By Missy Swanson I knew I was having a girl from the minute I found out I was pregnant. I already had one little boy, and things felt different right away.  During my pregnancy with my son, I craved all things salty and fried, and I had the irresistible need to paint my kitchen and take on home improvement projects. This time around, as my pregnancy progressed, I craved watermelons and cherries and sweets; I had bizarre urges to learn to quilt and to bake things. I had a lot of nausea, but it wasn’t as intense as in my first pregnancy. We decided not to find out the baby’s gender at my ultrasound, but I told everyone it was a girl anyway. The time leading up to the birth was difficult for my family. We experienced the devastating losses of close family members and family friends. I began to worry that something would go wrong with the baby. After listening to my grief and anxieties, my mother reassured me, “This baby will be a bright ray of sunshine in this dark year.” I took that to heart as best I could and tried to focus on the new life growing inside me. My due date was June 16, and it came and went quickly. I continued working until a few days past my due date (my son had been 15 days overdue), but I was exhausted and ready for the baby to come. Sometime after 41 weeks, we started doing all the usual things to encourage labor, and we made a plan to get the baby born around 42 weeks. So on June 30th, when I was exactly 42 weeks, my parents came and took our 2-year-old, and then I had a morning of castor oil, acupuncture, and herbs. I choked down the castor oil first thing in the morning and then headed out to my acupuncture appointment. The plan was to then continue some labor herbs and check in with the midwives later in the day. By the afternoon, I had been having uncomfortable contractions all day, but nothing that felt “labory.” I was getting very tired and discouraged, and decided to call and see if I could come in for a sweep. We lived a little over an hour away from the birth center, so we planned to get a hotel and sleep if nothing was happening.  … Read More