While a first-time labor and delivery usually lasts around many hours, sometimes, babies just decide that they are coming out. Now.

Babies are occasionally born on airplanes, on the subway, on the front lawn, and more often than you would think in a car on the way to hospital.

A mom in Cambridge, in the UK, delivered her baby in her local post office this week. She went in to top up her cell phone, and delivered a healthy baby girl before paramedics could arrive. The little girl weighed 5lbs 15oz. How do we know? Because the post master weighed her on the mail scale.

And then another new arrival made her debut on New York’s Fifth Avenue. The mom was being driven to hospital, and dang that midtown traffic, didn’t make it in time. She was expecting twin babies, and the first was born in the car outside Central Park. Paramedics made it to the scene in time to assist with the birth, and get the mother to the hospital where the second baby was delivered. The twin were born seven weeks prematurely and are expected to stay in hospital for a couple of weeks, common for preemies. One of the paramedics described the birth as “fun”. I can’t help but wonder if the mom felt the same way?

A lot of moms worry about going into labor and delivering their baby right there on the floor in the laundry detergent section at Target or in Jiffy Lube. But actually, births like these are very rare and being rare is what makes them newsworthy. The average first time labor lasts for hours, 8 to 24 hours is a normal range, with 16 hours being the average time from first contraction, to holding your baby. So almost all moms have plenty of time to get to the hospital or birthing center once labor starts.

Congratulations to my favorite celebrity couple!  Mom Jennifer, and Dad Ben, both 36, are surely ecstatic at the arrival of Seraphina Rose Elizabeth Affleck .  A spokesperson has announced that Mommy and baby are doing well.

Violet Anne, who is 3 years old, is now a big sister to the darling who arrived Tuesday, Jan. 6th in Los Angeles.  Name and other details have yet to be released but stay tuned for updates.

Rumors about the actress being pregnant were confirmed in August, after months of excited speculation.

As for the first glimpse of the baby?  The couple has no plans on selling photos of Seraphina for first dibs to a magazine or tabloid.

Can you imagine? A pregnant British woman got off her London Underground subway train and all of a sudden, her water broke and she went into labor on the platform. Paramedics were called, who decided that there wasn’t enough time to get her to hospital. And 35 minutes later she gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the station supervisor’s office.

Even though millions of people use the London subways every day, she’s only the second baby to be born in the London Underground’s 125 year history. The only other baby was born way back in 1924 in a south London station.

That’s just counting regular operation of the tube trains. During World War II, the underground train tunnels and platforms were used as air raid shelters, for London’s residents to shelter from German planes bombing the city. Thousands of Londoners often had to spend nights underground and several babies were born in the tunnels. Can you guess who the most famous baby is? Jerry Springer – yes, the talk show host – was born in East Finchley tube station in 1944 at the height of the German attacks on London.

I wonder if this baby girl will receive a lifetime of free travel on the London Underground? That’s what happened to a baby born on a San Francisco’s BART train – the baby was given a lifetime pass to ride the BART trains for free, and some babies born on airplanes have been given a lifetime of free air travel. It’s almost worth having a baby in an odd place for the freebies!

Announcing a pregnancy can be a difficult thing.  Once, my daughter stood up in the middle of church and announced to everyone that I needed prayer because I was pregnant.  That was probably the easiest pregnancy announcement I’ve had to endure, because I didn’t have to make the announcement myself.

I’ve found, as with anything in life, there are always those folks who simply can not refrain from being negative, even during joyful occasions.  Certainly, a pregnancy is a reason to be joyful and is a cause for celebration.   Some people don’t see things like that though.

I know at this moment that there are several close relatives who I will eventually need to inform of my pregnancy who will NOT be happy for my husband and I. Even though we are financially and emotionally ready and able to deal with the responsibilities that children bring, these folks will still not be happy.   They will find reasons why this pregnancy should not have happened, and they will feel obliged to tell me about these reasons. One or two of those relatives will probably be downright ugly about this pregnancy.  I  have come to these conclusions based upon their reactions to past pregnancy announcements and I ponder–how can I do this differently this time? How do I protect myself emotionally from the negativity?

I wonder–is it rude to just call them AFTER the child is born?  I’ve noticed that after the child makes his or her grand entrance into the world, the negativity dissipates anyway.

I am “lucky” in that my family lives over 800 miles from the rest of my family members.  Sometimes, it can be a difficult thing to have them so far away; sometimes, it is a good thing to have them so far away.  For now, it means I have time to gather my strength and decide whether or not I should mention my pregnancy to my family or wait until shortly before(or after) the child is born to make the announcement.

How have you handled “negative” reactions to your pregnancy announcements? Would you tell relatives who you knew were going to be negative about your pregnancy?  Is it rude to just send relatives a birth announcement without them knowing about your pregnancy?

The formula backlash continues. Starting from January, a British hospital will charge mothers of newborns for formula. They will also refuse to permit moms to bring formula from home.   Babies who require formula for medical reasons will continue to receive it for free.  The hospital says that it will sell infant formula for their cost price and not profit from the sales, and that the program will save them £30,000 (around $50,000) every year.

Britain is different from the US in that formula companies are not allowed to give away free samples in hospitals, like they do here in the States.

The announcement has caused controversy in Britain. It’s not so much the cost of the formula, rather than the perceived discrimination against formula-feeding moms.

Unlike the US, Britain has a nationalized health service – basically paid for by the government – and it’s chronically underfunded, understaffed and under-resourced. Healthcare is essentially free for most people and while standards are somewhat lower than the average hospital in the US, it’s free and available to all. Incredible when you consider what it costs to have a baby in the US: my hospital bills for my son ran around $7,000 for a routine delivery before insurance kicked in.

The average hospital stay is around 2 days, and moms have to start buying their own formula as soon as they leave the hospital, so paying for those two extra days’ worth of formula isn’t really that much of an expense.

But is this more discrimination against moms who choose not to breastfeed?

The hospital denies that the move is to encourage breastfeeding, or to discourage formula feeding, but they say that it is to make it fair so breastfeeding moms aren’t subsidizing formula feeding moms.

Everyone knows that, with everything else being equal, breastfeeding is best for babies. But in the real world, everything else isn’t equal and breastfeeding simply doesn’t work for many moms for many reasons. Moms who can’t, or choose not to breastfeed, have very valid reasons to not do so and formula-fed babies grow up as beautiful and smart as breastfed babies.

What do you think? Is charging for formula a reasonable cost-cutting step? Does charging for formula make it more fair for breastfeeding moms, or is it discrimination against formula feeding moms?

I’m a gift giver. At least, I try to be. Whenever someone makes my day or goes out of their way to do something for me, my family or someone else I know, I like to say thanks by giving them a meaningful gift. It can be something small, like a batch of home made cookies or a hand made card, or something larger to go along with a larger gift.

Thinking along these lines, I started to wonder: what kind of gift could I give the nurses who help with my labor, delivery and recovery in just a few short weeks? What sort of gift would be appropriate for the men and women who are going to be helping me with one of the best gifts that anyone could ever receive? How can I possibly express my gratitude?

With all the expenses of a newborn, money is definitely tight, so here are some inexpensive ideas I came up with:

• Flowers. A single rose or other flower (perhaps the birth flower for that month?) for each of the nurses.

• Candy, Cookies or Snacks. Small boxes of candy, a tin of flavored popcorn or a fruit basket that can be shared.

• Breakfast. Bagels and cream cheese or a box of doughnuts in the morning is a great way to start the day on a positive note.

• Gourmet Coffee. The coffee in most hospitals is pretty bad – treat the nurses to the good stuff!

• Handmade Ornaments (for the holidays) or Other Hand Made Items. I enjoy knitting, and have thought about knitting up wash cloths or some other small items that I can hand out to the nurses. Bath salts or other crafty items also make nice gifts.

Don’t forget the thank-you notes and birth announcements!

What will or did you bring to the nurses when you delivered?

Postpartum depression isn?t just something that affects women.

According to Will Courtnay, a psychotherapist and founder of a group for men struggling with postpartum depression, the condition can affect men as well. According to Courtnay, some new studies suggest that as many as 1 in 4 new dads struggle with depression after the birth of their child.

Male postpartum depression is different than just the “blues”. The signs of the condition are usually more severe. Signs of postpartum depression are the same as the symptoms for generalized depression, except these symptoms begin soon after the birth of a child. They include: intense sadness, lack of interest in activities, a sense of worthlessness, change in appetite and sleep habits, and irritability.

Men who have a spouse suffering from postpartum depression have an especially high risk of developing depression. Half of all men who have depressed spouses also are struggling. Men are also less likely to seek help if they are depressed.

Experts suggest that it?s best to be proactive and not ?just wait? for the symptoms to go away. If you struggle with depression, seek help before your child is born. Counseling can help you work through issues and also adjust to your new responsibilities as a parent. Experts also suggest counseling as a couple as well as individual counseling. Such sessions can help a couple learn to communicate their fears and work on solutions to those issues. Ideally, counseling should start before the baby is born and continue after the birth.

Romanian-born Livia Ionce, 44 yrs. old, gave birth to her and husband Alexandru Ionce’s 18th child in Abbotsford, British Columbia last Tuesday, July 22. The newborn, named Abigail, joins her 10 sisters and 8 brothers, who range from 20 mos. to 23 years in age. Staunchly religious, the couple has left the size of their family up to God, and considers all their children as gifts.

The Ionces are somewhat of a celebrity in Canada, being Canada’s “most prolific” in terms of child birth. Best of luck to the parents and to dear Abigail. I have a feeling she won’t be short on pairs of helping hands.

Source: Fox News

This is the final part (part eight) of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

He leaves, and my wife looks at me with panic in her eyes. I am feeling terrified (and not just because I have dirty dishes around the house and my underwear hasn’t been put in the hamper) but tell her everything will be OK. We’ll figure it out. Foolishly, she believes me.

We call my in-laws to come help with the process. In the end, they wheel my wife’s wheelchair down while I carry my daughter in her infant car seat. I leave my daughter inside the hospital with them and go get the van. Doh. It is snowing heavily outside. The snow is not staying on the ground, but it is not melting either. It is making a thick slushy paste that is both slippery as anything and able to saturate the entire lower half of my jeans.

I roll the van forward and hop out to place my daughter in her seat base. By the time I get around to my wife she is in the van safely. I thank my in-laws and tell them to meet us at the house. I get in the car and squeeze my wife’s hand.

The normally five minute drive home takes almost fifteen that night. It is dark, visibility is next to nothing, and the brakes on the van seem to be more like the hand brake on a “big wheel”, designed more for spinning you into a skid than stopping. Later I would look for grip marks on the steering wheel, convinced I had held it that tightly.

I get home and carry my daughter into the house. My wife is assisted by her parents. Amazingly, no one slips and falls, and we are finally a family in our home.

This is part seven of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6

The remainder of the day and the whole of the next passes without any significant incident. My younger sister comes up the first night and visits (transit to get her from her apartment to our town wasn’t servicing the area after midnight). Of course, my in-laws are there frequently.

The day after that we begin to wonder what the protocol is for discharging a c-section patient. Our nurse informs us there was “no way” we would be discharged today, and that Sunday is unlikely as well, given my wife’s slow recovery and that she had just begun to move on her own without someone holding on to her.

My older sister and her family come in the afternoon. We pretend to be ignorant of the rule that no children are allowed to visit except for siblings, allowing my niece and nephew to meet their cousin. About half an hour into the visit, our nurse comes and offers us a private room that has just become available. We jump at the opportunity (a private room means I can sleep in the room with them) and get my siblings to help move rooms.

We visit with them for another half hour or so in the new room, and they leave. About ten minutes after their departure (4pm-ish), the insensitive ob-gyn arrives and says, “Are you ready to go home?” Shocked and more than a little frightened, my wife replies, “No.” The doctor furrows his brow and says, “What’s wrong?” my wife says (holding back tears) that she is just not feeling physically ready. The ob-gyn replies, “Well, without a medical reason I have to discharge you today.”

Read Part Eight

This is part six of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5

I call my parents from the house as I sit in our office uploading the photos of our new daughter to a photo sharing site. I cry and avoid telling them the bulk of the story. I am saddened by the reality that they cannot travel to see their new granddaughter because of my mother’s health. It would be almost two months before my wife was well enough to travel.

I get to bed around 3:00am and sleep soundly until my alarm wakes me at 6:30am. I shower quickly and head back to the hospital. My wife would later tell me that my entrance into the room was like a ray of sunshine. I arrived to find my daughter screaming in her bassinet and my wife pressing the call button for a nurse. I pick up my daughter and she quiets immediately. My wife begins to cry. She (my daughter) had been screaming for over an hour, and she (my wife) could not get up to get her because of her incision. After ensuring my wife is OK with my daughter (she was needing to nurse) I go out to yell have a calm and rational discussion with the nurses to find out what was going on. Two words are returned. Two words that become the bane of our existence in the hospital: shift change.

We spend the early morning as a family. Well, my wife sleeps and I cuddle my daughter, but we’re all in the same room. Eventually our nurse arrives and introduces a college co-op student who will be shadowing her today. We are told to call for either of them if needed.

The student returns with a tub and some cloths and towels, informing us it is time for my daughter’s first bath. She instructs my wife to lower her bed flat and sit up, cross-legged, so she can watch. Incredulously, my wife looks at her and says, “I just had a c-section. I can’t do that.” The nurse seems perplexed. Obviously the school had given her strict instructions about how to perform the bath. She attempts to cajole my wife into trying, at which point I step in and tell her to put the tub at the end of the bed and do the bath, please.

Mid-afternoon they come to us and offer a “door side” bed in a semi-private. My wife asks me to take a look and make the call. I assess that there is little more space, but it is significantly less crowded, making it seem larger. So, the student and a couple of her student friends begin to navigate the bed (in which my wife is holding my daughter in her arms) out of the ward room while I move the bags and stuff. I arrive in the hall outside the new room watching them try and align the bed with the door. I see them bang the bed into the wall, and my wife winces. I clench my fists and grit my teeth. A few moments later, the three of them still can’t master the laws of physics and again the bed is jarred, and again my wife winces.

I step forward. “I will do it.”

“No sir. It’s OK. We’ll get it.”

“Step away from the bed. Now.”

The three of them move away slowly. I take a quick look and carefully roll the bed away from any walls. I then lift the lower half of the bed and rotate it (think like a wheelbarrow), aligning it with the door frame. I slide the bed about half way in and turn back to the trio of gape-mouthed students and say, “Can you handle it from here?”

Read Part Seven

This is part five of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4

Excited, I leave recovery and start toward the waiting room where I know my in-laws are. I decide against it because I figure my wife would want to share this moment with them. (Thankfully, otherwise they would have seen my daughter before my wife.)

Eventually they wheel my wife in. She looks weak and exhausted, and I choke back tears. I pass my daughter to her Mommy, and watch as my wife looks at my daughter for the first time. It is 11:45pm; over an hour since my daughter had been born. Then, the nurse does the whole weighing and measuring thing while I take some pictures. And finally, my wife gets to put my daughter on the breast (something she had wanted to do as soon as she was born). I heave a sigh of relief and offer to go get my wife’s family from the waiting room.

I go and collect my MIL from the waiting room (only one visitor at a time in recovery) and rush off to the pay phones to call my parents and tell them the news. Three successive calls go straight to voicemail (they have call waiting). I would later learn that my mother fell asleep with the cordless phone beside her and rolled over on it, pressing the “talk” button and effectively taking it off the hook. I call both my sisters and tell them the news, asking them to continue trying to call my parents. My younger sister would reach them shortly after 2am.

After my in-laws leave they wheel us to a ward (4 bed) room. I try to explain that we asked for a private room, or failing that a semi-private. I am told this is the only bed they have. It is cramped and dark (because, after all, it is after midnight by this point). The night nurse comes in and takes my daughter away. The panic in my wife’s eyes tells me I should follow the baby and not worry about my wife. I follow them to the little room where they do the assessments (you know: prick the heel to check blood sugar, test the grab reflex, weigh them, etc). When they lift her and try to turn her to her stomach (to make sure she has the reflex/strength to turn her head to the side and not, you know, suffocate herself) my daughter puts her arms out; stiff. She won’t lie on her tummy and instead does a push-up. The nurse looks at me and says, “You know, I’ve been doing this twenty years, and your daughter is the only one I have seen do this.”

I follow the nurse back to the room and am told that I have to go now. I express concern, but they tell me that I cannot stay in a ward room; it would not be fair to the other mothers. I kiss them both (my wife and daughter, not the nurse) and leave.

Read Part Six

This is part four of the story of the birth of our daughter.
Read Part: 1 | 2 | 3

They call me over to the assessment table (where they are giving her an apgar of 9) and encourage me to come see her (through the throngs of people all crowded around my little girl). I approach, and as I wander about the space in a confused daze I turn. Toward the operating table. And I see something I will never forget. You know those scenes you see on TLC of a surgery, where the person is open and you see things inside them? Those scenes that most people cringe and quickly flip the channel as soon as they realize what they are looking at? I saw my wife like that.

I recoil back. I keep saying to myself, “I did not need that. I did not need to see that.” A nurse grabs my shoulders and guides me to a stool where I can see neither my wife nor my daughter. The anesthesiologist comes over to hold me down as I am insisting on getting up. The nurse tells another that I am very pale. My wife hears a nurse call over the intercom, “Can I get a nurse for Dad here? He isn’t doing too well.”

My wife asks what is going on. No one will tell her anything. I cannot hear her over the nurse yelling at me.

I am arguing with the nurses and anesthesiologist that I am fine. I was stunned, I was scared, but I am no longer a concern. They refuse to believe me. They want me to leave. I refuse to leave my wife and child. As I sit there I hear the following…

Voice #1: one, two, three, four, five
Voice #2: one, two, three, four, five
loud clang of metal

This is repeated a couple more times before it dawns on me what they are doing: they are counting clamps or instruments or whatever and making sure they haven’t left any in my wife. I am too much in shock to cry at this point.

Finally, I negotiate the right to hold my daughter. They insist that I remain seated. At this point my wife calls out to me, and I tell her I am OK, and that the baby is beautiful (all I can see was her face as she is wrapped in like five blankets). Eventually they allow me to take my daughter into recovery to wait for my wife. I would later learn that no one showed the baby to my wife, and that the first time she saw my daughter was in recovery afterwards.

Check back tomorrow for Part Five

This is part three of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Read Part: 1 | 2

We talk. We cry. We panic. I try to call a friend of hers who had a c-section the previous December without success. I offer the following: insanity is doing the same thing twice and expecting a different result. She agrees, and the final push is that if we wait too long, the next ob-gyn on call is someone she saw for a couple appointments while her regular ob-gyn was on holidays, and this other ob-gyn was disgusting and not who she wanted delivering her first child.

We call for the ob-gyn to tell him of our decision. He again explains that the child is large (we get it) and as such he would suggest a vertical incision instead of a horizontal. We would later learn that all his c-sections are vertical (also known as “the old way that takes significantly longer to heal but is a lot easier for the doctor”). We agree to the vertical.

So around 8pm they come and take her to the O.R. while I wait in recovery next door. The next two hours or so I pace back and forth while the wonders of medical science figure out how to get an operational epidural into my wife. (We would later learn none of the earlier attempts to get her an epidural were “right”.)

I get collected by the anesthesiologist and brought to the O.R. He directs me cautiously past the table where my wife is and around to her head, behind a curtain (we had specifically told both the ob-gyn and the nurses that neither of us wanted any details about the surgery; we wanted to hide behind the curtain and not be given a play-by-play). She is on her back with her arms outstretched, and I am immediately angry for the years I spent in Catholic school classrooms, all of which had crucifixes in them.

I try to be coherent and talk to her as the team of doctors and nurses tend to her. Eventually, the ob-gyn exclaims, “Woah! Look at her!” To which I reply, “It’s a girl?” And he tosses back, “No, it’s a girl and a half!” Time of birth: 10:24pm.

Click Here for Part Four

This is part two of the story of the birth of our daughter.

Click here to read part one

At around noon they conclude that the baby is R.O.P. (right occipital posterior… don’t ask how I remember things like this; just go with it) which means the baby is facing sideways. Despite a pitocin drip we are stopped at 8cm with a cervical “lip” (I did not see this, but I was told to visualize a crescent moon shape). During the previous five hours, my wife has been complaining that there is a rod digging into her hip. The nurse tells her that she is imagining things and that the epidural wouldn’t let her feel that.

At around 2pm they finally give my wife the go-ahead to push (after her begging to try for hours). The caveat is that pushing will only work if the lip is lifted. Manually. By the nurse. While she pushes. I’ll give you a minute to work that visual out for yourself.

At around 4pm, after two hours of steady pushing, the nurse asks my wife, “Are you putting your feet in the stirrups while you push?” my wife replies, “Of course I am. I’m bearing down hard on them.” The nurse makes the “tsk tsk” sound and says, “Well we’ve just wasted the last two hours then.” My wife continues to complain about her hip.

At around 6pm, after another two hours of “proper” pushing, they give up on pushing and tell my wife to rest. My wife insists something is up with her bed. They roll her to her side and discover that her hip is resting on the joint in the bed frame, and that the mattress is extremely thin there (due to a history of bending the mattress at that point).

An hour later (we have been in the delivery room nearly twelve hours at this point) the on-call ob-gyn comes in and offers the following, “The baby is very big, and very healthy. We are not worried about the baby right now. However, you have been here all day and we have to consider the possibility of a c-section. You don’t have to do it; it’s your call. But if something goes wrong with the baby, it stops being your call and it becomes my call.” He leaves to allow us time to digest the information.

Read part 3

Over the next series of posts, I will share the story of the birth of our daughter. While the eventual outcome was joyous, the path there was somewhat less than ideal. I am not writing this to frighten anyone, or to lament the circumstances. I am writing to let people know that sometimes, things don’t go as planned, and even when things seem impossibly difficult, there is a light at the end of the tunnel. This is part one.

My wife was due March 29, 2005. Despite many ultrasounds (due to an “over ripe” placenta – seriously, that’s what they called it; like it was some kind of fruit or something) taken in anticipation of having a reason to induce labor, she still had not given birth on March 29. That night (March 29) she was very chatty, and we wound up talking until almost midnight (my routine is to get up at 5:30am, so this was a late night for us).

At 2am I am awakened by her feeble calls from the bathroom. I jump out of bed with a start (mostly because I was sound asleep). She tells me that her water broke (she had laid towels down on the bed) and that now she feels constipated and very crampy. I ask her what I can do, and she tells me to call the maternity ward nurse’s station at our local hospital for guidance. I call them (and in hindsight I can hear them snickering at me under their breath) and explain the situation. They tell me that the cramps are likely contractions, and that when they approach five minutes apart we should drive to the hospital.

At 5am, after a shower and phone calls to our parents, we leave with contractions in the five to six minute range. I am eerily calm. We arrive at the hospital and I drop my wife at the door and go park. She waits for me inside and we go up to the maternity floor together.

They put her on a fetal monitor in a triage room and we wait. The moans of agony continue to escalate from my wife as I stand by helpless. I watch as our assigned nurse spends ten minutes trying to start an IV without success. There is blood on the floor from the process, much to my horror. We finally get the IV started with the help of a second nurse.

At around 7am they move us to a delivery room. My wife is told that shift change is rapidly approaching, and that she has the following choices… option 1: get an epidural now; option 2: wait until potentially 9am to receive an epidural. She opts for option 1. Half an hour (and three failed “starts”) later she has an epidural line we would later learn was not properly inserted. They assess the situation, and find that she is over 7cm dilated but not effaced. Our new nurse (shift change) nonchalantly tells us we will be holding our baby before 11am.

Click Here for Part Two

How can anyone be born twice? Here’s an incredible story from Texas.

Parents Chad and Keri McCartney took their four children to a routine ultrasound in Keri’s fifth pregnancy. Everyone was excited to see the new baby, and find out if their new sibling was going to be a boy or a girl. The ultrasound showed they were expecting a little girl – but it also showed a gigantic tumor growing from her back.

The tumor was the same size as their daughter, and if it kept growing it would eventually rob the baby of her blood supply and oxygen, a grim prognosis. It was non-cancerous, but would have been deadly to their little girl.

The only way to save their daughter was an incredible operation. The operation was performed when Keri was 6 months pregnant. The mom was deeply anethitised, so surgeons could pull her uterus completely out of her body. They then carefully opened it up, took her baby out, successfully removed the tumor, and tucked her back in.

Then everyone prayed that the pregnancy would continue long enough for the baby to recover from the surgery. It lasted just 10 more weeks, but that was enough. Baby Macie Hope was born for the second time on May 3, several weeks premature but otherwise healthy and tumor-free.

After a month recovering in the hospital, little Macie Hope gets to go home from the hospital with her family on Saturday.

What a wonderful story – wishing her and her family all the best!

When my son was born, I was so scared he’d be swapped for another baby, or stolen from the hospital, I insisted my husband stuck by his side at all times when the nurses took him to the nursery to wash him and weigh him and do the heel prick and all that stuff they do to newborns.

I even tried to get up with the epidural still stuck in my back (bad idea) to go with them, but sanity did prevail and my husband went with him. And yes he did come back, and we took the correct baby, the one I gave birth to, home.

It’s incredibly unlikely either will happen in the hospital, but it does happen. And to the most unlikely babies. You wouldn’t have though twins could be mixed up – even less so, one twin swapped from identical twins?

In this incredible case, 35 years ago, in a hospital in Las Palmas, Spain, a nurse took one baby from of a set of identical baby girl twins, and somehow replaced that baby with another baby girl. The twin’s mother took the twins home, and the other mother took her daughter home.

In 2001, one of the identical twins was working in a clothes store. While she was away from the store, her identical twin sister happened to walk in. The clerk in the store couldn’t understand why this identical-looking woman didn’t recognize her. And when the woman came by the store again, the clerk arranged for them both to meet.

After DNA testing proved they were identical, the twins, and the third woman in the mix-up, are all suing the government of Las Palmas for $4.7 million in damages.

Do you think they should sue? Is it the city’s fault? Do they deserve that amount of compensation?

This is my first post since giving birth to my 3^rd child, boy # 3, who was born three weeks ago today (Thursday). My little guy was born on May 1^st (aka May Day). His name is Jack.

After experiencing some painful contractions for a few hours on Wednesday night, and poking my sleeping husband a few times, I knew it was time to go to the hospital. I wasn?t certain at first if it was ?the real thing?, as I wasn?t due until May 18^th. We called my mom, my husband packed up the car, and as soon as Mimi (Grandma) pulled into our driveway, zipped off to the hospital. The drive was the longest 15 minutes of my life: the bumpy road made my contractions even worse.

We arrived at the hospital at 1:15 a.m., checked in, and I was wheeled up to Labor and Delivery. After quickly changing into my gown, I dashed to the bathroom, where my water broke, made it back onto the delivery table and the nurse checked my progress. I kid you not: She said, ?Okay, you?re going to have this baby in just a few minutes. You?re fully dilated.?

There was no time for pain meds or an epidural even if I?d wanted one. Little Jack-Man was born at 1:36 a.m., just sixteen minutes after I?d gotten to the delivery room. He was my little peanut, at 6 lbs 10 oz and 20 ?? long (kind of surprising, as my 8- and 11 year-olds weighed 8 lbs 4 oz and 8 lbs even, and were also early.)

Unfortunately, I got stuck with the one doctor in my group I was hoping not to get. Thank God the labor went quickly and she was ?outa there? after that. I got to see my favorite doc during rounds the next morning.

The little guy lost weight after birth, of course, but as of this Tuesday was up to 7 lbs 8 oz. I now have the task of growing three young boys and have been thrown back to a vaguely memorable time of late-night feedings and diaper-changes. As my 11 year old experiments with algebraic formulas in Math class, my 3 week old is busy testing the latest baby formulas (Sadly, I am unable to breastfeed this time around). Life is busy. I just keep reminding myself of how quickly it all goes and that this is the very last time I?ll watch one of my babies grow up.

I was talking to a dear friend several months ago about her ‘birth plan‘ for the upcoming birth of her first child. A birth plan is an opportunity for you to discuss and plan ‘ideally’ how you’d like your child’s birth to happen with your health care provider. Just doing a simple internet search, I found several websites devoted to helping you create a birth plan which can be simple, or very detailed.

I’ve given birth with a doctor in a hospital, with midwives, and also in a military hospital. The interest level of the health care providers in birth plans varied significantly across these environments, as I’m sure you can imagine.

What I did find out from my birth experiences, all after high risk pregnancies, was that very little emphasis was placed upon the experience. It was more so placed upon the baby and doing whatever was needed to deliver a healthy child. Because of the stress surrounding the birth event, I had little time to think about if I’d like music played during the birth, or if I’d like to be in a birthing chair or not. I found, quite frankly, that different providers had different ways of doing things, and that some things were not up for discussion.

Perhaps it is different during a low risk pregnancy. What I did try to convey to my friend, and what I’d like to share with other women on the cusp of motherhood is that you should pack a hearty share of flexibility in your hospital bag. Don’t set your hopes on having ‘an experience’, and realize that your child’s birth may or may not go the way you envision, for many reasons.

A birth plan is an awesome way to mentally prepare yourself for the birth of your child, but realize that it isn’t set in stone, no matter how detailed it may be. It’s best to keep in mind that the goal isn’t creating the ultimate birth plan for the perfect birth experience; the ultimate goal is the birth of a child in an environment that is safe for both mom and baby. Prepare yourself mentally for the reality that all may not go as planned.

After checking back with my friend, I found that she did indeed need to deviate from her birth plan as last minute complications meant that she needed an emergency c-section instead of delivering the child naturally. She had a beautiful, health child, and yet she was disappointed and felt shortchanged because the experience had not gone a certain way. My heart broke for her because her emotional pain was very real, and there was very little I could do but listen to her relay her disappointment.

Parenting is a grand journey that begins during pregnancy. Birthing the child is just one event in that grand journey and lasts a comparatively short time in comparison to the length of time it takes to raise a child to adulthood. It is however, a preparation for what is to come. Just as you might need to deviate from ‘the plan’ during the birth, you may need to deviate from ‘the plan’ at some point during the parenting journey in the future too. Pack your flexibility for the birth, and keep it handy for the rest of the ride!