Mary and Martha

EDIT: This post was originally written way back in 2013. I recently went through all of my old posts and deleted more than half. I kept this and edited it a bit, just to clean up some typos and rearrange a few words to improve flow. I didn't realize doing so would make it now appear as though I published it in 2018. So, yeah. That happened. (The usual disclaimers for males apply: there is some female/birth-specific yuckiness in this post. Do not continue if that grosses you out.) Yes, yes, I know, here I am jumping on the Birth Story bandwagon. Honestly, though, I want to encourage (and disabuse) other first time mothers who, like me, knew exactly what they are going to do when the time came to give birth and how they were going to handle a newborn baby. Let me just say that reality has a funny way of bursting your idealistic bubble. To begin, I knew that, this being my first birth, I was going to be in labor for at least 22 hours (why 22 and not 23 or 21, I don't know)