Our second pregnancy started out with quite a bang: I awoke in an ambulance one crisp December morning to the sound of sirens and unintelligible words spoken over the emergency radio.  The young attendant told me I had had a grand mal seizure and that we were on our way to the hospital.  Before passing out again I vaguely remember looking at an IV drip in my arm and telling him to take it out because I thought I may be pregnant.

After hours of tests, they finally brought us the only good news of the day: I was definitely pregnant, and the baby seemed to be doing fine despite the traumatic morning.  I was sent home with vials of enormous pills and books on living as an epileptic - my new label.  We spent the next several days researching the effects these drugs may have on our growing baby, and were assured that I was taking an extremely low dosage of the safest epilepsy drug possible.  But the trauma of this pregnancy was only beginning.

Our first son came into the world as a classic, beautiful Bradley birth; no drugs, no artificial intervention, and almost unattended as well!  We had just moved to this tiny, rural town from Los Angeles a couple of months before I became pregnant, and were surprised and thrilled to finally find an obstetrician here who was actually a Bradley supporter.  Unfortunately, severe health problems made it necessary for him to suddenly retire during my eighth month.  What were we to do now?  Only one obstetrician in town was willing to take me - a "high risk" late term epileptic patient.  It was then that our nightmare began.

This man told us that it would be safer for me to have a C-Section because a vaginal birth may cause a seizure.  He said that as soon as I arrived at the hospital he would break my water (per his policy), start an IV with Pitocin and give me two hours to deliver before intervening.  Then on a Friday he said that the baby was huge and I would need to be induced the next week.  We spent the weekend agonizing over how we could escape this doctor, and then Monday he told us that the baby was too small, that he wasn't growing properly and that I would need to be induced immediately.  We suddenly realized that this guy was trying to schedule our birth so that it occurred before he left the country for a vacation in Peru.  We immediately stopped answering our phone and we prayed that we would not go into labor while this man was anywhere near the U.S.

We knew from the moment I went into labor that this baby was destined for a career in either politics or academia: we figured out that that man's plane was probably two minutes off the runway when my first contraction hit!  Our first labor lasted a good 17 hours, so I was planning on at least 10 hours with this one.  After waking my husband's mother to tell her what was going on, my husband and I took a nice shower to ease the pain a bit.  We soon realized that things were progressing much faster than anticipated and that we had better leave for the hospital.  I got no further than the bathroom door when I got down on all fours and exclaimed that I was going nowhere!  While my husband and his mother tried to get me into clothes, I reached down between my legs and announced that I could feel the baby's head.  Suddenly, as if we had rehearsed this scene for years, my husband gently guided Christopher's head out and my hands swept his neck to be sure there was no cord in the way.  I looked down and said "Honey, he looks like your dad!" and we delivered his little belly and long legs into our four waiting hands.  My husband's mother came into the room and gave a little yelp; when she left the room moments before we had no idea how far along things had progressed.  My 2-year old son looked at the baby, looked at us, and said "Mommy, you have a dirty baby!" and went about his 2-year old business. 

Then the fun began.  We called our pediatrician, also a friend of ours, and told him what had just happened.  In our excitement we had forgotten to check the sex of the baby, which we immediately did when he reminded us.  I sat on the floor nursing Christopher for the next half hour until he arrived to help.  He searched the house for something suitable to use to tie off the cord, and when nothing ideal turned up he returned with the leather strap from the barbecue tongs.  We used my sewing pinking shears to cut the umbilical cord, and slowly made our way to his waiting van to take us to the hospital to have Christopher weighed, etc.

It's amazing how some people can turn such a beautiful experience into a crime.  We were told we could not have a birth certificate because no one of any authority witnessed the actual birth.  Then we were accused of doing it at home on purpose, something my neurologist and physician warned me against for months.  Our response was, "if we did it on purpose, then why did we do it on the carpet instead of the linoleum?"  After much consternation, we finally got approval for a birth certificate.

We have had another child since then, and have our fourth on the way.  All have been completely unmedicated births, but none will hold the same meaning as the birth of our little Christopher at home.