I was perched on a birthing stool, and had been pushing for an hour already - Rhiannon was born at 12:38am (less than an hour to go). What a trip.

It's so hard to believe that she will be two years old tomorrow. My water broke on the morning of the 23rd, and I didn't really want her to be born on the 23rd. It just seemed like an "off" day to me. After she was born, I heard one of the midwives tell Dave she was born at 12:38, so I was happy to learn that it had become the 24th during the process.

Rhiannon's birth was the single most amazing experience of my life. It was pure emotion, pure adrenaline, primitive, primal, natural. I labored in a tub of warm water, and I let go and let the water wash over me, let the surges rise and ebb, rise and ebb, until I couldn't tell that there was ever a pause. Each one felt as though it knocked the wind out of me; there's a reason they tell laboring women to breathe. But there was no pain. There were little bursts of panic, when my rational mind tried to control my body, stop the contracting, give me my breath. Then I remembered that my body knew what it was doing, even if I didn't, and that I had to let it do its job. Eventually she was coming; the birthing process was slow, probably for a reason. Her head was molding into a perfect cone as it went, decreasing its girth. My body was squeezing the fluid from her lungs during her long descent, preparing her to breathe air for the very first time. Her head slowly stretched my skin, allowing it time to rest before stretching it some more, making sure not to damage me. Once her head was born, her body came in one fast movement, causing me to gasp with the speed with which I was suddenly emptied. Then I pulled her gently from the water, and looked into my daughter's eyes for the very first time. They were deep and black, and looked right into me. In that moment, I felt the measure of who I was; it was as if I had just glimpsed my own soul in her eyes. And I was never the same.