A long time ago, I didn’t understand the point of birth stories. I thought once the baby was here, the birth was more or less incidental. After all, "the only thing that matters is that you have a healthy baby," right? Uh, no. I take major issue with that statement. Having a healthy baby is obviously very important--but the mother’s experience of birth is far from incidental. Birth involves both you and your baby--it’s a cooperative act between your body and his/hers. Really, there’s no such thing as a baby. There’s a baby AND ITS MOTHER. This is called the mother-baby dyad, or the 4th trimester works, too.