After a 7-year decline, the C-section rate is rising again.  Twenty-two percent of the 4 million U.S. women who gave birth last year had the operation, nearing the all-time high of 25 percent recorded in 1988.

There were two midwives and a surgeon in a hospital in France.  One midwife was friendly and loving, clearly the favourite, known to mop mothers' brows and hold hands during labour.  The other was dour, aloof, certainly not touchy, and might be found knitting, or reading a book, by flashlight, while her client laboured.

The surgeon soon noticed he was called to perform cesarean sections more often, when one of the midwives was on call.  Which midwife, you ask?  The favourite!  The hand-holder and brow mopper lovingly guided her clientele toward cesarean sections more frequently than the dour book-reading midwife who calmly empowered her mothers towards natural, stress-free, vaginal delivery.  The surgeon was astonished, and began to observe the different midwives and their approaches to the birthing process.  His name was Dr. Michel Odent, the place was Pithiviers, France, and his work and books inspired the decline in record-high cesarean sections worldwide.

I had one North American hospital birth under my belt and was pregnant again.  My hospital marathon lasted 18 hours of agony, wherein my birth team consisted of more than a dozen strangers gowned in pale green.  The pain was so great I thought I would die.  Two hours later, I hoped I would die.  My purple infant was born to a 40 minute chorus of "Push, Dammit, Push!  Push or you'll kill your baby."

For months I felt ashamed that I had not had the natural birth I planned.  I was terrified of a repeat performance, and read everything I could by the silver-haired Dr. Odent.  I had enough friends who complained about their infected stitches and postpartum discomfort to know I didn't want a cesarean section.  But the horrible, soul-killing pain I endured at the liberal, family-centered birthing hospital was something I would never willingly go through again, even for a much-wanted child.

I polled everyone I knew and even strangers on the bus, to find out how to have an easy delivery.  Drink raspberry leaf tea, they said.  It strengthens the uterus, and a strong uterus is an efficient uterus.  I drank it by the pot.

Give birth at home, or don't leave the house until you feel like pushing.  I planned a home birth.

Get lots of exercise.  I swam, walked up and down hills, and danced with my toddler.

I woke at midnight.  I felt a wee 'pop' and moved to the toilet.  I thought I was peeing, but it was amniotic fluid, dribbling for a long, long time.  I was in labour!

Often, undisturbed women will take the all-fours position, which frees the vena cava to replenish the placenta, and the mother's body, Odent had said, so I got busy and crawled to the bathtub which was full of gray water and my toddler's tea set.  I scrubbed it clean, filled it, and got in.

The contractions felt like an interior massage, very pleasant really, coming and going.  Frequently I dashed out of the tub in my nine months of naked, pregnant glory to have labour diarrhea.  My body was efficiently making room for my baby's descent.

Out of the tub, those contractions were getting strong.  I had to get back into that soothing water.

I hollered at my snoring husband to get up and turn off the *&%!! light.  Couldn't he see that I was in labour and that light was bothering me?  (It was a 40 watt bulb, around the corner.  I wanted darkness.  Darkness felt better.)  And by the way, call the midwife.

In the darkness, my mouth opened the size of a ping pong ball.  More contractions.  My mouth opened the size of a golf ball.  I knew I would not be gaping like a fool surrounded by nurses, Lamaze coach, and obstetrician, but in the darkness, in the tub, with my husband on the phone around the corner, my mouth opened the size of a baseball.  And that's when it happened.  That's when America slid into the ocean and the earth moved.  It felt like my baby shoved along fifteen yards inside of me.  Pain?  There was no pain.  It was the most splendid, sexual, sensual, orgasmic, hallelujah, Great God in Heaven sensation I have ever experienced.

Could that be all there was to labour?  The midwife arrived and I asked her to glove up and check if my cervix was fully dilated, because I thought maybe I had finished labouring, but it was so easy, so fun, so euphoric, so. . . .

"Margaret, your baby's head is crowning, dear.  You're ready to push your darling into the world."

So I hiked my glory out of the tub and waddled to the bed, and placed my butt on the edge of the firm mattress (because if I didn't it seemed my kid might come out the back passage), and after a rest, pushing took over me and out projected a marvelous, curly head.  When the pushing took over me, it was another marvelous sensation, and I was both awed spectator and full participant.  It was sexual and orgasmic and I was amazed at the strength of my birthing self.  It was far and away better than having a team gowned in green telling me I was killing my baby.

The shoulders came next.  Lovely and red, and out like so much butter.  My husband caught her and passed her up to my breasts and arms, and I hauled us both into the center of the bed and we nursed.  My toddler hopped up too, and investigated his sister's hands and feet and vernix-covered back, and eventually, kissed her forehead.  I passed our newborn to my husband who was crying and singing and taking pictures of us all, and then I did another queenly thing.

"Coleslaw bowl," I directed my midwife, who brought it at once.  I perched on it like a throne, and the pushing took over again, and out flopped my liver-red placenta, perfectly uncalcified and as big as my head.

My pain-free birth was done.  Start to finish, less than two hours.  Gnashing of teeth:  none.  Orgasmic fulfillment:  Plenty.  Cesarean suture infection:  Never, thank you.  Cost:  The darkening of a room, the warm water for the labour tub, the cotton shoelace to tie Baby Christina's umbilical cord an hour after she was born.

We weighed her the next day at the post office.  She was 10 lbs, 2.4 ounces.  First class.  Pain free.  Thank you Dr. Odent and the dour midwife.  Now we know how it is done.  Mother directed, passion uninhibited, birth undisturbed.