About 12 hours after my first daughter was born, one of my midwives popped in to my hospital room for a routine visit. In she walked, chipper and cheerful, and asked how I was doing. I started to cry a quiet, pitiful cry that took my voice away. She looked at me quizzically as she walked around my bed and asked what the matter was. I couldn?t find the words, but eventually muttered something about just feeling overwhelmed. She asked if nursing was going OK, and I said it seemed to be. She asked if I was in pain. I said, ?Not really.? (My morphine-spiked epidural still hadn?t fully worn off.) She seemed confused by the tears, but I couldn?t make them stop. Well, if nothing?s wrong, her face seemed to say, why are you crying"
I didn?t know why. And now she?d made me feel silly for being upset over nothing in particular. I knew she?d attended thousands of births in her career?she knew all about how new moms handle those very early postpartum moments. I kept thinking, if these inexplicable tears of mine were throwing her for a loop, how utterly terribly was I coping" I felt like I was falling apart, and overwhelmed that every moment of my daughter?s birth felt out of my control. As the epidural faded and my legs returned to me, I started to tie together the unexpected events and twists that had filled the previous two days.
I had gone into the hospital nine days overdue for a routine non-stress test, which showed I had almost no amniotic fluid left. I had been gunning...