Epiphany!

Today was our birth class reunion, where we met up with five of the seven other couples that we had spent nine weeks learning about childbirth with (which is a pretty good showing, considering we're all new parents and some of us are sleeping through the night better than others). Brunch was had, babies were shown off, and birth stories were shared. I was amazed to discover that after those nine weeks of education approaching propaganda about natural childbirth, we were the only ones that had had a birth free of intervention. As I listened to these women's stories, I could not believe how they had been tested, and how lucky we had been in contrast. We're talking three-day-long labors, hours and hours of pushing, pitocin and an epidural or a narcotic or even just morphine to get a few hours sleep, some ending in caesarean, some not, but all true marathons of labor. Mine was a sprint by comparison. The woman who had taught the birth class commented after we told our story, "Isn't that funny that you came into the birth so concerned about your family history of c-section and then you wound up with the most uncomplicated birth in this group!" It is funny. If I felt lucky before, I feel positively blessed now. That is my epiphany on Epiphany.

Today my doula also sent the photos she took at the birth, so it's been a pretty special day to revisit it. I will share some of the cleaner ones here. The ones that are less fit for public consumption get me all choked up looking at them, as though it wasn't fully possible to realize what I had done before I seeing it recorded in the third person. I'm so glad she took these pictures. If she'd asked me for permission, I would not have given it to her (I didn't think I wanted those kinds of photos), so I'm glad she didn't ask. But here are the sweet, PG-13 ones.