And Baby Makes Four

I've been getting some positive feedback from the excerpt I read at the Feb 18 CWC Peninsula meeting from Love in Any Language called "And Baby Makes Four", so I wanted to post it here:

I unwrapped pink diaper bags, pink onesies, and frilly pink dresses at the April 1971 baby showers thrown by the Hawthorne school faculty and the women in our UC student-housing unit. Those who doubted that I could choose the sex of my baby, thought impossible in 1970, gave me yellow blankets, sweaters, and booties. (I’d read a Life magazine article about how to conceive a girl. My husband loved the method.)

When birthing Tony, our first child, four years before, I’d been caught off guard by the pain. Then, my obstetrician had quickly administered a saddle block anesthetic. The painkiller deadened me to all feeling in my lower extremities. For days afterward, I had excruciating headaches every time I lifted my head. I didn’t want a pain-deadener with this second birth. I wanted to experience the pleasure of a natural birth, like so many women said they did in the ’70s. I enrolled in weekly evening Lamaze classes the month before my due date, and hoped for a painless, enjoyable childbirth.

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