It was 10 days before my second child was due. My first child was born 18 months earlier with only a five-hour easy labor and weighed 8 pounds. (I'm also very petite, which makes it even harder to believe I did this.)

I woke up about 2 a.m. with painless Braxton-Hicks contractions only. They did not hurt whatsoever, yet I couldn't sleep. About two hours later, I woke up my husband and said, I feel funny; no pain, but funny.

I went to the bathroom. He suddenly ran to me while I was in there and slapped my face, telling me I was grunting. I have no recollection of doing this whatsoever and indeed looked at him very shocked that he was slapping me for no reason.

I got up to get dressed. He called the hospital. They said if I can talk then wait till the pains are painful before calling them back. He hung up.

I was in the middle of getting dressed, when I had one panting contraction, then another. I then recovered from it. While I was walking by my husband, who was kneeling on the floor, he looked up between my legs and noticed I was bulging. The baby's head was beginning to crown. I still was in NO pain, and gave him a what-are-you-looking-so-funny-at-me-for look.

He suddenly yelled at me, Drop, now! and he pulled me to the bedroom floor and told me to push as hard as I could on the next contraction. I was NOT feeling any pain or like pushing whatsoever, and I told him, No, I'm not going to push. Why in the world do you want me to do that for?

Suddenly, I did get the urge to push. My body gave one good push. I was on my left side by this point, and my daughter's head crowned, inside the bag of waters. My husband grabbed the nearest thing to break it with, a comb! He did, her body turned and one more push and she was born.

He rubbed her back to clear her airway and she cried once and promptly fell asleep as she was placed into my arms. She was born so fast that we don't even know the exact time of her birth because of not being near a clock, somewhere between 4 and 4:30 a.m., March 1, 1990.

A few minutes later, the ambulance arrived (hubby managed to call 911 as she was crowning). I was taken to the hospital, the placenta was painfully manually delivered from me and we were both pronounced completely healthy for having gone through such an 'unsterile, precipitous birth.