Most people don’t talk or think about death. I only realized this close to adulthood, having grown up in an Irish Catholic family where we talked about death all the time. My grandfather’s typical birthday greeting was, “You’re one year closer to the grave.” Death was a comfortable topic for me.

Birth, on the other hand, was not. I knew that if I got married, children would be forthcoming (again, I’m Irish Catholic), but I tried not to think about it. Don’t get me wrong: I love children. I’m the second of seven kids. I was an elementary school teacher for five years. I used to babysit for fun. I wasn’t afraid of pregnancy, and I wasn’t afraid of childrearing. But I was terrified of childbirth.

So I put it out of my mind. I married my husband, and within a month of our wedding day our first child was on the way. For the next nine months, I tried to ignore the obvious, inescapable fact that I would have to eventually give birth. I soon realized that I was treating my child’s birth the same way many people treat death, and for the same reasons. …

Continue reading >>>>>>>>>>>>