September 30, 2005 Around 6:00PM We check into Nason Hospital in Roaring Spring. Room 167. It's an LDPR (Labor Delivery Postpartum Recovery) room that is trying very hard to look like a hotel room: tv wardrobe and drawers, writing table and chairs, and of course the infamous recliner, aka "papa cot." took one …

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The sun was bright and warm when we left the midwives office. I wanted to freeze that moment. Three hours was not enough time to stare into AC’s eyes, to hold hands, to walk up the leaf-crunchy trail on Wopsy Mountain, to sit and breathe in the enormity of what we had done, and what we were about to do. It was, …

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Mother- and Father-to-be sat there stunned. A baby this weekend? Now? It was as though they had failed to understand that a baby was the usual outcome of nine months of pregnancy. Then what was the point of all the morning sickness, fatigue, weight gain, oh yeah and the kicking, fluttering, heartbeating being inside? …

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It seems to be fashionable nowadays for new parents to write a birth story, just as it’s become de rigueur for parents-to-be to compose a birth plan. A birth plan is supposed to help keep everyone—mom, dad, nurses, doctors, midwives—on the same page as far as what the pregnant lady does and does not want done to …

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It was a Tuesday. I remember that because I did not have to go to class that day. I awoke long before my husband, saw what day it was, and took the test in the bathroom. A very faint plus sign. So faint that I left the stick on the bathroom vanity and trotted over to my computer where I immediately Googled “faint …

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