Anyone who knows me could tell you I talk too much. I tell stories no one asks for. It's compulsive rather than me thinking I'm fascinating, which I'm sure some people assume. My mom says I haven't shut up since about age three. One thing I do hesitate to talk about is Ruby's birth story, which is how I can tell I'm still freaked out by it. When I do talk about it, I feel a scary hush comes over the group, and I'm like the camp counselor telling a gory horror story that ends up with me whipping out a hook for a hand!

With both my girls' births, my water broke, but I didn't dilate. With Ruby, I didn't even have any contractions. When the doctor checked me, she said I had the cervix of someone who wasn't even pregnant. She suggested a scheduled Cesarean as my regular doctor had. I was stubborn and said no; I wanted to labor. It's a decision I can't stop thinking about after two years.

Everyone said, "Are you crazy? You want to labor?" I couldn't explain why I wanted to experience "normal" childbirth with all the puffing and pushing, but for some reason, another Cesarean felt like cheating. At my insistence, they hooked me up to the Pitocin and parked me in a bed with a warning I was in for a long haul. I had no idea.

I watched the Raiders game, chatted with people, played with my sister's puppy she smuggled into the room in her purse—I wasn't even breaking a sweat after five hours. Then they turned up the dosage, and I went to the bad place. I remember saying to my husband, "It feels like I'm ripping in half." I don't think anyone took me literally, but they should have because I was rupturing internally along my first Cesarean scar.

Twenty-four hours later, the sixteen-year-old-looking Korean doctor said I was not even at seven millimeters dilation, and she refused to let me continue because I had spiked a fever. She woke up my husband and sassed him, telling him he was "sleeping through it all." Next thing I knew, I was waking up and insisting Ruby wasn't mine because she was pink, not brown, and had a pig nose.

At first, we were a great success, Ruby and I. Once home, she breastfed like a champ and slept well. I felt the head-over-heels-in-love thing everyone talks about on TLC. But one morning I woke up and tried to eat and knew something was very, very wrong. Over the next two weeks, I went to the emergency room three times. I stopped eating and eventually drinking water because the agony in my stomach when I did so was not worth it. I vomited constantly.

The doctors told me I had stomach flu, a bad gall bladder, a urinary tract infection, and I would sob with frustration because they weren't listening. A urinary tract infection! Was he kidding!? Did he go to med school on the freaking internet! If I saw him on the street, I think I'd attack him.

Finally, I went to the emergency room, and there were two people I think should get medals. The first was the triage nurse, who rattled off questions that had all been asked before until she got to, "Are you breastfeeding?" "I was," I answered and started sobbing. I was still trying to breastfeed, without food or water, and I didn't know it at the time but the expenditure on my body's resources was causing my organs to fail. The nurse stopped and looked at me when I starting crying, took my hand, and held it. No medical professional had showed me any humanity up to that moment.

When the doctor met me, he listened to my story and said very sincerely, "I believe you are very sick," and ordered an MRI. The MRI led to my eventual diagnosis of Clostridium difficil. The gigantic amount of antibiotics that were given to me when I ruptured killed all my natural intestinal flora. This allowed a stain of bacteria it had been holding in check to flourish uninhibited, and my colon was four times its normal size by the time I had the MRI. If I had consented to a Cesarean in the first place, I would not have gotten sick.

In the infectious ward at Kaiser Morse, I had numerous IV's, which fed me Keflex, potassium, hydrating fluids, Phenergan, and massive amount of Dilaudid. I hallucinated a lot while I pumped and dumped my infectious, drug-laced breast milk.

My college day drug love returned, and I loved hallucinating. One of the Filipino nurses would come in and inject my IV with Dilaudid and within seconds, it would feel like a large, soft hand was pressing down on my chest. I would struggle to catch my breath and dream I was floating in a warm, dark sea, and I would sink below the surface slowly, comfy and warm until I realized I wasn't breathing; then I'd kick my legs and shoot to the surface and gasp for breath. At that moment, I would startle myself away and eat an ice chip before I'd sink down again.

There were also a lot of auditory hallucinations. I once heard a black church choir warming up their voices to sing and asked the nurse when they would start. She just looked at me. I also heard Izzy playing in the hall a lot, although she wasn't there, and yelled at her to be quiet several times. I remember thinking I would go crazy because I was so hungry and they wouldn't let me eat. When I did start again, it was broth for a week. I will gag if I smell warm broth now.

When I returned home, my husband had gone insane. I did not know it at the time, but the doctor told him I might die, and he had a toddler and newborn. He acted like he hated me. He said I was mean to him when I was in the hospital, and I don't remember him visiting. He bought a new stove while I was away—very strange. Our marriage is still recovering.

I missed Izzy's third birthday and Thanksgiving, my favorite feast. I missed Ruby's first weeks and checked out early against the doctors' wishes because I wanted my children so badly. When I got home, Dave had to drive me an hour and a half to my mother's because our plumbing had exploded while I was gone and my waste was still infectious.

At my mother's, I remember calling a friend I'd never cried in front of before and sobbing hysterically into the phone. She kept saying, "Ooh, Renee. Oh, Renee. You poor thing." Then I curled up in my mother's bed with my new baby and slept eighteen hours. The doctor had told me I may be chronic and had no expected recovery date. When I woke up with Ruby, I knew I was going to be okay. I couldn't even consider I might not be, or I'd go mad. My first meal came a week or so later when my neighbor Angela brought me chicken soup. It was the most delicious food I have ever eaten.

At a recent gathering that included copious amounts of wine and snacks, a woman I'd been out with several times told us she has had three babies and only one lived. She's one of the more friendly, outgoing people I know. One of my closest friend's sons was just diagnosed with Angelman Syndrome, and they just seem so relieved to have a name for the challenges they've faced with him. We all went through considerable pain bringing our babies into the world, and I'm sure we all consider ourselves the luckiest women in the world to have them. I'm just so grateful Ruby is healthy and happy, pig nose and all.