It started with a gentle tap on my shoulder: “I think I’m in labor!” I turned toward her and blinked stupidly: “You’re sure?” The news delighted me, though. For at least two weeks, both of us had been eager to get going. Labor at last! “I’m all wet, and I’ve just had a strong contraction,” Lauren added and shifted heavily. I looked at the alarm clock by our bed. It was 5:25 in the morning on Friday, June 19, two days before the Summer Solstice—Lauren’s favorite day for our baby’s birth. We agreed that the best thing we could do was to go back to sleep, but we kept looking into each other’s eyes and grinning. How could we fall asleep when such momentous things were just around the corner?! To occupy ourselves, we started timing Lauren’s contractions.

They were quite regular: 5:48, 5:57, 6:06, 6:14, 6:22… The pain slowly mounted. At 7:00 we decided to call Mary Pryde, our midwife. She arrived an hour or so later. We were disappointed when Mary examined Lauren: “Only one centimeter.” The dilation of the cervix had barely started. We reassured ourselves that centimeters did not matter and that the important thing was that there was no doubt but that Lauren was in labor. Mary also checked Lauren’s blood pressure—which had been quite high in the last few weeks of pregnancy. It turned out to be fine. Lauren was relieved, because high blood pressure could mean that she would have to deliver in the Royal Berks Hospital—not at home, as planned. The baby’s pulse was also checked with a sonic device pressed on Lauren’s belly. The pulse was alright, too. We were ready for delivery. It was around 9:00 when Mary told us that she would go home and prepare everything we would need later. “I’ll be back in four hours, but make sure to call me if you need anything—anything at all,” she said.

When Lauren emerged from a leisurely bath, I attached the Transcutaneous Nerve Stimulation, or TNS, machine on her lower back, and she found a comfortable setting on the gauges controlling the two pairs of electrodes. We rented this device, acting in a way similar to acupuncture, at the Reading Clinic, not far from our home in central Reading. The current helps release a substance which helps reduce the pain. Lauren’s contractions were palpable, but hardly worrying. Together with our midwife, we expected things to develop rather slowly, so I decided to go to my office at the university and check my mail. Lauren did not mind my absence and set out to bake a cake that she hoped would distract her in the early stages of labor. In fact, the “birthday cake ceremony” was planned many weeks in advance. The recipe came from my mother a while ago. As I was leaving, I felt that she was happy to spend some time alone and savor in peace the early stages of labor.

In the headquarters of my department I found several of my colleagues and told them that Lauren was in labor and that I expected her to deliver that day or perhaps the next. There was much merriment. I spent at most five minutes in my office. On my way home I found myself rushing like mad. The closer I got, the more worried I became about all possible kinds of predicament Lauren could have gotten into. I was away for less than an hour, but when I burst through the door at 10:30 I found Lauren kneeling on the stairs going to the second floor. She was going through a strong contraction.

She smiled to comfort me and said that she had had strong contractions with short intervals between them since 10:00 or so. In the kitchen I found the batter and other ingredients of the birthday cake, but Lauren told me that I should finish it by myself. Her contractions required too much of her. As I was working on the cake, we timed about a dozen contractions and established that they lasted from one to three minutes and that the periods separating them were from one to three minutes, as well. It was clear that we should get back to Mary. Things were moving faster than we had expected. When Mary heard Lauren’s story, interrupted by yet another strong contraction, she said that she would be with us in ten to fifteen minutes.

Lauren and I went upstairs, where we had made all the preparations for birth giving. The arrangement consisted of a large futon, two chairs propped against the wall and placed on the futon, and two small futons rolled into bolsters, which were placed on the chairs. On the wall to the right we hung a huge canvas that we painted together with a friend last summer in the Dordogne. Windows overlooking the Forbury Gardens were to the left. Lauren knelt in front of the chairs and propped herself up on the futons. I knelt by her side and rubbed her back, wiped her face from time to time, and supported her during contractions. The new strength in her arms was truly surprising. During contractions her whole body would twitch violently and it would take all my strength to hold her tight. This is how Mary found us when she arrived, and this is how Lauren delivered our baby—kneeling in a semi-upright position.

By 11:30, when Mary returned, Lauren was very much in labor. A student nurse accompanied the midwife. “Six centimeters!” announced Mary when she had examined Lauren. We were pleased. Much was accomplished since 9:00. She also checked the baby’s heart rate and found it satisfactory. She kept doing this throughout the labor and the baby had never shown any sign of distress. Mary also brought the “gas and air” equipment with her. This device consists of a gas tank with a mild analgesic and a tube leading to a face mask. By this time Lauren needed it, as the contractions gathered speed and intensity. Very soon Lauren’s labor became relentless. Powerful contractions surged one after another, leaving very little time for rest. I marveled at Lauren’s good humor, which did not leave her throughout the ordeal. When Lauren’s doctor came by to see how things were going, Lauren introduced us to each other in the brief interlude between two contractions: “Dr. Johnson, this is my husband, Dr. Bon.” We laughed. The doctor left when it became clear that Lauren would not be ready for the second stage in less than an hour. He left instructions on how to find him.

Around 2:00 Mary examined Lauren again and established that there were one or two centimeters to go. However, an anterior lip had developed. As the baby’s head was already very low, where it had been engaged for several weeks, Lauren had to make sure that she was not pushing before the cervix had been pulled out of the way. Mary taught her how to pant to avoid pushing. “In and out, in and out” she kept saying. The retraction of the lip took an enormous effort and an hour to accomplish. Mary repeatedly told Lauren that she knew how difficult this was, but that it still had to be done. She also kept commending Lauren for good work—for not pushing when the urge to push was overwhelming. Halfway through this increasingly painful process the second bottle of gas and air had run out. Mary’s assistant rushed to the hospital to fetch another bottle and Lauren proceeded to pant. She was left with the TNS machine as the only means to reduce the growing pain. By the time the student nurse returned, Lauren was fully dilated, and gas and air was not needed as much as before. Lauren took a few deep breaths through the mask and then stopped using the device. Mary told Lauren that she could start pushing. It was 3:00 and Dr. Johnson was called back.

The second stage took some time to get used to. Lauren could finally push to her heart’s content, but she had just learned how to avoid pushing. Crazed as she was by the growing pain, the new situation took some time to fully digest. Still, by the time Dr. Johnson returned, and he returned soon after he was called back, Lauren was pushing as hard as she could. The doctor started coaching Lauren on how to push without making any noise: “We don’t mind the noise, but you will have a sore throat tomorrow.” He explained that all the air that escapes with her groaning and yelling was lost to the push she was delivering. He assisted her with every contraction, and the results started showing very soon.

At length, the baby’s head came out and just hung out there, immobile. I was struck by its size. Mary told us afterwards that she had had hard time getting the baby’s shoulders out, an indication of the baby’s large size. When the body finally slid out into Mary’s hands someone muttered: “Big boy!” It was 3:50 in the afternoon. He was bluish in color and quite limp. The features that surprised me immediately were huge hands and feet. Later on we learned that he weighed nine pounds. Also, I immediately noticed a resemblance to Lauren’s father, whom I have seen only in photographs. The same strong brow—the “Neanderthal brow,” as I sometimes tease Lauren, who shares this feature with her father, her father’s sister, and her three brothers. Our boy looked very male, very much like a little boxer after a difficult bout. A “stork mark” on his left eyelid accentuated the sporty look.

Although he was breathing—or, better, gasping for air—and although he was languidly moving his arms about, it was clear that the last few minutes of labor had distressed him quite a bit. The sonic sensor used to measure the heart rate had indicated nothing of the kind, however. The doctor and the midwife attended to him with a pump in an attempt to clear his lungs. Apparently he took a good gulp of the gunk that came out with him. Some of it went into the lungs, some into the stomach. Mary told us later on that this happens quite often with big babies: “The bigger the baby, the bigger the gulp.”

Lauren kept throwing worried glances toward our boy. “Is he okay?” she kept asking. I did my best to reassure her. For some reason I did not feel worried about his color and limpness, although he did look rather ghastly. Happily, in a minute or two he was fine and he started crying heartily. Later on we learned that he scored five points on the Apgar scale in the first minute of his life, and ten points after five minutes. There are five items that are scored, each of which can take the value of zero, one, or two. For instance, gray color gets zero, blue gets one, and pink gets two. At first, our son scored one point on color, as well as on the remaining four characteristics—tone, heart rate, respiration, and response to stimuli. In medical parlance, he was “slow” at birth.

The third and last stage of labor was predictably anticlimactic. The placenta came out soon afterwards—sooner than I expected it. Mary helped by gently tugging at the umbilical cord. Lauren delivered the placenta in a reclining position, her back propped against the rolled futons. Strewn about the room, the placenta and the umbilical cord gave the place the look of an abattoir. Blood was everywhere. The midwife and the student nurse went through the placenta with meticulous care, checking all the membranes. The gore around Lauren was quite formidable, but it impressed neither her nor me. All the while I was taking photographs—in fact, slides, which we will soon be able to see in “real life” size on our living room wall—and I made sure that the carnage was properly recorded, too. I guess I would have reacted to it differently had it not been part of “normal” childbirth.

When our boy was placed on Lauren’s belly, she was shivering violently. She felt exhausted and cold. I was sent to bring her a blanket, which I had a great difficulty finding. Soon afterwards the student nurse asked me whether we had something in which the baby could be bathed. We did not, and I offered her our “adult” bathtub instead. A minute later she returned and told me that the bathtub was not clean enough for a newborn. I rushed to the kitchen to find something with which I could clean the bathtub and managed to find only dish-washing liquid. In the end, our boy had his first bath in the bathroom sink, while Lauren took a long bath in the bathtub.

Dr. Johnson left first, followed by the student nurse. Mary stayed with us a bit longer, collecting and cleaning her instruments and filling out various documents. Before she left she told us that she was going to the hospital, where she needed to put into the hospital computer system all the data about the birth. She told us that she would be back immediately afterwards. By that time Lauren was in our bed and the little one was by her side. Everything looked so peaceful that the tumult of the last few hours appeared inconceivable by comparison.

Only when we were left alone I felt that I could attend to my own needs. I hugged Lauren and our baby and started weeping. Lauren looked calm and beautiful, our son looked content and puffy, like a boxer after an exhausting but victorious match, and I was the happiest man on earth. It felt so soothing to let my hair down and just cry and cry. Having thus relieved myself, I took our son to the room where he was born and showed him the colorful painting on the wall. He stared at it with deliberate concentration and solemn expression.

Our experience was as advertised, as it were, in the literature about home delivery. We were lucky to have a short labor—only 10 hours and 20 minutes, according to Mary’s reckoning. Although the first stage was unexpectedly short and violent, I think longer labor would have been much more difficult for Lauren. We were lucky there were no tears—only a few internal bruises—although our boy turned out to be quite large. We were lucky that everything expected of Lauren and me was within our means. Although Lauren says that at times she had felt that she would not be able to go through it, I felt she was very much in control of her labor. Even though we were undoubtedly lucky about all these things, especially because this was Lauren’s first experience with birth giving, I cannot imagine too many situations in which it would be better to be hospitalized—rendered subject to a system suited for sick people. At home, we felt in control of our destiny. We felt that everyone assisting us was our guest. Lauren did not feel like a patient, but like a healthy woman giving birth to a healthy child. We felt surrounded by competent and sympathetic professionals, but we nevertheless felt that our baby was born into our world.