Whatever you're facing...
Heaven Can Begin Now

What a difference it would have made if I'd known that "the place where the dragons lie" is on the road to the joys of heaven! In 1950, though, I was still traveling unaware...

I came upon Mother's note recently, saved with other cards and notes that came following the baby's birth. Affectionate and cheerful, it is not, after all, the shattering document my memory had made it. Two things, I think, made my reaction to it so out of proportion.

One was my immaturity. This was long before I could see my mother as a rounded person, with her own childhood history, her own strengths and needs. The other was the hours of unassisted labor the previous day -- hours that neither she nor John, not even Dr. MacKenzie, knew anything about.

All summer I'd been reading about the then-new concept of "natural childbirth." Apparently the staff at the hospital in Manhattan had not. "If you want to do it without medication," said the nurse on the maternity floor when I arrived at 2:00 A.M. on October 2, "then we can't help you." She took me to a small room, gave me a gown, got me onto a high hospital bed, raised the metal sidebars, and left, shutting the door with a decisive click behind her.

And on that bed I thrashed as the hours passed and the pain worsened. Whether they couldn't hear my screams or thought that such agony was what these peculiar natural childbirth enthusiasts expected, I never knew. The pain was multiplied by terror. Alone in that steel-barred bed, I became convinced that it was impossible for a baby to squeeze through a two-inch gap in solid bone. The baby and I would die together!

Downstairs in the waiting room, John had been told that it would be twenty-four hours before the baby came. In the dismissive way fathers were treated then, he'd been told