This will be the story of Lilah’s birth. It has been a year since I wrote Rowan’s birth story, so it seems like a good time to tell her sister’s.

If you were reading a year ago, and left me a lovely comment, please remember that Michael had a boo-boo and I do still have all your kind wishes safe from crazy husbands in my inbox.

Sunday, 30 October was the day after my due date, and everyone was more than ready for this baby to be born. Rowan having arrived a week early, we had expected something similar the second time around and had been on any minute baby-watch for what felt like forever. And it wasn’t just me who’d had enough of being pregnant this time. My mother, who never got sick of her own pregnancy, and didn’t understand my impatience with Rowan, came to me that afternoon and said, “I’m bored. I think you should have that baby already.”

Maybe that’s what ‘Probably Lilah’, as she was then known, was waiting for. That evening, just as I’d hoped it would happen, I put Rowan to bed, had dinner and went into labour.

We finished eating at about six-thurty, and the intense contractions started immediately. We were watching a movie, and I didn’t want to get anyone’s hopes up unnecessarily, so I just kept my eye on the clock ’til the end of the film. By the time Johnny Depp and Mary Stuart Masterson were happily ironing their grilled cheese sandwiches together, the contractions were about ten minutes apart, so I filled Michael and Mum in on the situation.

Michael called his Mum and sister to let them know what was up, and to warn Ginnie that she might be called upon for a run to the hospital. The contractions were slowing down a bit, though not easing up, and sitting there with people looking back and forth between me and the clock was getting pretty boring. I wasn’t sure whether or not I was ready to go to the hospital so we decided to wait and see how I felt after The West Wing.

By ten, the contractions were not especially regular, but were getting pretty intense, so we called Ginnie to come get us, figuring that it couldn’t hurt to get my progress (or lack thereof) assessed.

We got to the hospital at about eleven, and found the labour and delivery ward, where I said to the nice nurse at the desk, “Hello. I’d like to have a baby, please.” She laughed and said, “That’s not really how it works.” Michael told her that’s how it worked the last time and she said that she’d better check me out then.

I was given some lovely green gowns to wear and parked in a cubicle. At eleven-thirty, a lovely young resident named Erin came along and examined me. She told me that I was only 1 cm dilated, but pretty effaced, and that I would probably have another small baby, judging by the size of my bump. She also said, though, that she could feel the top of the baby’s head, even though I was only at 1 cm. I had been telling people that the baby felt really low, and I guess I wasn’t imagining things. Since I apparently had so far to go before giving birth, I was not admitted to the hospital, but asked to wait and be reassessed in two hours to see if things were progressing.

While we were waiting, Michael phoned Mum, who phoned my Dad and Stepdad and Cheesefairy to keep them up to speed, and Ginnie ran home to update her Mum and to pick up her camera because we had forgotten ours. I lay on my side and felt the contractions getting stronger with passing minute. They got so intense that I spoke to Michael about how he would feel if I choose to use pain medication or even an epidural. If they were this big at 1 cm, I wasn’t sure I’d make it to 10 without assistance. Michael, marvelously, told me that he would, of course, respect any choice I made and support me through labour however I needed. He is a good man. And he really wants to help. He learned with Rowan that I don’t respond well to the backrubbing that it is recommended for partners to offer a labouring woman, and he always asks me if there is anything he can do to make it easier for me.

What I needed from Michael was simply for him to be there. I also squeezed his finger during the contractions. That helped me stay focused and relaxed. Just a brief word of advice for anyone out there who will soon be attending a birth - Let the woman squeeze ONE FINGER at a time, not your whole hand. It will hurt everybody a lot less.

At about quarter to one, the friendly nurse, Kathy, poked her head into our cubicle and asked how things were going. Michael told her that the contractions were getting stronger and closer together. She decided to give me a look-see, even though the resident wasn’t scheduled to reassess me for another forty-five minutes. I was discovered to be at 7 cm, and whisked off to a delivery room, with no stopping to actually be admitted to the hospital.

Once we were in the delivery room, we got to meet the actual obstetrician on call. I don’t seem able to have my babies delivered by the doctor who has provided my pre-natal care, but that’s okay. The doctor doesn’t really need to do anything, anyway. The doctor on call was a middle-aged pompous blustery type, whom I sure most women find fatherly and comforting. I don’t go in for that sort of thing, and I think the doctor was a little put off by my lack of awe and helplessness. I wasn’t rude, then, just chatty and casual and not at all cowed by his great store of knowledge. He broke my water and went away. Michael told me he used a very big crochet hook to break my water. I didn’t look.

The amniotic fluid came pouring out of me, and the contractions continued to intensify. I took a few hits of the gas to help take the edge off. I didn’t really like the gas or find it useful. Rather than easing the pain, it made me feel sort of disconnected from my body, and that seemed somehow wrong. Nevermind that, though, after using the gas through three contractions it was time for pushing.

Erin, the delightful resident came back in with the pompous doctor. It was about twenty past one at that point, and I said to Erin, “It’s been almost two hours now, would you like to reassess me now?” She thought it was funny, as did almost everyone else in the room, but I don’t think pompous doctor thought I was showing quite enough awe for her great store of knowledge, either.

After a couple of contractions through which I tried very hard not to push, I was all set up in the stirrups, with Michael on one side, the wonderful Kathy on the other, Erin down at the delivery end of things, and pompous doctor standing there supervising.

I had been a little nervous about having a baby without a doula, as our friend Meghan had been so helpful when Rowan was born. This team did great, though. Michael cheered me through the pushes, and assured me that I could do it when I said I can’t, and Kathy repeated encouragement right into my ear the whole time.

The first contraction of actual pushing got the baby’s head half-born. This pushed her body so low that I could no longer hear her heartbeat through the fetal monitor strapped to my belly. I kept saying that I couldn’t hear her heartbeat, and the pompous doctor, for reasons unknown, kept telling me that the baby wasn’t born yet. I was fairly aware of this fact, as I could quite clearly feel her cranium lodged half in and half out of my vagina. Michael understood what I was talking about, and assured me that he could still see and hear her heartbeat on the monitor.

The second contraction of pushing delivered the rest of the baby’s head. Her mouth was suctioned and then we waited for another contraction to see the rest of her. Rowan’s shoulders just slid right out of me after the great tear her head made, but this time around, I had to push one more time for the shoulders. Pompous doctor announced, “It’s a girl,” and she was placed on my chest while Michael cut the cord.

She was born at one-thirty-eight am, Monday, 31 October. Hallowe’en, yes. Also All Hallows Eve and Reformation Day. She was taken off to be weighed and poked, and was discovered to weigh in at eight pounds. Not such a small baby, by any standards, but she must have been really low to fit in a 36 cm bump.

Erin examined me to check for tears and prepare for the delivery of the placenta. This is an ouchy sort of exam, and I thought I would need stitches again, so I asked if the gas could be brought back over (being detached from my body while needles are being stuck in my vagina does not seem one bit wrong to me). As it turned out, I didn’t tear at all, and needed no further medication than some extra-strength Tylenol, but pompous doctor scoffed at my request for gas, and said, “For the placenta?” in a snarky tone that seemed to imply that I was the world’s biggest wimp. At this point, I had had exactly enough of the pompous doctor, so I asked him rather pointedly if he happened to have labia that someone was currently poking. That seemed to give him exactly enough of me and he went away.

We could then get on with the important task of enjoying our new baby. We got one good look at her dark curly hair and knew that she was definitely Lilah. Ginnie came in to meet her second niece, and the phone chain was repeated to let everyone know Lilah had arrived.

When she was brought back to me, she started to look a little hungry, and nursed eagerly with very little prompting. Kathy the lovely nurse helped me to have a shower, and Lilah nursed again before we even left the delivery room.

It was love at first sight when I finally met Lilah. She looks so completely different from her sister, but I recognized her immediately as my baby. It was immediately clear, to all of us, that Lilah had been missing from our family, and we are that much more complete now that she’s joined us.