We were children when we first met.  Both of us were fourteen, and although I didn't know it at the time I was actually a few months older than he.  I knew, when I saw him, who he was.  In the sense that he seemed somehow familiar to me, as though I had met him before - in my subconscious perhaps, in dreams.  On the few occasions I mentioned something like that to him, many many years later, he scoffed.

We weren't thinking of having children, in the first few years of our marriage.  It wasn't until we were both twenty-two that we realized I was pregnant.  And that pleased us mightily, for we had of course, felt confident that we would have a family, eventually.  One-and-a-half years precisely fits neatly between each of our three children's births; two in October, one in April.

The April birth was different than the other two.  That was the one that the doctor didn't seem quite able to make it to, in time.  Just as well it was at Branson Hospital in Toronto where a British-born midwife-turned-nurse was on duty that night.  She handed my husband a green outfit and mask to cover his mouth, and instructed him how to assist her.  As our daughter's birth was completed, the doctor and the anaesthetist rushed into the operating room - imperiously prepared to 'take charge'.  I insisted I had no wish at that point to have the services of either.

With the first birth of our first son I wasn't the least bit nervous or concerned; reasoning, I suppose, that what I was about to undergo was the most natural and common and by extension, most primitive act on Earth.  Everything went very well, no problems whatever encountered, none anticipated. 

I recalled reading somewhere that a lactating mother should drink plenty of fluids, although it went against the grain for me. I experienced no difficulty whatever breast-feeding our children.  It was as natural as giving birth.  The babies exhibited no hesitation, no problem in doing their part of the life-giving procedure.  All went well in that department. 

Adjusting to becoming a mother was not at all difficult, just tiring.  Since my husband contributed constantly and encouraged consistently, we were both pretty fulfilled and happily immersed in our new roles.

Now, when I read about the burdensome difficulties that women experience in conceiving, in bearing children, in the agonies they experience attempting to breast feed their babies, I find it difficult to relate.  When I was young I made it a point not to listen to people who insisted on telling me about their trials and tribulations, how hard and painful childbirth was, how excruciatingly irritating breastfeeding was. 

In my naivete I reasoned that anything that common and quite simply natural, could not be that difficult.

I never regretted that decision to dismiss out of hand all the unsolicited and often alarming advice I was given.  I did it my way, and it worked perfectly well.