My daughter's birthday is Christmas Eve. She hasn't quite figured out that kind of sucks yet. She thinks it is very special.

Whenever she tells someone about her special day, people say "you were your mother's Christmas present." As if Christmas was a good day to have a baby.

I was lucky enough to be at the bedside for the birth of a friend of mine's son. It was the most amazing, beautiful, disgusting thing I have ever witnessed.

Pregnant with my second child at the time, it did help me visualize the birthing process which was still a mystery to me after my labour-less C-section at 37 weeks the first time around. I wanted to return the favour and have friends at my bedside but my husband overruled - fearing issues both medical and emotional.

For many pregnant moms, the idea of having someone watch the birth is abhorrent, but others, like my friend, have a "more the merrier" attitude. But this Ottawa mom is going further than inviting a few pals over. She is live-streaming her birth for those who sign up at her website.

There are some things that you should never say to a pregnant woman. They seem obvious don’t they? And yet, everyone who has been pregnant has had something inappropriate said to them.

Size seems like an easy topic to avoid and yet, every other person wants to discuss the size of your belly with statements like: 

I had a highly medicalized first pregnancy that ended up in a C-section. Without the C-section both the baby and I could have died from a placental abruption in a matter of minutes. My subsequent deliveries were both V-Bacs (vaginal birth after Ceasarean) which was something I fought for. But the idea of a home birth - no way. I always felt that the health of the baby was more important than the comfort of the mother. My friend and fellow blogger Karen Green disagrees, she had a home birth and feels that was the key to her healthy, peaceful start as a mother. So I asked her to write about it:

I loved being pregnant so much that I would offer to be a surrogate for someone - if I was younger, knew someone who was desperate, and didn't worry that I would want to keep the baby, and most importantly, if hadn't read Handmaid's Tale a few hundred times in the early '90s.

I know lots of people hated being pregnant but I just don't understand - there are so many reasons to love it. Here are some of mine:

I met Lorraine at university, and to know Lorraine is to know that she is always passionate about something; that passion settled into helping people in the third world. She travelled, had two kids and then another. We sort of fell out of touch until I got an email from her describing a harrowing cancer diagnosis of multiple myeloma days following the birth of her third child and then a year of hard work - physically and mentally. Perhaps it has happened to you -- someone you are friends with but have fallen out of touch with for no particular reason was diagnosed, or had something happen to them that changes everything; perhaps, it is you. Lorraine wrote her story here:

Days after giving birth to my third child, I was told that I had incurable cancer.

I couldn't even take that in. Though I had never examined it before, I realized that implicit in the decision to have children was the idea that I would be around to help them grow up. Having incurable cancer just seemed ridiculous; I was healthy and did all the right things like eat well and exercise; I had no risk factors. But I guess that's the thing with cancer - you don't ever choose it, it chooses you.

Labour. In retrospect it is a pretty awesome thing. But it takes a long time to get there; very often the memories of your labour and delivery carry some emotional weight that only time and distance can take care of.

For many women pregnancy is the first lesson in giving up control, and labour, labour is like the next 50, (parenting is when you realize control is a myth).

There are lots of great articles with tips out there. And you can you spend hours planning the minutia of your birth plan. But it won't help. Because no birth goes according to a birth plan. Here are my biased, but realistic tips that will get you through it.

Dear Cindy,

I am overjoyed at your pregnancy and even a little envious of you and all the new things that are about to happen to you. Since we are such old friends I know that I can be honest with you about the dark side of some of those new things. I don't want you to say to me, as so many new moms do: 'Why didn't you tell me about [fill in blank]?'. As a cynical mother of three I will not sugarcoat so if you want to stop reading here, please do. If you choose to go no futher then I want to leave you with my congratulations and the knowledge that you will make a wonderful  parent and that even though some moments will be rough -- the joy and texture of having a child in your life far outweighs the dark times.

Here are the things no one tells you ahead of time:

When it comes to labour every mom-to be is searching for a feeling of control. And the first place they look is to their caregiver options – Midwife? Family Doc or Obstetrician?

Through my three pregnancies I was in the care of: a midwife, high-risk perinatologist, family doctor and an O.B. And they were all great, because I learned that it isn’t the initials after the name that matters; it is the chemistry between you. You need a good working relationship with your caregiver so that you feel safe enough to ask them all the stupid questions that you want.

My first choice was a midwife but my first pregnancy turned high-risk and we leapt up the care ladder from a midwife to a high-risk doctor. I ended up with a cesarean at 37 weeks and a healthy newborn and my husband got to keep his wife and baby.

During my second pregnancy, I was adamant about being a VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) and after much thought I decided that a combination of a family doctor and a doula was going to give me the best care and the greatest feeling of being in control.

I just want to say that the term “getting your body  back” is offensive.  It’s not like your body leaves you when you are pregnant, it’s just busy creating a human. And it doesn't matter how quickly you lose the weight, or find your abs -- you never end up with the same body you had before.

Pregnancy and birth are such natural and amazing things and yet a few weeks after the baby is born, the only thing we focus on is how is the baby sleeping; and how the mother looks. Guess what? The baby is not sleeping and new mommy has a pile of weird loose skin around her midriff.