ow that I'm pregnant again, ( just over three months), I've already started dreading the childbirth part.

Such a harrowing topic of conversation from the bathroom stall in third grade to, well, now. Even after going through it once already, childbirth seems like an experience that I'll never quite comprehend or savor even in retrospect.

The last time, I was 39 weeks pregnant when I awoke at 5:00 am with these little pains jutting across and from inside my belly. I waited until 7:00 am before I couldn't stand it anymore and woke my husband, William, with the news. The pains weren't bad at all, just frequent and a nuisance. We timed them on his handy new Iron Man watch bought especially for the occasion: anywhere from 2 minutes to 8 minutes apart. I asked him to drive me to a doctor's appointment already scheduled that day for 10:00 am, just in case I shouldn't be driving or we needed to go to the hospital. We were genuinely excited but I hadn't yet packed a bag, or even read all the chapters on labor and delivery. My preferred state of denial hadn't allowed me to study those pictures of a baby's head coming out of the mother's vagina just yet.

A few days before, feeling like a beached whale, I slipped an exercise video for pregnant women into the VCR and worked up a good sweat. Afterwards, I felt better but my blood pressure shot up and my doctor advised me to quit going to work, put my feet up, and be a bum. This was glorious news since I secretly wanted the time to appreciate my life as it was now and never would be again. Example: the night before this 5:00 am wakening, William and I went to a see Spike Lee's Four Little Girls on the Texas documentary tour and then out to a late dinner. We may get to do this again in 15 years.

I left William in the waiting room while my doctor examined me. He pronounced my contractions to be "Braxton-Hicks," otherwise known as false labor. He said that the pains could last for days and would eventually stop but that he was more concerned about my high blood pressure. "Go home, take it easy. Nothing strenuous over the weekend, okay? (It was Easter weekend). And remember, if you get dizzy or have blurred vision, go to the hospital." The Word spoken, I let William in on the anti-climactic news.

I tried to rest that day, but I had a ton of work to do and those pains wouldn't leave me alone. As the day progressed, my mood worsened. I had been bragging for years about my high pain threshold but these Braxton-Hicks contractions were kicking my butt! What a giant wus I've become.. I did as much paperwork as possible, then called the office and plead for respite. I called a colleague who had a one-year old and asked her about Braxton-Hicks. She said hers hurt so much that sometimes she couldn't even walk through them. Well okay, this is normal. No wonder people get drugs and epidurals during the real thing. If I ever had a question about if I would or wouldn't have natural childbirth, I now had the answer.

As the day wore on, I pulled out all the pregnancy bibles like What to Expect When You're Expecting and studied all the gruesome pictures. I read all the symptoms of real labor and the checkpoints for going to the hospital. I packed my bag.

William called at 7:00 pm or so and asked if I wanted to go out to dinner to celebrate a close friend's promotion. No f***ing way. I can't even sit still for five minutes…how in the hell am I supposed to sit at a table in a restaurant for an hour and eat a meal? Even though I couldn't really sit still long enough to eat and food had lost its appeal in general, I told him to go ahead without me but to bring home some Chinese. When he ate a few bites of my dinner, I ran to the bedroom crying. "What in the world?" he must have thought. It's MINE! My Dinner! Even if I can't eat it, you are going OUT to dinner in 30 minutes anyway. These goddamned pains have been kicking my butt all day and I am TIRED, TIRED, TIRED. (I must have sounded JUST like my two-year old.) I then took a bath.

William came home around 11:00 pm and I was still pacing the floor. It just felt better to walk. The pains didn't seem so intense if I was moving around all the time. He gave me a back massage and I was able to lay down for 30 minutes, the most rest I'd had all day. But at midnight I was up again. (This is where it gets good.)

I must have gone into absolute La-La Land. With all the lights out, the neighborhood asleep, TV and radio off, I turned into a primitive cave woman. I did any physical contortion that would ease the pain or help me get through a contraction. What's odd though, is that I never really thought about what I was doing - the movements and the breathing came naturally. All I knew is that the pains would eventually stop and that I would get to go back to bed and get some sleep. In the meantime, the contractions came so close together and were so intense, that for three more hours, in total silence and darkness, I squatted, crawled, breathed and moaned my way through it.

Finally, at 3:30 am I began to come back to reality. I turned on the living room light, made my way to the bathroom. On the way, I had a contraction so painful that it made me dizzy, and I began to hyperventilate. I woke William from a deep sleep, turned on the bedroom light and said that we needed to go to the hospital. He thought that I was still in false labor, and he got out the checklist. Consistent contractions at 5 minutes apart? No. Breathe. Did your water break? No. Breathe, breathe. Meanwhile, I am trying to reach over my distended stomach and put on socks. I don't give a shit what the book says. It's time to go to the hospital, NOW. I want drugs. And with that, I waddled my way in nothing but a pair of white socks and an XXL T-shirt to the front door.

I opened the door, walked down the front porch steps and got into the car. William came out holding a pair of sneakers. "Don't you want any shoes?" he asked. "It's time to go to the hospital, NOW." Breathe. He went back in and came out dressed, holding a pair of pants. "Don't you want some pants?" "It's time to go to the hospital, NOW." Breathe, breathe. He went back in and came back with my bag. The thing I most dreaded was the 15-minute ride to the hospital, sitting down. So with one hand gripping William's until his knuckles turned white and the other clung to the thing where you hang your dry-cleaning so I could lift myself off the seat, I still managed to advise William on the best route to the hospital, opening one eye every now and then to see if he's on track.

We pulled up to the hospital at around 4:15 am. I waddled up in my socks and T-shirt to the elevator and William, fully panicked, guessed which floor the maternity ward was on. As soon as the elevator door parted and the maternity ward sign appeared, a wail came from my body that to this day surprises me. It was as if all my inhibitions were set free and I was finally allowed to push this mammal out of me.

Then came the TV scene from ER -- nurses flying, charts pulled, me in the wheelchair whizzing down the corridor as fast as the nurse could push me. In the room, shirt and socks off, paper gown on. Hoist the whale up on the examining table. Legs apart. Feet stirruped.

"Were you planning on having natural childbirth?"

"No, Damnit." I said.

"Well you just hold on there. We're going to have you a new baby in just a few minutes."

And then it dawned on me (and William.)

"So you realize there's no time for an epidural," the nurse said to William, whose face turned to a pale shade of fresh snow. She asked William a million questions while we waited for the doctor on call. I wanted to shout the answers but couldn't talk over the contractions. Time in between gave me just enough rest to gear up for the next one.

"Isn't there anything topical you can use, like Ben Gay?" I asked between breaths.

"No, I'm afraid we'll just have to give it the old college try," she said and then offered me ice chips. Ice chips are really, really good things to have around. More contractions, but this time with a death grip on William's hand. FEEL MY PAIN.

In strides the doctor, slips on latex gloves, paper gown, his hands diving between my legs, I push once. "Here comes the Ring of Fire!" he yells, which is the head coming through. Push two…the shoulders, and there she is. At 4:44 am we have a 6.5 pound bundle of squalling baby-girl joy. Just when you think it's over, "Push one more time to deliver the placenta." The last thing you ever want to hear, I promise. Then a nurse comes and pokes on your abdomen to contract the uterus, which is nothing like getting a Swedish massage.

But all the pain is trivial compared to the overwhelming experience of being a couple one minute, and being a family the next. In a way, you are born again. And I promise, as stupid as it sounds, when you push the baby out, you still utter the words of surprise, "It's a baby!"

So the long of it is that I was in labor for 23 hours. But the short of it is that I had the baby 30 minutes after arriving at the hospital with no epidural and no episiotomy. I felt really stupid not going to the hospital until I had dialated all ten centimeters, but listen to your body first, then consult the books. Your body knows best.

People ask me if I will have natural childbirth again, and quite honestly, I'm not sure. Time has erased a lot of the pain. Casually, I might say I did it once, so I could do it again. But I'll just wait and see. It all depends on how this pregnancy goes, what position the baby is in, if I have back labor or if I give birth on my living room floor.

No. 2 will arrive in another 6 months, so maybe I should follow my own advice in the meantime: Try to enjoy the time we have as a family with one child, because once the second baby is born, life will never be the same again.