It was 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, September 21, 1999. I was 8 1/2 months pregnant. My husband and I were sitting in our Prenatal Class at the hospital where we chose to have our baby, listening to the instructor. All of a sudden, I felt a contraction! A few minutes later I felt another one. And then another.

Excitedly, I looked over at my husband and told him that I was having contractions. He looked at me, shocked, and began to time them. Five minutes apart. They weren't very strong, but they were strong enough to let me know that the baby was coming. Two minutes apart.

I raised my hand and told my instructor what was happening. She told us to head up to maternity to get examined.

My husband and I couldn't believe it was happening so soon! We were so excited. I had lofty expectations of my ability to handle pain, so I opted for natural childbirth with no drugs.

We got up to the maternity floor and they escorted us to a room to be examined. The resident doctor came in, and after having his hand up there way too long, he told me I was dilated 3 centimeters! They moved me to a room and put me on a monitor.

My OB/GYN got there around 11 p.m. and, to my dismay, I was still only dilated 3 centimeters, and my contractions seemed to be slowing down. They kept me for a little while longer and at around 2 in the morning, they sent me home because I was still dilated only 3 centimeters and my contractions had stopped. Disappointed, my husband and I headed home.

I tried to sleep but I couldn't because my back was killing me. Wednesday went by, and still no more contractions, but my back was still hurting.

Thursday morning, after another sleepless night, I got up around 7 a.m. Wham! I was hit with a contraction that stopped me in my tracks. Then another one. They were about three minutes apart. I told my husband, "I think we need to go back to the hospital."

I called my OB/GYN and she met us at the hospital. She examined me again and I was still only dilated 3 centimeters. She said I was having a prolonged latent phase and she said that she was going to break my water to get things going. What a mess!

About eight hours after my water broke, there was still no progress. So the resident doctor gave me Pitocin to speed up the process. An hour later I was in a lot of pain. The contractions were coming fast and furious, almost one right on top of the other. I began screaming, over and over. I felt like my body was being torn in half. I lay on my side and rocked back and forth on the bed, writhing in agony. I yelled for an epidural. My husband was beside himself. He'd never seen anyone in so much pain.

The resident doctor examined me. I was dilated 8 centimeters! He said that it was too late for an epidural to be administered. The nurses prepped the bed for me to deliver this baby. They called my OB/GYN and I started pushing with all of my might. It was 3 p.m., September 23, 1999.

After 20 minutes, everything was going well. "The head is crowning," the doctor said. All of a sudden the baby's heart rate dropped below 100. Everyone was worried, especially me. The doctor said, "You have to get this baby out. he's not handling labor very well. Now push!"

I pushed with everything I had in me. I felt myself tearing open as I pushed. Then all of a sudden, I couldn't push; the baby was stuck. His heart rate dropped again. My OB/GYN was still not there. The resident doctor tried to vacuum the baby out. I've never felt such pain in my life. I screamed in pain as I tore even more. Unfortunately it didn't work. Blood spattered everywhere.

The resident doctor said, "We're going to have to do and emergency Cesarean section." My husband was terrified. He was ushered out as I was prepped and taken into the operating room.

A frenzy of activity was going on. My arms and legs were strapped to the operating table. "I hope my husband is OK; he seemed really scared," I thought. The nurse put a mask over my face and told me they were going to administer the general anesthetic. I could hear it hissing. Then, I stopped breathing.

The nurse said, "Come on, honey, breathe."

"I can't breathe."

"Jodi! Breathe!"

I was paralyzed but still conscious. "I can't breathe! I've got to tell them that I can't breathe! Oh God. I'm going to die. I'm going to see Jesus today. I'm going to die. My poor husband, how's he going to take care of a baby?"

I felt the doctor make the incision in my abdomen. "Oh God, I'm scared. I'm so scared. I'm going to die. Oh Matt, I'll miss you. I hope you know that I love you. How can I tell them I can't breathe? I've got to tell them I can't breathe!"

All of a sudden, I felt my hand move, then my leg and then my head. I was going into convulsions. The nurse put a breathing tube down my throat. I could see the nurse squeezing the air bag to the right of me. I could feel the doctor ripping through the layers of my abdomen. The last thing I remembered was one of the nurses saying, "Oh God." Then I blacked out.

I opened my eyes a couple of hours later. I was alive, but I was in tremendous pain. I asked the nurse if the baby was OK. She told me he was fine and asked if I wanted to see him. Of course I said yes!

He was so beautiful! My baby and I were alive and I was so relieved. (I later found out that my OB/GYN arrived just in time to sew me up.)

The next few days were kind of a blur. I was on some pretty heavy pain medication. When we got home, everything started to fall apart. He was colicky and all he would do was cry for hours. It was the most horrible feeling, knowing that I couldn't comfort my own baby. I felt so inadequate. We finally found a formula that he could tolerate and the colic subsided.

Nobody had ever told me that it would be so hard. Society paints a picture of happy mothers with content babies and everything is supposed to be wonderful, but that is so far from the truth.

Only two weeks after the birth of my baby, I was thrust into a pit of depression. I wanted to die. I felt so empty, unbearably empty. I began binge eating to try to fill the emptiness inside me, to no avail.

Then the flashbacks began. Several times a day, especially at night, I relived my labor experience, going over every detail in my head. I couldn't go near my baby because he reminded me of what I went through.

I was also having horrible, disturbing dreams about killing my son. I dreamt about cooking and eating him, cutting him up into pieces, drowning him and smothering him. Dreadfully, these thoughts started to manifest themselves during the day, sometimes while I was holding my son. I would have to put him down because I was so afraid I would hurt him. These thoughts and flashbacks plague me on a daily basis for six months. I thought I was going insane.

I became irrational and I actually thought about what would happen if I killed my son. "If I kill my son, my husband will be upset, so I'll kill him too, and then I'll kill myself. Then we'll all be in Heaven together and everything will be alright."

I knew that my son had no control over what happened to me. But the primitive side of me, the side that is concerned with self-preservation, saw him as a threat to my body, and to my survival. Because of him, I almost died. (Not to mention his life was in danger as well.) Because of him, I had horrible pain for weeks. Because of him, I was thrown into the depths of despair and saw death as my only escape. Because of him, I had flashbacks of my terrifying birth experience for months.

I was scared of him, of what he did to me, and of what I wanted to do to him. Inside I felt somehow flawed. This is supposed to be a natural, normal part of life and I screwed it up. "There must be something wrong with me," I thought. Why were there so many women who had babies and were fine? They were so happy. Why wasn't I?

So for six months I isolated myself from the world. Every night I would go to bed, praying that I wouldn't wake up in the morning. The only reason I would get out of bed was that my son was hungry. I was a shell of the woman I used to be. I just wanted it to stop. I wanted to die.

I convinced myself I was the most horrible mother on the planet. I didn't dare tell anyone what I was feeling, because I must be crazy and I knew for sure that they would take him away from me. I was paralyzed with my fear, so I trudged through the months after he was born completely alone.

Fortunately, when my son was about 6 months old, the flashbacks, nightmares and terrible thoughts subsided. But I still wanted to kill myself. I fanaticized about it. I planned how I was going to do it to the last detail. Even the thought of my husband finding me in a pool of my own blood didn't make me want to live.

When I got pregnant again, with my daughter about a year later, I was overwhelmed with fear. I knew that there was a good chance I would go through the same emotional torture after I had my daughter that I went through after having my son. I opted for a scheduled C-Section because I just couldn't go through labor again. But this didn't calm my fears.

When I was about 6 months pregnant, I started having panic attacks, and I couldn't sleep at night. I cried all the time. I knew how empty I felt after I had my son and I dreaded feeling that empty again. I dreaded going through the depression, the nightmares, the horrible thoughts and the solitude.

Finally, I did reach out to a friend from church, and I told her everything. She referred me to a Christian psychiatrist. I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) caused by childbirth, and put on Prozac. I reluctantly took the medication and went to counseling. I thought that since I am a Christian, I shouldn't need medication. I felt somehow guilty for needing help. Jesus should be enough for me, right? But, out of fear, I took the medication anyway. I couldn't survive another episode like that again.

The pills ended up helping tremendously. Still these thoughts plagued me daily: "If I kill myself, I won't have to go through any of this. It will just be over."

I had my daughter on August 7, 2001, by a planned C-section. She was so different from my son. She was not colicky at all and was a very pleasant baby.

Two weeks after I had my daughter, however, my worst fears were realized. The depression and the emptiness set in. Then the thoughts of smothering her began. I couldn't even be in the same room with her because I was afraid that I might hurt her. Again, I wanted to die.

One night at about 1 in the morning, I was holding my 1-month-old daughter, and saying goodbye. I had decided to kill myself. I couldn't go through this again.

I looked down at my daughter and I started sobbing. "My daughter needs a mother," I thought. I cried for about an hour, just holding her. I couldn't bear the thought of her growing up without a mother. My focus had shifted from my needs to her needs.

I called my psychiatrist the next day and told him what happened. He increased my medication and I saw my counselor two days later. This helped a lot. I am still on medication and I go to counseling when I begin to feel out of control.

Today, I love my son and my daughter with all of my being. I could never imagine hurting a hair on their precious little heads. They are truly two of the most important people in my life. When I look at my scar, which stretches down from my naval, I still remember the fear, the pain and the despair. But I am not crippled by it anymore.