Thank you VERY much to everyone who read this blog! In case you're interested in how the actual birth went for us (sans epidural), here is the play-by-play...

On Thursday, March 13th, 2008, I went to my midwife for a 1pm visit. Since I was due on March 17th, she asked if she could do an internal exam and if I wouldn't mind if she stimulated the cervix just a little bit with her finger to nudge things along. She said this was nothing like inducing, but just a little nudge. I said okay. When she checked me, she said the baby was really low, my cervix was 75 percent effaced, and I was dilated about 1 to 2 centimeters. She said the whole picture made her very optimistic that we might be having a baby that weekend. She also mentioned that the internal exam and her slight stimulation might cause some cramping.

That afternoon, I did feel cramping and had some bloody show -- and I didn't know if it was just a byproduct of the internal exam or if it meant labor was beginning. That night I started to feel a lot of cramping. By midnight I started to think that the cramping was coming kind of regularly and that maybe this was contractions. Still, I thought it could be nothing or "false" labor, so I tried to go to sleep. But I was in too much pain to sleep, so I finally woke my husband up around 5 am and told him I thought something might be happening. We started timing the cramps and found they were coming fairly regularly -- around every 10 minutes -- but sometimes they were coming every 7 minutes or every 15 minutes. We decided to wait until my midwife's office was open on Friday morning to call. When we reached her around 9 am, she said that this could be very early labor or this could go away. She said to keep monitoring the contractions.

As great luck would have it, my co-worker here at Parenting delivered with a midwife she loves here in New York City — at the very same hospital (St. Luke's Roosevelt) that I was already set to deliver in with my obgyn, so I'd already researched the hospital and knew that I liked it.

Also fortuitous: One of the obgyns in the documentary The Business of Being Born who speaks about the benefits of midwifery in the film, works at St. Luke's Roosevelt and he's one of the doctors who backs up the midwives at this practice.

I was so excited that I called up the midwife practice the day after I saw the documentary. Thankfully, they had an opening for me and asked me to attend a group orientation to learn about the practice — something they offer every two weeks. Can you imagine if all doctor's offices offered orientations to explain their philosophies before you chose to sign on with them?

Big news: My approach to labor has been transformed. I'd always planned on trying to have a natural birth, and I was planning to hire a doula to help make my birth as holistic an experience as it could be. But a new documentary called, The Business of Being Born, has opened my eyes to an approach I like even better: Midwifery.

I am so glad that I got to screen the movie (you can see one image from the film above). It premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival but it doesn't get released nationally until January. My brother and sister-in-law saw it at the Festival and told me it was incredible, so I got in touch with one of the producers to see if I could screen it because I was interested on both a personal and professional level. The documentary was remarkable and it's changed the course of my pregnancy.

This morning at my now-weekly OB appointment, I learned that I tested negative for Group B strep. This is wonderful news because it means I will not be subjected to IV antibiotics during labor and delivery. Generally, approximately 20 percent of moms-to-be test positive for the virus.

I am always glad when I pass through a hoop that will cut down the number of medical procedures will be involved in my impending labor and delivery.

At today's appointment, my OB and I also went over my birth plan. She seemed amenable to all of my requests, including my desire to not have a Hep-Lock installed in my arm. Although I may recant on that one myself. Because if I do need IV-anything, I might be glad the line is already open and good to go.

She also said it may not be possible to talk the nurses out of asking me to rate my pain on a scale of 1-10. This is a regular procedure for them. I'm requesting that they refrain because I am intending to have a natural childbirth, and constantly attending to a rating scale will probably irritate me, and possibly make me more aware of the pain. Not helpful.