"That's not the head."

These are words you do not want to hear in the delivery room. But, thirteen years ago today, that's exactly what a bright young nurse said to me, my husband and the on-call family-practice doctor from my regular clinic, five hours after my water broke and roughly twenty minutes after I'd started pushing.

For a very long second, everything in the room, including my heart, came to a standstill. Then the sweet, little blond nurse turned into a drill sergeant. She moved up toward my head, looked me straight in the eyes, and ordered, "Stop pushing." Then she smacked the red panic button on the wall and barked something into the intercom that I don't remember because my brain had turned inside-out.

What in the world is going on?

What was going on was that the small crown the three of them had been discussing a few minutes earlier as being the top of a very bald baby wasn't the top at all. It was the bottom.

My baby was folded in half and presenting itself to its unsuspecting attendants left-rump-first.

Whirlwind is probably the most apt word to describe what came next. The room was almost instantly filled with nurses. An obstetrician was summoned from the specialty clinic next to the hospital. I was told at least a dozen times by my militant new best friend not to push, and the family doc was told by that same woman what to do in case the baby came anyway. (Even though she was younger than he was, I'm guessing she had delivered a lot more babies and figured he might not remember the tricks for a breech.)

When the OB finally walked in, he went right to the foot of the bed, took a quick peek, then looked up at me and asked two questions.

"Not your first baby?"

"No. My third," I said.

"How big were the first two?"

"Both about six and a half pounds."

He considered this information for a moment, then nodded and said, "Keep going," and settled in to finish the delivery.

Damn right I'm gonna keep going, I thought. I'm almost done. There's no way I'd let you push it back in and take it out the top.

My husband later told me that after hearing my responses to the doctor's queries, one of the older nurses in the room leaned over to another nurse and said, "I'd go for it." Now, I happen to think maternity ward nurses are amazing, but I'm also aware that breech delivery in this day and age is a rarity, so I really am glad the doctor gave me the chance to keep going and didn't immediately whisk me off to the OR.

And because breech delivery is rare and inherently more risky, my room remained full of people through the next few pushes and eventual arrival of a slippery, quiet, little newborn. In the ensuing hubbub, my baby was taken across the room, to a raised, heat-lighted table for examination, before I even got a chance to see it.

Frightened, I asked, "Is everything all right?"

A couple of beats later came the reply: "Everything looks fine." 

And I finally exhaled. Then I realized there was something else I needed to know.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's a girl."

With a full head of hair.

Happy Thirteenth Birthday, sweet baby girl!