Isla's birth story.

Isla's birth story is straightforward, and blessedly without surprises -- just as I wanted it.

As if we were heading to SFO, on the morning of September 7th D and I packed methodically, cleaned out the fridge, and called an Uber. We assured the driver that it was not an emergency. He was a cheerful guy and cracked the "labor on Labor Day" joke, and when he apologized for the cliche, I told him I still thought it was funny. It was a quiet morning with minimal traffic, the city sleeping in after their Labor Day beers and BBQs the day before. We rode, unimpeded, along the route we'd driven ourselves countless times in various states of mind -- anticipation, anxiety, panic -- since February of this year. It was a surreal ride.

We checked in at 10AM, leisurely. Our nurse got us settled into a large, clean room and went over a bunch of paperwork with us. Then it was just waiting. I skimmed a book and texted pictures of the L&D suite to M to pass the time. The doctors started me on misoprostol and told me they'd give me up to four doses, four hours apart. The first dose came at 1PM. I waited expectantly, remembering how quickly things had started moving with Mila, but the few contractions I felt were sparse and fizzled out. At 5:30PM I took the second dose. I stared at the clock; I'd thought I'd be in labor by that time, but I felt only the gentlest, most tentative of tightenings. By the time I took my third dose at 10PM, I was losing patience and worrying about what would happen if the induction didn't take.

I needn't have worried. At 10:30PM I finally felt something. An upset stomach, I thought at first, but the pains were too regular and rhythmic. Eventually the contractions were unmistakable on the monitor screen. I was 3cm dilated, and the doctors left me to progress on my own.

Things really started to hurt. I hunched over the bed to relieve the growing pressure on my back. The sound of the fetal heartbeat monitor through the gathering haze was distant but reassuring. I inquired about pain relief but everyone seemed to think it was too soon for an epidural, and the nurse offered me a couple of doses of pain relief via IV. They took the edge off for a little while, but remembering how quickly things went with Mila, I insisted it was time to pull out the big guns. And not a minute too soon -- I found out later that the anesthesiologist was called into a c-section right after she saw me, and even as she prepped me, the pain began to snowball in a way that felt familiar.

Once the epidural was in, I slept for a couple of hours, until it began to wear off on my left side. Not long after that, I felt what seemed like a head bearing down. I remembered the sensation from Mila's birth. I called the nurse and things started happening quickly after that. Pushing took about twenty minutes, and as Isla advanced, the docs started setting up the table for the baby, spreading plastic under me, and calling in the attending doctor. He arrived a few pushes from the end, in time to say Congrats, you did it! and rush out to his next birth just as Isla's head was emerging.

The doctors maneuvered her body through, and Isla emerged, as grey and slimy as Mila had been. But unlike Mila, as she tumbled out onto the plastic sheet, she squalled -- and then, just like that, we were in wholly new territory. I cried and cried as they plopped her on my chest and turned their attention to the afterbirth, but as far as I could see, D was all smiles.