One of the big choices we faced was whether or not to find out whether the baby appeared to have male or female sex characteristics during our 20-week ultrasound.   This, of course, is not the way people usually frame this question.  The ordinary question is more like “are you going to find out what it … Continue reading Anxiety and the Gender Politics of the Unborn – or – Why We Didn’t Find Out →

“CHILDBIRTH IS NOT AN ILLNESS BUT A NORMAL HUMAN PROCESS.” This was the simple sentence I heard for the first time during a presentation at Illinois Masonic when Brooke and I went for a tour a few weeks later.  A attractive mid-thirties woman with an ambiguous European accent and short blonde hair led the tour.  These … Continue reading The Hospital Tour →

Our first appointment was in a tiny room on the third floor of an annex to the Illinois Masonic hospital, just a few steps away from the northernmost exit of the Brown Line’s Wellington stop (since this is where Sam was born, everytime we go by there on the train I get a shiver and … Continue reading Our First Midwife Visit →

Susan Sontag once wrote "strictly speaking, one learns nothing from a photograph."  This is the picture taken just a few hours after the birth of our child, deceptive in its immediacy and seeming transparency.  I want to tell the story of this picture (before and after) - for me anyhow, there's a lot more to … Continue reading The Birth of Our Child – Introduction →