The resulting baby, with her babies. She had very positive baby-acquiring experiences.

I hear a lot of women complaining about the way doctors and hospitals treat them during labor. Pushing epidurals, requiring pitocin, being generally unsympathetic to requests to limit intervention. Taffy Brodesser-Akner has written about her birth for both Self and Salon, and it’s a true horror story–a doctor who broke her water against her wishes and circumstances that only went downhill from there. Brodesser-Akner didn’t necessarily want an all-natural birth. She just wanted to be listened to and treated with respect. She wasn’t.

Writing for Babble’s Being Pregnant blog, Ceridwen Morris points out that any birth can be a positive experience. It’s less about the details than about being treated with kindness and respect at a vulnerable time. I see her point–and I would have to say that I was treated with kindness and respect for all three of my births. But ironically, my most positive childbirth experience was the one where no one listened to me at all.

Read more on Babble.

But yes, the punchline of the whole thing is that for number four, no birth. But we all know that had its disadvantages too…