happened, the midwife taking care of me would know exactly what to do. Moreover I felt sure that we would not be left to guess what was being done to me should some intervention become necessary.

My mom came into town to help with Kate on April 19. On April 22, I went to an appointment with my midwife. And then the story took on a life of its own. So stay tuned for part two, posting tomorrow.

A few quick photos of Isaac, who is two months old this week. I keep trying to get pictures of him smiling, but it's hard because generally when he's smiling he is also kicking his legs and flailing his arms, turning himself into a blur of baby. Meanwhile every picture I take of Kate captures the back of her head. So Isaac gets to monopolize this post.

The boy has definitely established his love of thumb sucking, but unfortunately he can't reliably get his thumb in his mouth or keep it there.

So sometimes he has to settle for a finger.

Sweet, sweet sleeping baby.

And now, I'm off to sleep myself.

In the last week we have taken some video of both of the kids and thought we'd post a clip of each of them here in hopes of keeping our mothers from disowning us.

On Saturday, we went to the Explora Museum, which is a children's museum dedicated to hands-on learning in science, technology and art. Or, as Kate thinks of it, the place with the giant bubble-blowing station.

Previous to Saturday's excursion that was her favorite part of the museum, but I think we may have a new winner. Towards the end of our visit, Dan and Kate walked ahead while I stopped to tend to something for Isaac. When I caught up with them, they were in a part of the museum dedicated to demonstrating various aspects of light. I had never taken Kate there before, assuming most of the experiments would be over her head, and many of them are. But what I didn't know was that in the heart of that section of the museum they have a mirror room. Yes. A small room covered from walls to ceilings, with mirrors. Stepping into it as an adult is pretty horrifying since it enables you to see yourself from every possible angle. I could not get out of there fast enough. Kate, on the other hand, has zero inhibitions and possesses an abiding faith in her own fabulousness. And so perhaps it will come as no surprise when I tell you that Kate LOVED the mirror room. Apparently she has been waiting her whole life to see herself reflected 6,000 times. We had to drag her out of there a half hour later. But not before we got some video of Kate singing and dancing ... with herself. This was shot with Dan's I-phone, so it isn't the best quality, but I'm so glad we had a camera.

And while that is a tough act to follow, I caught Isaac in a chatty mood on a recent morning and got some video of him too. Notice his double chin(s).

Isaac is five weeks old today, and to celebrate I thought I'd get it together and take some pictures off the camera. Woo! Big accomplishments! Seriously though, Dan's mom went home on Wednesday, so at this point I'm just happy to have survived two days on my own with both kids. There were points on both days when both kids were screaming simultaneously, but they were brief. One morning I got all ambitious and tried to get out of the house. In order to accomplish this I spent every minute from 6:30 a.m. until 9 a.m. getting me, Kate and Isaac dressed and fed, and it was going pretty well until Isaac peed on me during a diaper change. This happens all the time because more than a month into this I have still not mastered the art of changing a boy's diaper without incident. This time I made the rookie mistake of stripping him down and picking his naked self up so I could move all the wet linens out from under him, and that's how he pooped on my clean shirt minutes before I thought we were about to get in the car. That set our departure back by about 30 minutes, so all told it only took us three hours to get out the door. Needless to say the house pretty much looks like it has been ransacked by vikings most days. But I'm optimistic we'll find our new normal in ... I don't know ... a year maybe. I appreciate all the encouragement I've received from moms of more than one. It's good to hear that one day this will seem less like a complicated circus trick every minute of every day.

And now, pictures!

Grammy and Isaac.

Isaac is starting to give us some real smiles, which is so much fun.

But those sweet little newborn sleep smiles are also pretty amazing.

Kate has been keeping it fabulous.

Since we're not quite ready to move Kate into a big girl bed, Isaac has no real room and has been sleeping in a bassinet in our walk-in closet at night. When it's time for a nap I just put him down on whatever flat surface is available. Poor neglected second baby. Of course sometimes he gets our whole king size bed to himself, so it's not all bad.

And now, back to the circus!

Since it's been almost two weeks -- TWO WEEKS -- since I last blogged, I have come to a few conclusions. Let me share them with you:

1. This is the 700th entry on this blog. That's a lot of entries, and I'm proud of that number, especially since it has recently occurred to me that I may never write anything meaningful again. This is both because my brain no longer works and because I never have both of my hands available. I think fondly of the days when I used to write things ... sentences and paragraphs. Sometimes whole coherent stories. I like words. But clearly they are gone forever.

2. My new turnaround time on answering email, returning phone calls, and other social niceties is about 10 days. I base this on the fact that this is how long it took me to respond to an email in which a sweet friend was asking to come by, visit, and bring us a meal. Ten days to say "Yes, please do that, what a lovely offer." I will be lucky to have any friends left in a few months. Not that my family should feel left out of the neglect either. Here's another true fact: My sister Hannah and her husband Daniel got flooded out of their Nashville apartment two weeks ago. (Short version: It was bad, but they were safe and are fine now and all moved into a new dry place.) I knew all about it because my mom and dad were here at the time and phone calls updating us on the status of things were happening constantly. But it took me until yesterday to actually get on the phone and talk with Hannah about the loss of her home in a natural disaster. OH MY WORD. Thanks for still taking my call, Hannah. You are a better sister than me.

3. Since they are making it impossible for me to get anything else done, it is a good thing that my kids are so cute. And seriously, people, they are adorable. So in lieu of any intelligent commentary, here are some photos from the last couple of weeks.

Isaac gets to know Dangles the Monkey, the fifth member of our family.

Kate has started having little morning chats with Isaac. Mostly, this consists of her calling him "buddy" and asking how he's doing. If he so much as flinches, she comes running up to tell me that he is hungry and I should feed him. Good advice.

Isaac and his Gam. And while we're talking about my mom, I should take a minute to say that I have no idea what we would have done if she had not been willing to come and spend three weeks cooking, doing laundry, playing with Kate and basically running the entire Wachdorf establishment when Isaac was born. Dan's mom is here now taking the second shift of the same job and it is amazing to have that kind of help. I'm pretty sure we'd be eating hot dogs three meals a day and wearing dirty clothes if our moms weren't so willing to love us this way. To repay them, we completely failed to get either of them a gift for Mother's Day last week. Like I said, we are really knocking it out of the ballpark around here lately.

Isaac and his Geez discuss four wheelers and other manly things.

Isaac is three weeks old now and is still a very happy, content baby. Unless he's hungry. Then life is very very tragic for 30 seconds or so. Then he's happy again. And pretty cute too.

And with that, my time is up. Thanks for checking in.

Dan and Kate are at church this morning, and having gotten a shower, I feel I can take on the world ... or at least blog a few pictures before Isaac wakes up from a nap. Here are a few shots from the week we've all spent together at home.

The verdict is not yet in on whether Isaac prefers his fingers or his paci. Maybe both. I'll keep you posted.

I know. I'm taking pictures of my baby's feet. But they are so cute!

Since I went with the feet shot, I figured we should document the hands too. Because behold, they too are cute.

Some daddy cuddle time. They were watching the Spurs beat Dallas in the playoffs. It was pretty great.

Kate continues to monitor Isaac's medical condition. I'm not sure if you can tell, but in this picture, she's got her little play blood pressure cuff on him from her pretend doctor's kit. She checks him out a couple of times a day and pronounces that he is OK.

A quick update on Kate, while we're at it. Thank you so much for your prayers and encouragement. The second half of the week has been much better than the first. I think every day that we are home together and she feels more secure that we're not going anywhere makes things better. There is still a lot of adjusting to do, and things will change a few more times before we get to what our days will really look like from now on. The next milestone is that starting tomorrow, Dan will be back at work. Please keep praying for us. I won't be on my own with both kids since my mom is still here and my dad comes into town tonight. After that Dan's mom is coming to spend some time with us, and that will be great. But Dan going back to work is a big step toward the normal swing of things, so pray for that transition. It has helped to have Kate keep doing as many of her normal activities as possible. For instance on Friday evening, she went to Skipper Club at church and made this fabulous crown, which she has been wearing incessantly while announcing that she is a queen. I do not know what I am going to do about that child's low self esteem.

And one last shot of the little guy, who is looking forward to meeting his Geez and hearing all about four wheelers and hunting and all the other testosterone-oriented activities that await when he and his cousin Clark get a little older. He's excited. I can tell.

Hi, everyone. When Dan ended our last blog post by saying that I would post again after I got some sleep, I kind of had to laugh. Because, seriously, we have a newborn. I might not blog again until the next presidential election if sleep is the deciding factor. But then last night Isaac actually put in some decent chunks of sleep -- nothing to go out and run a marathon on, but enough that today I find myself able to think in complete sentences. Meanwhile, family and friends are sending me increasingly edgy messages demanding photos. I really am trying, but I keep having this moment where I think "I want to take a photo of that!" and I'm on the couch with the baby and the camera is nowhere in sight, so I just have to let it go. That's actually what life is like a lot right now, which I seem to recall is normal with a new baby in the house. So here are a few of the shots I have managed to take of our adorable baby boy. Hope they get you your baby fix for the day.

Since we have a two-and-a-half year old paci addict, we thought we'd just go for broke and give Isaac one too. Maybe next year we can send them both off to paci rehab.

One of the freakiest things about new babies is how much their appearance changes in the first few days. With Isaac, every day we think he looks a little more like Kate did as a newborn. This photo in particular reminds me of some we took of Kate in her first weeks. He's not her carbon copy, but he's definitely our kid, as I reminded Dan when he made some crack about contesting paternity when we were filling out birth certificate paperwork in the hospital. Hilarious.

A rare eyes-open shot. Isaac so far is a very laid-back baby. Obviously, at one week, it's hard to say what his long term temperament will be like, but so far he is just the sweetest, snuggliest thing ever. Unless you take his clothes off and he gets cold. Then he pees on you. I should know.

Kate has little sessions with Isaac a few times a day, and she is so careful with him.

Several of you have been kind enough to inquire as to how Kate is adjusting to her new sibling. I have to say that the first two days after we came home from the hospital were really, really rough. She wasn't upset about the baby -- she likes Isaac and is super sweet and gentle with him. I am thankful for that. But the amount of my time he takes was really upsetting to her and there were a lot of meltdowns in the first 48 hours, both hers and mine. Yesterday was a much better day, and today has been good so far as well, so I'd appreciate your prayers that we can continue to improve.It helps a lot that my mom is in town and has taken Kate on outings and then handled the household stuff so that we can spend as much time with Kate as we can during the rest of the day. If you want to tell me your stories of how your oldest totally adapted to the new baby within a few weeks, please go ahead. If your oldest freaked out every day for six months after the new baby, please don't tell me. I am trying to think happy thoughts here.

One of these days, I am going to blog about Isaac's birth. But right now, I think I have the opportunity to go eat a sandwich if I play my cards right. Thank you so much for your love for us. I shall endeavor to do a better job of documenting our new little man.