#she lived 3 minutes away BY FOOT to a planned parenthood.

[croissantbae]

Letter to Naya re Her Entry Into This World

You were born on June 24, 2019; four days past your due date but right on time from my perspective. You came on a Monday and gave me and your dad one last weekend to relish (though I think the most exciting thing we did was watch a movie). I don’t know if I should tell you this but before you were born, I wanted you to stay inside for as long as possible. You gave me no discomfort from the womb. In fact, my belly was small enough that even nurses said I looked 6 months pregnant instead of the 9 that I really was. You gave me no heartburn, no constipation, no major aches and no stretch marks. My fingers got swollen and a nice thick double chin grew in but I don't know if I can really blame those things on you - I gained 40 pounds through my own hard work. Other than the nightly hiccups and kicks in my gut, we (your dad and I) were all comfortable with your then-present living arrangement.

On June 23, I started feeling cramps but they went away after a few hours. I never even woke your dad up. I just endured the painful ones from bed and then got up to eat a mango. That seemed to appease you because the contractions died down after that and I went back to sleep at around 3 am. The day passed by without any issues but at 11 pm the contractions came back. They got stronger and stronger so I woke your dad up around midnight. I’d scared him a few times before as a joke so I don’t know if he realized it was actually go time but I showed him the contractions calculator and then he freaked out. He started packing things up getting ready to go but I knew this process could take a while so I got my work affairs in order and put my out of office message up. Your dad was not pleased with me. You’ll learn this soon enough about your dad but when he’s in a mood there is no reasoning with him. He gets into a zone and you just have to let him ride it out. So I put my things away and got ready to go to the hospital as well. I told him we were leaving too early but away we went, at his insistence.

We got to the hospital at 2 am and when the doctor checked my cervix, I was 3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced. This will mean nothing to you until you have a child of your own but the hospital’s policy is to admit women only once they are 4.5 centimeters. I was given 3 options: (1) walk around the hospital floor for a few hours and check if I’ve progressed afterwards, (2) go home and come back if my contractions get closer together or (3) get pain medication and go home. I opted for number one so your dad and I walked around the fourth floor of the Kaiser hospital on Sunset from around 2 am to 4 am. I’m not entirely sure how to describe contractions. I want to say it’s like a stabbing pain but that’s not quite right because it’s all over your stomach. I wish I could describe it better but it appears I’ve already forgotten the precise sensation. It overtakes you at first but somehow I was able to endure it and after a while they felt tolerable. To speed up the process we did squats and talked about how strange this whole thing was; that your dad and I were about to enter into parenthood. I’m thankful we were there at such an odd time, without people everywhere, because I was farting all over the place and just could not hold it in. They were both noisy and smelly. Right before going back in to see how far dilated I was, I also pooped. Sitting on the toilet and pushing poop out while also feeling contractions was quite a journey. It felt impossible for a second but I conquered it. I was both glad that I was getting cleaned out and embarrassed that the doctor would be checking me immediately after a dump. Such is the business of giving birth: it’s messy. Trying to thoroughly clean myself, again, while feeling contractions, was another challenge. There’s a theme here.

Afterwards we went back in and I was exactly 4.5 cm dilated (though a part of me suspects that the doctor just had sympathy on us and admitted us out of pity). Once we were officially admitted, they asked me if I wanted to get the epidural then but I said I’d wait and walk around a bit more to keep the process going. We started walking again and I immediately regretted my decision. Once offered pain relief, each contraction felt unnecessary so the roaring, rolling pain became intolerable. Instead of walking for an hour like I had hoped, we walked for 30 minutes and called it quits. It was around 5:20 am and your dad and I were both exhausted. We went back and requested the epidural and ice water. The doctor who administered the epidural was an Indian woman with a British accent and she came in like a true veteran. She was there for business - no pleasantries were exchanged and it was perfect. She moved swiftly and was out within 5 minutes flat. She was there for such a short period of time but she left a big impression on me. I wish i caught her name so that I could request her again for the next time (assuming you’re going to have a sibling). The epidural felt like a drink of cold water for my entire body. Once the epidural numbed the contractions, your dad and I slept for the majority of the day. Your grandma came and went, leaving us to sleep and to run a few errands for herself, particularly since I stopped progressing and I had to be administered pitocin to encourage the contractions to keep going. I don’t know if it was because of all the medication but even though I hadn’t eaten in almost twenty four hours I had no appetite. I was cruising, letting my body absorb the cold epidural that was administered hourly. Throughout the day a sweet and soothing white nurse was assisting us, bringing us ice water and just being a calm angelic presence in the midst of everything. She left us alone for the majority of the day to just catch up on rest.

Finally, and suddenly, at 4:30 pm, the doctor confirmed that I was 10 centimeters dilated and the time to push had come. He noted that pushing would commence at 5 pm. While we waited to push, a Korean nurse with a thick accent and blunt demeanor took over. She received several personal calls and would leave the room to talk to the caller in Korean. There was one occasion where her and another nurse snapped at each other. Needless to say it seemed that it wasn’t just us that weren’t fans of her. I wasn’t sure what caused the switch but it looked like we were stuck with her and her alone. Unlike my assumptions about the process, instead of having a whole team of medical professionals in the room with us, only the Korean nurse was in the room with us, guiding us through the miraculous process of bringing life into this world; and her instructions to me were to “push.” Your grandma was on the right side of my body and your dad was on the left side trying to guide me in breathing exercises. Your grandma lifted up my right leg and your dad was trying to stay near my head so he wouldn't see my nether regions. That was the plan all along. As I began to push however, the nurse informed me that I wasn’t pushing correctly and that I needed to push better. Very helpful instructions. I knew what she meant though; all the pressure from my pushing was unfocused and diffused itself throughout my body. I was pushing with all of my might but it was useless if I couldn’t aim it appropriately. It was sort of like studying for a test but reading the wrong chapter. Grandma was already holding onto one of my legs but I asked her to put her palm against my foot so that I had something to push against. It helped immensely.

I asked Jason to do the same with my left leg. I could sense his hesitation but he did it; he really had no other option. Inevitably, he saw the gory mess I presumed my vagina had become. And, he cried. The nurse saw him and bluntly asked “why are you crying?!” He fumbled between tears, saying he hated to see me struggling and going through so much pain. Incredulous, the nurse then asked me “are you in pain?” I really wanted to tell her to shut up but instead I explained that while I couldn’t feel the contractions, I could feel pressure down there and I could feel waves of something. Once your dad and grandma applied pressure to the palms of my feet I was finally able to get into the hang of pushing and the nurse (whose name was Boedul) seemed pleased with my results. She told me I was doing a good job pushing. She asked if I wanted to see what was going on with a mirror. My mind was telling me no but my mouth said yes so she brought out a small mirror and I saw that which was formerly known as my vagina. As I pushed, hairy blackness appeared. Genuinely confused, I asked if that was you or me. It was you. I expected you to be bald so it was a complete shock to see so much thick black hair. At first I thought my pubes has gotten seriously out of control.

When I stopped pushing, the blackness disappeared. Even when I could see it, it was only a sliver of your head. Discouraged, I said in exasperation, “this is impossible!” But Boedul assured me again I was pushing well and she predicted that we would be pushing for another 20 minutes or so, 30 maximum. I couldn’t fathom how a whole head (I wasn’t even going to think about the body) could fit out of there that quickly. It genuinely seemed like an impossible task. Around this time, Boedul raised stirrups so that I could use it to push. I stared at her, incredulous that she was holding out on me. She must have sensed my anger because, unprompted, she explained that she didn’t raise them earlier because then it would be too tiring, which made no sense to me. After the whole process your dad and I had a moral dilemma as to whether we should call her out in the survey they send asking about our experience and anyone we interacted with in particular but in the end we decided to be cool and not say anything. Back to pushing, shortly after using the forceps, and making a lot of progress, a team of doctors and nurses came rushing in. Perhaps for the best they moved the mirror away so that the doctor could place herself in front of my vagina and guide the baby out. They said we’d be doing a few pushes together and I’d have to hold the push when they told me. We did maybe three of these guided pushes and all of a sudden your head was out. I couldn’t believe it; my job was done and I relaxed, ready to pack it up. But the doctor said I had to keep pushing to get your body out. I made one feeble push and the rest of you seemed to slip right out.

I don’t know if it was because of the medication or the adrenaline that was pumping in me but I didn’t cry or feel much of anything. I saw them take you to a station nearby to clean you up. I just observed everything, without fully feeling anything. I was neither happy nor sad. I just watched everything going on around me. I was surprised by how big you were. Given my belly size i thought you’d be small but at 21 inches you seemed like a full grown baby (not a newborn). They placed you on my chest and even then all I could do was observe the strange creature you were then wriggling on my chest. I won’t go into the details of what happened next (long story short, Eileen and your paternal grandmother and Jordan came to visit and your dad yelled at them for coming in during the golden hour - he was definitely hyped and still trying to process everything himself so he was a little jumpy and made Eileen cry; also your maternal grandma and Jason were hovering over you after they took you off my chest to get examined, but a particularly high level of hovering came from your maternal grandma I will say).

It wasn’t until about 24 hours later that I felt an overwhelming rush of emotions. Everyone was gone and your dad was sleeping on the pull out couch in the hospital room. You were laying in the plastic bin that hospitals use as a bassinet, next to my bed. Even though the room was dark, I stared at you, thinking about how perfect and wonderful you were and how thankful I was to God and the universe for allowing me to birth a healthy baby. I teared up as the feelings of love and gratitude filled me.

You’re almost a month old now and I love you so much more now than I did then. I even love it when you cry intensely and inconsolably; everything you do is so precious. Sometimes I just want to stare at you crying (but don’t worry I don’t do it… for too long). You make a duck face and stretch out when you wake up and after you eat. You grunt and cry for nipple, sometimes even when it’s already in your mouth. You’re getting more alert but also startled more. I know there will be (many) days where you’ll aggravate me (like last night when you wouldn’t sleep in your bassinet no matter how many times you fell asleep on my nipple) and I just won’t like you but for now I love you and everything you do, everything you don’t do and every sound that comes out of you.