On Sunday morning, June 29th, at 3:10 a.m., in our very own bathtub, to the wonderment of our whole family and under the watchful eye of a reliable midwife and her two apprentices, Paula gave birth to our baby boy, Kehan Leyani—eight pounds five ounces, twenty-one inches—after a relatively short labor of about three and a half hours.

That was our third birth, but I guess birth is something you don’t get used to. It is always something that demands your total attention, and in that exclusive focus, you are surprised again how you get to touch the miracle of life itself.

Here is the story of the event:

On Saturday night, a week after the due date, our children Jad and Sheena had had some friends over and their parents, good friends of ours, had come to pick them up. Paula was feeling some cramping, which was not so unusual, but somehow, and without saying much, we all found ourselves cleaning the house in a sort of frenzy full of anticipation. Paula’s contractions were still rather mild, but becoming more frequent. As our friends were leaving our suddenly but appropriately spotless house a little bit before midnight, Paula came into the garage to check on the new washer I had installed that evening to replace the old one that had just broken down irreparably—you need a good washer when you do your own diapers!—and right there, in the middle of the garage, her water broke. A bucket, quick. Yes, the testing paper turned dark blue. That fluid was no urine. It was happening! We called the midwife.

What Paula wanted was a shower. She felt a bit nervous and shaky, and wanted the soothing feeling of the warm water on her body. The midwife-apprentice arrived first and checked Paula. She was 3-4 centimeters dilated, already a third of the way. The bloody mucus, whose abundance had us slightly worried, was normal. We had to remember to give Paula an antibiotic every hour to make sure the baby did not catch, on its way out, a strep whose presence we had reasons to suspect according to some earlier tests.

Jad and Sheena were both excited and a bit anxious, especially Sheena who had not experienced a birth before. We told them to try to get some sleep so they would be awake when the baby was ready to come out, but they did not want to miss any of it. They started decorating the bathroom with candles.

All Paula wanted was water, more water. She had been staying in the shower for a long time, but we needed to prepare a bath—when you are on a well, you have to conserve water. Because her water had already broken, we needed to disinfect the tub carefully first, so she had to come out. But she wanted to stay in the cocoon of the candle-lit bathroom, focused, curved inward, as if to forget for now the rest of the house. So she laid down on the wooden bathroom floor with some towels, and I laid beside her, holding her shoulders. Then the contractions really started to become intense: breathing, breathing deep, focusing on what the body knows how to do, entering into the process with each breath, moaning as a way to work hard and relax at the same time, always remembering, as way to keep understanding the intensity of each contraction, the coming baby and the knowing body. As a partner, you just help sustain that remembrance, contraction after contraction.

Meanwhile, the midwife and her assistants—with good help from Jad and Sheena—were getting everything ready, discreetly, almost invisibly—from the clamps for the umbilical cord to the bottles of oxygen just in case. A lot of competence to rely on, but no big show of it, just a presence of preparedness and confidence, focusing the whole event on the work of the laboring woman.

The bath was ready. A check by the midwife. Paula was fully dilated. We were both surprised, used as we were to longer labors.

In fact, Sheena had just heeded our recommendation to get some rest and had gone to sleep for a little bit, while Jad was still busy helping, wanting to be part of it all at any cost. It was time to wake his sister up. He had to shake her pretty hard. But now we were all here. Paula climbed into the bath, and I climbed in behind her, to support her and to be close.

Now that the cervix was open, it was time to push that baby out. Sheena had never heard her mother bellowing deeply like that. Jad had once. But all the memories, all the videos, and all the warnings still always come short of the experience of being there. It was clear that it was hard work. It was impressive, palpably intense, and yet deeply beautiful. It made everything sacred, down to the details of draining a bit of stool out of the water. Soon the baby’s head was showing. Look, everybody. Then the head was half out, stuck there for a while between the womb and the world. Paula, you need to push a bit harder now. She thinks she does not know how to do it. Has she forgotten? Come on, you do know. The midwife is helping with her expert hands. She starts draining the water out to prevent any contamination. A few more contractions, then very quickly the head comes out, and the body. The midwife swiftly lands the baby on Paula’s chest. It is real, unbelievably real. Paula starts squealing with delight: "We have a baby, we have a baby, I can’t believe it."

Hey Paula, look, there is an actual knot in the cord. It is not especially dangerous if the cord is long enough because the pressure keep the flow of blood going, but it occurs only about once in a hundred thousand. The cord had already stopped pulsating, and Sheena got the honor of cutting it, as her brother had done to her.

The contractions were not over. A few minutes later, it was the turn of the placenta to come out. There was no rush. The baby had passed all the primary checks. Paula spent some time just holding her little boy in the tub, while the midwife showed us the placenta and the water bag and took some cultures to send to the lab.

The ordeal was not quite over because Paula had torn a bit and she needed some stitches. The apprentice did the actual work under the close guidance of the midwife, passing on to another woman the art of attending birth.

After a last set of check-ups, we each took turns holding the baby, embracing with a sense of awe his little—you never quite remember how little they are—but completely formed body: a calm and contented baby with a very round face and a coat of reddish-blond hair. He had an hematoma on his head—a bump of blood under the scalp that made him look lopsided. Jad remarked that he had a nose like his. Sheena commented: "It is hard to believe that he belongs to our family because we’ve been a family for so long." Well, it did not take very long for us to really feel like we were five.

Now we are settling into the new rhythms of our expanded family. We have to be watchful of any development, but the hematoma seems to have stabilized, the jaundice is only slight, and there is no sign of strep infection. Paula’s nipples are painfully learning again how hard these little mouths can suck and how that suction stirs up postpartum contractions. We have to relearn the diaper routine, the burping, the quietness. And we have to find ways to decide who gets to hold Kehan.