Like many of you drawn to read this, I grew up with the lore of multiple birth stories, primarily from my mother. She delivered four LARGE babies, naturally, with each birth story having its own particular sense of drama. The most notable is delivering me, alone at the age of 19, in small-town Saskatchewan, with a doctor who had never attended a birth on his own. As a close runner-up to that, the next baby was born at 10 lbs 12 oz with shoulder dystocia (stuck shoulders) that temporarily popped her hip out of joint. So, naively, I have always assumed that I was made of the stuff of warriors,…

I didn’t appreciate a good birth story until I found out I was pregnant. After that, I became obsessed with them, asking everyone I knew to share theirs. It was weird and potentially inappropriate.  Meet someone, find out they are a mother, ask them to share their birth story. I found, though, that most women loved to share. The word mother took on a whole new meaning, one I couldn’t grasp until I held my son. I have a mother, but what could it mean to be a mother? The same was true of birth. I was born, but had never given birth. The anticipation drove me wild. A nine…