A week ago today I woke up wanting to nest.

A week ago today I decided that this was the day to bake a groaning cake.

A week ago today I started monitoring my body, scanning my body, feeling my body in a totally new way. By about 2:30pm I knew something was different. The cake was almost done and I was starting to clean the dishes and put everything away. A girlfriend called me and suggested that maybe I start writing down the time of each contraction to see if there was a pattern.

Four to five minutes apart for two hours.

I called Jeff and told him he should probably come home. I didn’t want to jinx anything so I had a hot bath to see if I could slow things down, to see if this was the real deal. The heat that normally would slowly remove the feeling of contractions in previous weeks wasn’t working the same way. They were only getting stronger and becoming more frequent.

Inside, I knew that things were starting to shift and that the tiny person I had been carrying for 10 months and 2 days, was finally ready for our first blind date.

Ten hours of labour at home. Our tiny person was sitting posterior, the back of her head against the back of my pelvis. This is said to be one of the most challenging labour positions and is sometimes not realized until you are too far along in labour without any real progression. This was the case for me. Contractions coming closer and closer together without breaks in between. Double contractions, that are usually a sign of very active labour, were hitting me harder than I could have ever possibly imagined and I wasn’t even halfway there.

Fourteen hours of labour at the hospital. Talk of c-sections, of baby’s position, of things not progressing, of the baby being in distress. I asked the doctor for three more hours. Three more hours to focus, to breathe and to connect with the baby and see if we could make some magic happen. Three hours passed and still no progress. I asked for one more.

I closed my eye and I visualized. I thought of space, of shifting and of movement. I had our doula put in acupuncture points to help turn the baby right side up. I asked this baby to work with me so that we could finally meet one another in the most natural way possible. Twenty minutes later I felt the most incredible urge to push. When the nurse checked me, the baby had not only turned but the head was right there. We did it, and we were all ready to meet her.

The entire thing wasn’t a blur. I don’t not remember. It just seems like this wild dream. It seems like this incredible space that I was able to be a part of for twenty four hours. It was one of the most painful and awesome things I’ve ever done.

And at the end of it all, Jeff was able to turn to me and say “you have a daughter”. The tiny person that had been moving and kicking, shifting and learning with me this whole time was a little tiny girl.

When she was finally curled up in my arms, I was just staring at her. I looked at Jeff and we both just sort of knew. The name we had been thinking of all along would suit her pretty perfectly.

I gave her a kiss on her forehead and introduced her to our midwife, doula and nurse.

This is Agatha Love.