Rowan is six months old today. How weird is that? She’s one half.

I celebreated my half-birthday growing up, because there is a huge difference between six and six-and-a-half. I don’t celebrate my half-birthday anymore. For one thing, people would look at me like I was more than a little special if I told them I was thirty-one-and-a-half, and for another, my half-birthday is September eleventh, which has ceased to be a very festive day.

But I am all excited about Rowan’s half-birthday. I sang Happy half-birthday to you when I got her out of her crib this morning, and she thought that was sort of interesting.

Six months is such a major milestone. We have come so far in such a short time.

There is a newborn baby in our building. A lovely little girl, Ana, who is not quite two weeks old. She is having trouble eating properly and is not gaining weight as she should. I have been offering as much support as I can to her Mum, ’cause I remember how scary and difficult those days were.

It is hard to believe, when I look at my little Pork Pie, that she was so fragile and tiny so recently.

Those first days and weeks were so hard. They were also long, and I thought at the time that I would be worrying about Rowan’s eating forever. I never really believed we’d get to this place, where she’s so big and fat and healthy and rosy that I never worry that she gets enough to eat. Now, those first few weeks are a blur like labour and delivery are blurs.

Speaking of those blurs, I have not yet really written Rowan’s birth story at all. I’ve told it to many people, and referred to various bits of it on the blog, but I’ve not yet organized it into a cohesive whole. I think that maybe I should, before it blurs too completely. I want also to have it to share with Rowan, so it becomes a part of who she knows herself to be. The story of my own birth was told to me many times, and has become a big part of my identity.

I will attempt to tell the story of Rowan’s birth now (I warn you, this is very very very long).

On 01 June 2004, one week before my due date, I woke at quarter to four in the morning. I had woken many times in the night for many months for many reasons. I had a perpetually full bladder and heartburn that could have etched diamonds. I had aches and pains in my back and hips from the forty pounds I’d gained. I had some weird nocturnal Braxton-Hicks contractions where I could see and feel the whole baby in relief on my tummy from her toes to her shoulders. This day I woke for none of the these reasons. I felt a whole different kind of crappy.

When I got up to assess my state of crappiness, I discovered that I was losing my mucous plug. I knew that it could still be a few days before there was a baby, so I went back to bed. I was very excited because Things Were Finally Starting to Happen. I did not wake Michael, neither did I sleep anymore myself.

I lay in bed, trying to rest, from four o’clock to six o’clock. During that time, I had a couple of painful contractions, and I started to get pretty excited, so I got up. Once I got up, the painful contractions went away. I had contractions every twenty minutes or so, but they were friendly little Braxton-Hicks-type ones. The mucous and blood continued to work its way out, so I knew that things were still happening, but I wasn’t sure if I really was in labour. Just in case, I had a shower and washed my hair and shaved my legs.

I called our friend and doula, Meghan, at about seven-thirty and told her what was happening. She was pretty sure that I was in early labour, but was also pretty sure that it would take a while. I blogged and emailed and killed time for as long as I could. Then I woke Michael with the news. He was less than impressed. He was not uninterested in the fact that the baby was coming, but was not so enthusiastic about being woken at eigth-thirty-seven in the morning if I only might be in labour. He later assured me that if I had been able to wake him with the guarrantee that he would be a father in twelve hours, he would have leaped out of bed. I’m not sure I believe this because I have never once seen Michael leap out of bed for anything. I have to beg him to get up on Christmas morning, for heaven’s sake.

He did get up, and we talked and blogged some more. I did my early labour project of organizing all the photos of my growing belly into a single entry. We called some friends and family members to keep them apprised of the situation. We also called the doctor’s office, and they moved our regularly scheduled appointment up so that we would be the first ones seen when the doctor arrived. We walked a few blocks to the store, hoping that would help move things along. The contractions started coming a bit more frequently, but they still didn’t hurt. I got a bit ‘drippy’ on our walk, but I wasn’t sure if my water had actually broken or not.

Eventually, we went to the doctor’s office. We took a cab. The nurses were all very nice to me, even the nasty one. But she made me pee in a cup, and that was very unpleasant. The lovely Doctor Nicole said that she thought I was in early labour, and would give me a look-see, just to be sure. She would also do a pH test to confirm whether or not my water had broken. She never did that pH test, because when I lay down on the table, the baby’s head dislodged a little from plugging the hole, and a fairly generous puddle immediately formed. Doctor Nicole took one look under the paper sheet, laughed, and said, “I won’t have to do that test. That’s pretty diagnostic.”

She did an internal exam and ’stripped the membranes’ a bit. I was about 2 1/2 cm dilated, and hardly effaced at all. She said she was going to put me on the induction list for the next day, because my water had broken. That was at two o’clock.

We didn’t want to wait a whole day longer to have our baby, so we walked the six blocks from the doctor’s office to the bus stop, and then the six blocks from the bus stop home. During this time, the contractions had sped up in frequency, and were coming every four to seven minutes, and they still didn’t hurt. We were walking along the street and I would say, “Ooh. Contraction,” and Michael would look at his watch and say, “Four minutes,” and we would keep walking.

We stopped for a frappuccino and had a few conversations with my Mum and Stepdad, who were on their way in to town. They had been planning to take us out to dinner, but decided to stop at their hotel and just check in quick before coming straight to our place.

About a block-and-a-half from home, active labour started. There was no perky little “Ooh contraction” from me. I handed Michael my jacket and my wallet and my damned frappuccino and I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk for however long it took. I could do nothing but have that contraction. There were a couple more like that before we made it into the apartment. That was probably about three o’clock.

Once we got inside, I tried to relax and drink my frappuccino, but it made me want to barf. I hadn’t thrown up once my whole pregnancy, and I wasn’t about to start, so that poor blended coffee was doomed to never be finished. I had another shower, but the water felt so good that I only stayed in for half an hour or so. I knew that if I didn’t get out soon, I never would. I camped out on my knees on the couch and ordered Michael around for a while. I had him call people and fetch things and then drop everything to rub my back during the contractions, which were still every four to seven minutes apart.

I had been advised to labour at home for as long as I could stand it, and I felt like a big wimp, but at about four-thirty, I had reached that point. We just waited for my Mum and Stepdad to arrive, and when they did, Michael told them not to bother looking for a parking spot, but to take us to the hospital. They did, and that was very nice of them. I was not very nice to them, but I was a bit distracted.

I got all checked in to the hospital at about five-thirty. I was examined by a very competent nurse and a very nervous medical student named Jesse, and was discovered to be fuly effaced, but dilated only three cm. The opinion of everybody but me was that this baby was not coming until the next day. The staff wanted to give me demerol and send me home. I would not take demerol. It makes me very sick, and I was not giving up on that no puking plan.

Because they couldn’t give me anything, but thought I wouldn’t be having a baby any time soon, the hospital people pretty much left me in a corner cubicle and went about their business. Meghan joined us and my parents went out for dinner. I spent some more time on my knees enjoying my hospital gown and mesh panties. According to Michael, the staff were basically trying to figure out what to do with me because, as Meghan explained to Michael, things don’t really start to happen until you are dilated to five cm. And that wasn’t going to happen any time soon.

In spite of everyone telling me that I was not going to have a baby that day, at seven o’clock I asked Meghan to please tell someone that I felt the urge to push. Then things really started to happen. I was examined again and heard something about ‘just a lip’. Thank God for doulas, because it was Meghan who explained to both Michael and me that I had reached, not five, but ten cm of dilation. I had been promised a good room with a shower, and when I asked if I could have my shower now, Meghan and the nurse told me I had to have a baby first. I was really looking forward to that shower.

Instead, we had to wait a few minutes while the staff completed shift change and Meghan told me not to push and I told Michael not to forget my shoes. Then a lovely nurse named Sheila came running with a wheel chair and wheeled me running to the elevator and to the fancy-pants room which was the only one available.

A few minutes before Doctor Nicole came running in asking if she had time to change into scrubs — and was told that she should hurry — Michael called my parents to come rushing back from the restaurant (they did, with half of their dinner taken to go). She had apparently needed to be paged twice because she couldn’t believe I really needed anything that urgently.

Eventually, Michael and Meghan and Nurse Sheila and Doctor Nicole were all gathered around me and I was given the go-ahead to begin pushing.

Nurse Sheila held my right leg, Michael and Meghan held my left, Doctor Nicole took care of the business end, and I pushed. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Between pushes, we all chatted and made jokes and checked the baby’s heart rate, which continued to be fine, so we could continue joking. We joked about things like Ha ha ha. No you relax your legs while pushing a watermelon out of your body and I think rest is a funny word for what I’m supposed to be doing between contractions when the baby’s head is not retracting like it does in the videos, but is continuing to press really hard against my perineum. Okay, so the jokes weren’t very funny, but we were all under duress. I pushed some more. I pushed so hard that one side of my face and neck became covered in little red spots where all the blood vessels had popped. Then we made more jokes about how we’d never ever believe anything Doctor Nicole said ever again because she promised us a baby in one more push five or six times.

The last push did come, and the baby’s head was out. Her mouth and nose were suctioned and her little body slid out with no more pushing. Her beautiful gooey body was placed on my chest. Michael cut the cord, and she became her own person. She was born at eight-thirty exactly.

She stayed with me for a few minutes, and then had to go off to be warmed just as she was thinking about trying to nurse. Then she was weighed and measured and poked and prodded, since she was already across the room. She weighed six pounds, five ounces and was 19 1/4 inches long. My feeding difficulties have been extremely well documented, so I won’t go into any of that here.

I had some delicious nitrous oxide for the delivery of the placenta and the stitching of the second-degree tear. Once the baby was born, I figured I had done my best and accomplished a drug-free birth. I had also had enough pain for one day. And the nitrous helped maintain the joking mood in the room, and after Doctor Nicole said that when she has a baby she wants to do it just like me, I figured I deserved it.

Meghan ran out to tell my parents that their granddaughter was as bald as her father, and they came in to meet the little miracle. Apparently, their excitment was so contagious that the restaurant gave them their wine for free.

Michael cut the cord again, and spent time getting to know the little one. He also phoned almost everyone we know to pass on the news while Meghan took dozens of pictures.

As soon as I could, I got hold of my baby and held on for dear life.

Once the dust cleared and Michael and I were alone with our daughter for the first time, we talked about her name. We’d had a short list of three names and waited to meet her to see what suited. We quickly agreed that our little one could be nothing but a Rowan. Her second name is for my grandmother and for my great aunt who died during my pregnancy, and her third name is Michael’s sister’s middle name.

Six months ago this evening, Michael and I looked into the little face we had so longed to see and introduced ourselves to Rowan Phyllis Kathleen.