When I became pregnant with our first baby I was 28 years old. We decided not to find out the sex of our baby until birth.

I really wanted to have a natural labor and delivery. In order to prepare for a natural birth we signed up for eight weeks of Bradley Method childbirth classes. My parents had successfully used the Bradley Method to have natural deliveries for all three of their children so I had a great deal of confidence in the method going in.

The Bradley Method classes gave us a lot of great information on maintaining a healthy diet during pregnancy, exercises to get ready for labor and delivery and information that we would need in order to make smart decisions about pain management and other options when the time came. Our Bradley instructor told us that there is a time and place for things like epidurals and other interventions but that the key is to educate yourself so that you can choose the option that is right for you instead of the one the hospital wants to push on you as it is their routine or protocol.

I tried to convince my husband to plan for a home birth but he was against it. He wanted to have the safety and security of the hospital in case of complications, especially since this was our first pregnancy and we didn't know what to expect or what might go wrong. I agreed to have our baby in the hospital to ease his mind but we agreed that we'd revisit the option for subsequent pregnancies.

A word on the Bradley Method: In my opinion the best thing about the Bradley Method is that it really teaches you about the physiology of labor and delivery. It helped me a lot to really understand what was happening to my body during labor. I felt empowered and confident in my abilities going into the last trimester of my pregnancy. I was excited and couldn't wait to experience labor and delivery. The bad thing about the Bradley classes we took was that they eroded my confidence in my doctor and made me suspect of her advice when it came to things like pain medication or the use of Pitocin. At Bradley classes you'll hear a lot of horror stories about the use of medication, epidurals or other interventions. As it turned out I had a wonderful, experienced obstetrician who did her best for me and my baby and we had a more natural labor and delivery because of her, not despite her.

I had a healthy pregnancy with no complications. At about 7:30 a.m. on a Friday, eight days before my due date, I was getting ready for work. As I got out of the shower I felt a pinching sensation low in my pelvis. I took a couple of steps and felt a trickle of water leak out of me onto the floor. I wasn't sure if it was urine or if my water had really just broken. I didn't feel any more pain and I had not experienced any contractions at all so far. I decided to continue to get ready for work but every few minutes when I reached for something or took a few steps I'd leak more fluid.

I called my doctor's office and they said that since their office wasn't open yet I should go to the hospital to see if it was really my water that was broken or something else. I wasn't ready for all of that yet and procrastinated a bit. I finished getting dressed, packed my bag for the hospital (why I didn't have that ready yet I'm not sure) and had breakfast. I made my husband stop at a coffee shop and get me some tea. I called my work office to let them know I wasn't coming in and that I was in labor although I still hadn't felt a single contraction.

By that time my doctor's office was open so we went there instead of the hospital to confirm that my water was broken. The nurse confirmed that I was leaking amniotic fluid and said I should go to the hospital – I was having my baby today!

I am very stubborn, however, and I wanted to delay my arrival at the hospital as much as possible. I was also nervous that when I arrived at the hospital with my water broken but no contractions, they would want to start Pitocin or other things and I wanted to give my body a chance to labor at its own pace. I called my Bradley instructor from the parking lot of my doctor's office for a pep talk and some last-minute advice. We decided that a brisk walk and maybe climbing some stairs might get my contractions going.

I made my husband take me to the mall to walk the corridors and the stairs. I stopped at the maternity store there to buy nursing bras and tank tops (again, not sure why I hadn't done that already). Yes, I was leaking small amounts of amniotic fluid all this time! I was using maxi pads to catch the leak as I walked the mall. My husband was doing a great job keeping me hydrated with lots of bottled water. By about noon I was having contractions at regular intervals although they didn't feel that strong and were not at all painful.

We got to the hospital at about 12:30 p.m. The nurse checked and found that I was only 2 centimeters dilated. They wanted me to change into a gown and get hooked up to an external fetal monitor. I declined the gown in favor of my own yoga pants and T-shirt, and I didn't want to get hooked up to the monitor because I still wanted to walk the halls. We agreed that I would be on the monitor for 10 minutes at the top of each hour and then they'd disconnect me and I could continue walking.

As I walked the halls I tried to stay hydrated and ate Jell-o. By about 5 p.m. my contractions were getting stronger and were painful enough for me to have to stop walking and squat down and just breathe through them. The pain got steadily more intense from there. I tried to do the relaxation techniques we practiced but they didn't seem to help me. Instead I had to squat down or get on my hands and knees on top of the bed to get through the contractions. For some reason, those positions felt better.

I just took each contraction one at a time. I did a lot of yelling. It felt better somehow to vocalize, maybe the vibration? I'm not sure.

As I labored into the night I retreated into my own mind and body to deal with the pain. It was hard to talk, to actually get the words out. I totally lost track of time. I couldn't focus on anything but labor and dealing with the pain of each contraction.

We started to run into some problems beginning at about 10 p.m. because I stalled at 6 centimeters for a few hours. The nurse convinced me that a hot shower might help with the pain and help my labor progress, so she got me into the shower and used the detachable spray head to keep a steady flow of warm water going over me. That worked great and when I got out of the shower and she checked I was 8 centimeters.

However, we started to run into some more trouble because I was not tolerating the pain well anymore. I was exhausted and felt like I couldn't take anymore. On a scale of 1 to 10 the pain was a 20. I couldn't take the contractions one at a time anymore. I was getting panicked with each one. At about 3 a.m. I was 9.5 centimeters and I stalled again. We tried every position we could to get my cervix to finish dilating. My doctor even tried having me push through a couple of contractions to try to get pressure to dilate me that last bit. Nothing worked.

My doctor said that my body was tired and that the contractions were getting less effective even though I was still racked with pain and they felt really strong to me. She said I would need some Pitocin to increase the effectiveness of my contractions and make them stronger again. She also said that she thought I was working against myself with each contraction, tensing up and fighting the contractions instead of breathing through them.

Because of this she recommended that I have an epidural for two hours, just to let my body do its work with the Pitocin. She said I didn't need to be in such agony to get my baby delivered safely.

I was crying; I felt like if I had the epidural I would have failed but I was too exhausted and panicked to continue with the pain. My husband wanted me to have the epidural. The sight of me in so much pain was really taking its toll on him too. I agreed to the Pitocin and the epidural.

My Bradley classes had taught me all about the bad things that can happen with an epidural. I expected my legs to go completely numb and to feel paralyzed from the waist down. This was not the case. I could feel and move my legs and wiggle my toes although I couldn't have stood up or walked. They did have to hook me up to an IV drip for fluids and I had a catheter for a short time right before pushing. Yuck. But the pain relief was immediate. I could still feel pressure from the contractions but I was able to sleep through it for two hours.

At about 5:30 a.m. the nurse turned off the epidural and checked me. I was fully dilated finally. The epidural wore off very quickly and I could feel the contractions coming. My doctor came in and we pushed for about two hours. I loved pushing! The contractions were very painful again, of course, but there was a lot of relief in pushing through them. I had a nurse holding one leg and my husband holding the other, and my doctor was there to talk me through everything and cheer me on. She also used mineral oil to stretch my perineum between contractions to reduce any tearing and to try to prevent the need for an episiotomy.

When my baby was almost crowning he became stuck in the birth canal. I was not that surprised – I'm 5 feet tall and a small person. My sister had a similar problem with her first baby and it resulted in a Cesarean section for her.

However, my doctor never even mentioned a C-section as an option – even after 24 hours of labor with my water broken the whole time. Instead she asked if I'd let her use vacuum extraction. I said yes and she used it for one contraction. My husband got a good look at this and is slightly traumatized from it. He said it looked really harsh but I was in pain from the contractions and from my baby being in the birth canal and did not feel any extra pain from the use of the vacuum.

I didn't see her use it – I had my eyes closed and was pushing as hard as I could. With the next push my baby's head was out and of course the baby was born with the next couple of contractions. This might sound strange but it felt so good when our baby's little body came slithering out with a gush of hind waters! It was the most amazing release and relief ever.

My doctor announced that it was a boy! He was perfect and very alert – the photos of him lying on my stomach immediately after birth show him with his eyes wide open looking around. He weighed 6 pounds, 11 ounces and was 19 inches long. He stayed with us in the labor and delivery room for an hour after his birth and we tried to nurse but he had absolutely no interest yet. He had a very strange looking cone head from the vacuum extraction but this returned to normal within a couple of days. I had only slight tearing requiring seven internal stitches.

My doctor came to talk with me the next day and said that if my son had been any bigger I probably would have needed a C-section as my sister did. However, she also said that my next delivery will probably be easier, even with a larger baby. She asked if I was feeling really bad about the epidural. I was and still am a little disappointed, but I'm so glad that she got us through it with no C-section and no episiotomy.

I have to give her a ton of credit because she was patient with me throughout a very long labor and didn't give up on my wishes at the first sign of difficulty. I now know that without the epidural, the Pitocin might not have been as effective and I might have ended up with a c-section. But this will not stop me from trying for a natural delivery our next time around!

My son is 6 1/2 months old now and he is a wonderful, easy-going baby. My husband and I are trying for our second baby now and I can't wait to be pregnant again!

I know this was a long story but it has felt very good to get it all down in writing. I hope that if you've made it through all my rambling that I've helped you to prepare for your upcoming labor and delivery in some way or helped you to reflect on your past birthing experiences. Good luck!