My plans to write about Cara's Birth Day almost didn't pan out... Woke up rather sad and it lingered... So I didn't write anything here and held off hoping I'd get through it.. and then a little bit ago that song The Other Side was buzzing in my head... the line... "can you feel me there with you... "  and I do feel her... here with me... and it helps...  I wrote the last journal last night kind of hoping yall might find it a good idea for you too...  I hope your memories of the day your baby came to you are special and if it will help to share them I know I'll love reading and imagining how wonderful it was with you... and now for Cara's Birth DayThe night before I was a nervous as the proverbial cat on a hot tin roof...  couldn't sleep... I tried a couple of times but finally gave up around 3am... Even though I'd washed her clothes months before I hand washed a bunch of her little outfits and hung them on the line... Of course at that point they were just little sleepers and stuff as I didn't know if I was having a girl or a boy... I kind of thought it would be a boy... which was fine... I had a name for him... Stephen Paul... but oh inside my heart I really wanted a girl...  Cara's dad and I split up when I was about 4  1/2 months pregnant...  I wanted a girl to be like my best friend someday... because I thought as far as men were concerned that part of my life was over...  ah the comedy and the tragedy of youth is that we think everything is going to be that way forever...   I am seriously amused at my stupidity...  Ok so... I didn't even notice it but I was going to the bathroom to pee a lot...  I was staying at my mom and stepdad's... They got up around 5am... I heard mama telling my stepdad that I'd been going to the bathroom about every 30 minutes... Dad said he figured he'd be a grandpa by the time he got off work that evening... I had a doctor's appt for 9am that morning... Around 8am I started feeling some pressure... Dr's visit... he tells me to go home and keep timing the pains... Mom and I stopped for breakfast but I couldn't get comfortable and didn't feel much like eating... so mama finished eating and we went home.  We were playing dominoes... a game called moon... and the pains were coming closer together... around 3pm... we head for the hospital...At the hospital I nearly collapsed at the second set of double doors when a pain hit me that almost brought me to my knees... Hang on... make it into the hospital and to the door of the admitting office... No one's there... look up and down the hall... no one... and oh damn... here's another one of those pains....  suddenly a nurse comes running with a wheel chair... I guess she'd been around women in labor because she just told me to get in the chair we were heading to the labor room...  So they got me up there... and things slowed down a little... A nurse came to shave me... I told her that unlike how a man moves his chin and mouth and all when he shaves...I couldn't move things down there like that... I'd read that in a story a woman wrote in for Reader's Digest a year or so before and had been dying to use it... Even in the midst of labor I can't stop cracking jokes....  then an enema... my first one ever... uh... no jokes yall...<> So they get me all prepped and comfortable.. not......  there is no comfortable  in labor... well not back then...  I was afraid of  spinals and coddles and they didn't do the epidurals back then...  anyway... as comfortable as  was possible...  and  we wait... and time the pains... and wait... and time the pains... and every so often the doctor comes in... and when he does that finger sweep check... it doesn't matter if I had just finished a pain its going to bring on another one... oh ouch...  damn damn damn.... In the midst of all this I notice that the lady who is my roommate and I are performing a comic symphony.... When she has a pain... she screams ay yi yi yi yi.... me... having no class at all... I just scream...... OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO and it just so happened that our pains seemed to be synchronized to follow one after the other... and again... even in the midst of this my comic sense is alerted... and I tell mama that someday I will tell my baby about his/her birth day symphony.... Finally a few minutes before 3am the doctor comes in and tortures me again... He said that we still had several hours to go and walks out the door... He's hardly out the door before I tell mama that I think the baby is coming... she tells me that the doctor just left and said I had several hours in a rather tired voice... I know though... this pressure and pain is so instense and I tell mama please to look for herself and so after a minute or so she does... and as she raises the sheet my water breaks and the baby's head is pressing through... Its 3am mama told me as she stepped into the hall she noticed the clock on the wall... the nurses come running... they bring me to the delivery room and hurriedly move me from the bed to the table... We had planned on using ether for the birth but she was born before they got a chance to give it to  me... and then I didn't want it... the baby was here... what for?  but the doctor said I should because the placenta still needed to be delivered...  so they knocked me out... and I always did resent those hours I was out and didn't get to see my baby...  I'm sure they must have told me I had had a baby girl... but I don't remember it... but it must have lodged in my brain because I knew before they brought her to me I had a baby girl... my Cara...More later... so... would it feel good to relive and share... Hugs ElissaYes I'm crying but I'm glad to remember... to hold her once again in my memories...