The wave comes. I push. The wave subsides. I stop pushing. I repeat this pattern over and over again. Sound emerges from my throat heavy and deep, I direct it downward toward the dense center of my body. I watch their faces rise with excitement and fall away into disappointment as the waves come and go. “Push, push! Give it everything you’ve got!” the midwife trainee cheers me on. Jeremy’s eyes are locked on mine, glancing every now and again down to check progress. I am crying. “It’s a no” is all I can choke out.

I knew what they wanted me to do, but it was impossible. They didn’t know, couldn’t feel, what was really going on down there; I was sitting with a square block trying to get it to go through a round space. No matter what anyone said I just couldn’t fathom how it could work. I couldn’t wrap my mind around the through line, nor could I communicate with anything other than my futile and helpless,...

“There is no midwife coming? Are you serious?”

For the first time in 15 years, none of the midwives were able to come in that night. So, there I was with a trainee and an OB sitting back in a dark corner like Shelob the spider in Lord of the Rings (she did have a nasty flu, but the pinched scowl she wore was etched on that face long before this night).

The nurse approached me with a needle in hand, plastic bits and pieces on the other end. She wanted to install a port into the back of my hand (an access point for an IV or drug injections). I squirmed on the hospital bed and my insides writhed.

“No. No way.” I hated needles and I especially did NOT want one living in my hand while I was going through labor. She insisted. I tensed all over.

“We do this with every woman.” Standard protocol. I hadn’t discussed this with my midwife, I didn’t even know this was a part of the process. So much for my thorough research. I tried to relax, but it...

And then, there it was. My next adventure…Parenthood.

I panicked, and a flood of memories came into my mind…sipping a latte at my desk looking out over the San Francisco cityscape from my office; relaxing on the beach in Fiji; arriving on the first day of my MBA program to find that I was the only one in a suit; presenting my regulatory implementation strategy to someone in the EPA; looking out over the ocean at a café in Big Sur and deciding to start our own company; waking up at dawn and jumping into my hunny’s BMW convertible and driving up the California coast looking for inspiration…was it all gone? Would I ever do anything like that again?

Two lines stare back at me. My heart skips a beat, I feel nauseated, elated, and terrified. Holy hell. I feel an unfamiliar sense of intimidation as I look out on the future and I see…well, I don’t know what I see, just unknown terroir.

 I’d always thought theoretically one day maybe...