As Baby Owl grows and I feel her every little hiccup and squirm, I’m reminded of just how close I am to meeting her face-to-face. And as the moment of her grand entrance draws nearer and nearer, I find myself getting more and more scared. Of so many things.

But especially labor.

Yes, we’re planning to do the cloth diaper thing…at least while we’re at home. I don’t think I will be devoted enough to carry around dirty cloth diapers when we’re out and about.

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Mr. Owl and I did not take any sort of childbirth classes during this pregnancy. As far as we know, there is only one childbirth educator here in Riyadh, and Mr. Owl’s hectic work schedule precluded us from attending her classes. (I did, however, read her book, which I highly recommend. It’s written from an Islamic perspective, but I think it’s beneficial for all pregnant women.) But I’ve been reading like crazy.

When I first found out I was pregnant, I downloaded everything Ina May Gaskin ever wrote, and I found myself especially drawn to the birth stories in Spiritual Midwifery. Of course, no one in an Ina May Gaskin book ever really describes labor as painful, exactly, even amid descriptions of screaming and vomiting. Adjectives like “out there” and “holy” are the norm. Contractions are referred to as “rushes.”

I love Ina May Gaskin’s books. They make me want to be a hippie and give birth on a commune, and I’ve told Mr. Owl more than once that if we were in the States, I’d be going to The Farm in Tennessee to have our baby. They also may not be exactly preparing me for the reality of a birth in a hospital in Saudi Arabia. I fear I may react poorly when labor starts and it’s not the LSD trip the books promise. I can hear myself now, yelling at Mr. Owl as we navigate chaotic Riyadh traffic on our way to the hospital: “It’s supposed to be psychedelic and beautiful! What have you done to me? This is not far out at all!”

But in addition to reading, I have also watched birth videos online–and even more incredible, Mr. Owl watched a few with me. I can’t speak for Mr. Owl, although I will say that he did a pretty good job of not freaking out, but as for me, they mostly left me feeling like, “Okay, that looks like it really sucks, but I mean, it’s not that bad. I can do that. I can. I can! It’s doable. And it’s worth it for my kid. Right?”

Of course, women who tape their births and upload them on the internet for the world to see (and thank God for them!) are typically not the type of women who march into the hospital and demand their epidural at the first contraction. They are not women who want to smack you in the face with the message that if you have chosen to pursue a natural birth, you are a naive idiot who has no effing clue what you’re getting yourself into. They’re mostly women who want to share the exquisite joy of their beautiful births and all that stuff. Such a woman is often giving birth in a tub in the middle of her living room, surrounded by an entourage that includes a midwife, a doula, a spouse, her other children, perhaps the proud grandparents, her six closest girlfriends, and even maybe a curious cousin or two. As the baby emerges, everyone is cheering her on. The woman looks simultaneously enraged and enthralled. And then there’s a baby.

So while the internet may be full of women declaring, “If you want a natural birth, stay the heck away from me in case your mental illness is contagious,” it’s also full of videos–and women who have chosen the same route but have also chosen not to upload their videos–declaring that it’s a survivable experience, if not altogether pleasant.

So all that was/is somewhat encouraging.

At the same time, my pregnancy experience has not exactly led me to believe that an uneventful (well, as uneventful as popping a tiny human out of you can be) natural childbirth is in the cards for me. Everyone says that if you want to know what your pregnancy will be like, look at your mom’s pregnancies. Well, my mom was freaking born to be pregnant. She wasn’t sick a single day during either of her pregnancies. She had no stretch marks. She had no heartburn.

Has the opposite been true for me in every single instance? Let’s see, check, check, and check.

Furthermore, my mom had amazing labors. She was in labor with me (her first) for about seven hours total, from the first mild pains until the birth, and she popped me out with a few pushes. My brother, meanwhile, took around four hours from start to finish. Her labors were easy (she describes them that way, not me) and fast. “Yeah, it hurts,” she told me, shrugging. “But it’s so worth it, and it’s not that bad. Heck, I was chatting on the phone with your aunt in California while they were stitching me up after I had you!”

Yeah, Mom, just keep on braggin’.

So due to my observation of the pattern that my pregnancy has taken compared to my mom’s, combined with the fact that I’m going to be giving birth in a hospital in Saudi Arabia, where epidurals, episiotomies, and elective c-sections are omnipresent (rare is the birth here that doesn’t involve at least one of the three), I’m now expecting a terrifying, excruciating, days-long labor experience that involves the shadow of an anesthesiologist with an epidural needle in hand darkening the delivery room doorway, cruelly tempting me as I wrench my husband’s arm out of the socket while he implores me to tummy breathe and I scream at my British midwife, “WHAT DO YOU WANT ME TO DO? I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOUR ACCENT,” and culminates with a curtain separating my face from my abdomen as a team of doctors saws me open to rescue my child.

And all that…all that scares me.

But to make matters weirder, I keep having dreams in which I give birth painlessly after one or two pushes. I had a dream like this just a few nights ago, and in the dream, the baby came out after two pushes, face-up, still in the caul, and smiling. It was surreal.

I had this dream even though the day before, Mr. Owl and I had a meeting with our midwife and she told us, “Contractions at five minutes apart aren’t an indication that you need to come to the hospital. You can have mildly uncomfortable contractions at five minutes apart all night long and nothing is really happening. In labor, pain lets you know things are happening, things are moving along. When the contractions are less than five minutes apart and they hurt, really really hurt, then it’s time.” I know that labor is supposed to be very slow, especially for first-time moms, and very painful. So why is my subconscious playing such cruel tricks on me?

I guess now all I can do is wait to find out what’s in store for me. Did your labor prep actually prepare you for your labor? What do you wish you had known before you experienced labor?