The domino effect is set in motion.

It was about 8 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and the wind was blowing almost hurricane force. I was on the phone with my husband who was telling me I shouldn't be driving the toddler to nursery school in that weather. Knowing that I rarely listen to anyone's advice, he was asking me whether I had decided yet about taking her. I didn't know, but I did feel a little anxious at the prospect of forging through the wind with my nine months pregnant belly and a toddler at my side who just might be light enough to be carried off by the wind.

I was looking out our bedroom window and glancing at the weather report when I saw the trees lining the entry to our back yard swaying so fiercely they started to bend. Crack, crack, CRACK! I saw the biggest tree in the yard coming down fast in 3-D heading straight toward the bedroom window.

I jumped up from the bed and let out a little shriek as I saw the tree fall in both the Southern and Western bedroom windows, pulling down all the wires attached to the back of the building. The power went out. The phone went dead. My heart was racing as I nervously approached the windows to see where the tree had landed. It missed the building corner by about one foot. Its massive trunk spanned the entire path to the back yard, laying at a southwest diagonal.

We were staying home that day. I snapped at the toddler many times as her curiosity drew her to peer out the back windows at the monstrous tree corpse. The wind was still howling and I heard a lot of cracking and whistling. I thought how ironic it would be to have a tree kill me after surviving nine months of pregnancy. More importantly, I thought how I might have to kill someone else if my lovely girl met that fate.

So we waited for Con-Ed to come and restore our power. We waited all day and all night. The refrigerator was warming up and I cooked stew by candlelight to use up the food before it spoiled. We waited two more days for the power and the super tried to relight the boiler a few times to give us bursts of heat and hot water.

Finally on Friday late afternoon we were restored. That night we went through all the food and got rid of almost everything. Except for some frozen stuff which we had "preserved" by boxing up with ice packs and such and leaving on our fire escape. There were some cheese enchiladas which were still very cold, although not frozen. We ate them.

At 4 a.m. I woke up and had terrible indigestion. I knew I shouldn't have eaten those enchiladas. After a few Tums and some pacing, I tried to go back to sleep. My stomach just wouldn't calm down. After a couple of fitful hours, I gave in and sat up. Contractions were coming again, just like they had been on and off in the last couple of weeks. But they kept coming. I couldn't really be in labor, could I? I tried to sleep. I really wanted to sleep and I felt like total hell.

Little Beauty came in to wake us up at her usual 7 a.m. witching hour and my husband went with her to the living room. I didn't want to alarm anyone, but I felt sick. Finally around 9 he came in and I told him the story of my unhappy tummy. Oh and by the way, I was having contractions. He went out for Pepto Bismol and fetus was going crazy. I wanted to puke or something just to get those cursed enchiladas out of my system. I barely ate anything. We had no decent food.

Finally we realized that this was the real thing and that I was going to have to endure giving birth with tomaine poisoning or whatever it was. Jesus. As if it's not bad enough. By 12:30 I acquiesced and let my husband call in the reinforcements to watch our daughter. The pain was getting intense. 2 p.m. came and I was almost in panic mode, ready to kill the reinforcements if they didn't show up soon. They did and we rushed off to the hospital, contractions coming one on top of another.

We were admitted and I was hooked up by 3:30. After a very rough couple of hours, our new baby was born at 5:24 p.m., Saturday, January 21st. A beautiful girl, 8 lbs. 2 oz., 20 inches long. And we went with a "P" name--an amalgamation of two names that we liked. She's a lovely baby and big sister is adjusting a little more each day.

Now we are four.