As a mother of four, I empathize with the horrible epiphany you had in childbirth — your experience sounds horrific and I read your account with a certain degree of horror. Any Mother who has experienced the Total Loss of Control to something that is truly bigger than any one mere mortal — the Force of Life itself, willing itself to be born no matter what the cost or the toll on the vessel that bears it — can understand to some degree, your experience. At the same time, I have to say, having been a lucky one I guess - who was blessed with 4 (what would be called) uneventful, straightforward births, two in my own home, all without drugs or intervention — that your experience is vastly diffferent than mine or many others, and I cannot imagine that what you experienced could be characterized as the norm. Childbirth is certainly tough, scary, and intense beyond anything I have ever experienced, but I believe that it is the toughness and total loss of control - the fear of being forced beyond any power of choice, to just give up all control to that immense and indescribable force — that ultimately underlies the unbreakable bond between Mother and Child. After suffering through the process that nature imposes on all creatures, not just human women (I have watched a horse almost die in childbirth too), the child enters the world with an almost all-consuming iron-grip on its Mother’s soul — a grip that is meant to ensure its survival. Father’s certainly love their children fiercely, but I believe that it is the agonizingly intense experience of childbirth itself that creates that primal bond that is unique to a birth mother and child, and in the end that drives that Mother to commit her life to that child, or mourn its loss forever. I wonder - can we have one without the other? Nature does not seem to think so.