The night before, I had a friend work on giving me what I'd term "restorative" massage to prepare for things. It made me feel like I had an edge, even if I really didn't, I felt like that, and I felt like anything that gave me that was worth having.

They checked me and I had gotten to 3.5 cm, lost some effacement and station of the baby, but I had a little more dilation, so I was pretty excited. I got cranked up on pitocin pretty usually. They increased 2 units every couple hours and by noon, I was starting to howl at the moon. Around 2 or 3, I asked for drugs. I was feeling fragile enough to where I knew that I had a right to them. Mike tried our distraction discussion and I simply looked at him and said,"I'm not fucking around. Just get me the drugs. No distractions." He stopped speaking mid-sentence and got the nurse. They checked me and I was at 4 cm and gave me a round of stadol.

The nurses were the same ones from Monday. Julie came in, shut off all the lights, pulled the curtains, gave me strict orders to stay in bed and sleep between contractions. I conked between them. The meds slowed down the contractions, so they inched up the pitocin. When the stadol wore off, I was screaming again and they checked me again and I was at 5. They gave me the promised epidural.

Now, I have a history with epidurals. The epidural they tried to give me with Russell, simply didn't work. They couldn't hit the broad side of anything when they were doing it and sent shooting pains down both legs. That past scared me a lot and the anesthesiologist was a little too full of himself, but I hunkered down through the contractions, trying to round my back to make it work and finally, blessed relief came.

But relief came at a cost...the baby started to struggle on the monitor in reaction to the epi. The nurse had me turning this way and that and I was totally freaking out. The fucking anesthesiologist kept saying stupid condescending shit, like,"let Tiffany do her job" in response to me saying,"Is she ok?" And finally, after about 15 of the longest minutes of my life, Genevieve seemed to stabilize.

As a result of the epidural, I was feeling good for about an hour and then it simply wasn't working. I got a speech about how the epidural wasn't going to stop all the pain, but I was howling at the moon again, so they increased it and there was no difference. The damned thing wasn't working. I worked and worked and worked through the contractions, wishing the fucking epidural would work, only it wasn't.

And of course, the anesthesia had initially slowed things down, so my pitocin was amped up. And then the bitch of things happened: I stopped progressing.

They checked me and gave me 6 cm, but that's where I stayed. There was no more progress than that. Simply 6.

I worked and howled and worked and howled through hours of blinding pain until I got checked again at 9PM. No progress. The OB was one of my favorites and the only woman in their practice and offered me another hour in which to progress or a c-section. I took the c-section.

Mike told me later when I said give me the c-section, he was trying not to cry. He knew how much it meant to me. At that point, however, having that baby in my arms meant more.

When the doctor did the c-section, she discovered that the baby's umbilical cord was wrapped twice around her neck and said she suspected that that was why things didn't progress because Genevieve simply couldn't drop any more and make things progress along. The other thing, of course, was that if she actually had progressed, they might have had to do an emergency c-section with the hard to heal from vertical cut rather than the bikini cut because the baby might have suddenly been in serious distress.

And of course,the epidural wasn't working, so after the anesthesiologist fucked with the doses and I could still feel stuff, they just put me under with general, which was a sweet blessing. I was too stressed out about the baby's reaction to the stuff and there wasn't a monitor on the baby when they were doing the new epidural stuff. I was scared shitless and actually just asked them to just put me under.

Things worked out the way they should. I labored for as long as I could. I gave that baby 3 days of labor and I worked hard for her. When the labor wasn't working, we did what we had to.

I didn't feel like a failure this time with this c-section. I felt like I gave it the best go I possibly could. I cried a little when I was in the hospital recovering and passed the operating room. I remembered somewhat bitterly, refusing to look into the room when Mike and I got the tour in our childbirth class because I felt like it would be a jinx.

This was different though all the way around. I was with my best friend and partner, who made me feel like a goddess for doing what I did. He over and over again said how strong I was and how proud he was of me. And nothing could ever explain the look of wonder on his face as he held our daughter in his hands and watched her face all night in the hospital as I fitfully recovered from surgery.

Oh, and here's the result: