Before I was pregnant, I was fascinated with pregnancy and childbirth. I remember reading a Sylvia Plath poem as part of AP Engish, a poem which was a riddle about pregnancy, filled with negative imagery. I couldn't figure out that the riddle was actually about pregnancy. “Who wouldn't be happy to be pregnant?” I asked our teacher, who replied, “you'd be surprised.”

In my 20s, I was dying to get pregnant. Bought all the natural childbirth books, too. Kitzinger, Gaskin, I've read 'em all.

And then I got pregnant, and fired from my job for being pregnant. And things weren't quite so rosy. But the third trimester was the best, and I looked forward to giving birth. Took the childbirth class with my darling husband. Read not one, but two different editions of “Spiritual Midwifery.” Sought out non-medicated birth stories on the net. Got Dick-Read's “Childbirth without Fear” from the library, and memorized its mantra of “Fear=Tension=Pain.” Man, I was educated, I was ready, bring on the drug-free childbirth.

And then they induced me, and all my plans to give birth without analgesic pain relief went out the window. Not that I didn't try — I breathed, I got in the tub, I sang, I laughed, we smooched. To no avail. Getting through childbirth drug-free was like getting through college drug-free: a nice idea that didn't happen.

But now, when I meet other women who have had babies, and they ask me if I did “natural” childbirth, and I say no, I had an epidural, they shake their heads and clarify: “I meant, did you give birth vaginally or have a c-section?”