by Nicole Chung
I woke up around one in the morning with a bad cramp twisting low in my abdomen. Indigestion, I decided, by now all too familiar with what pregnancy had done to my once reliable stomach, my newly squashed organs. I got myself a second pillow, turned on my left side, and went back to sleep. But as the night progressed, the pain flared and subsided, waking me again and again to stare at the clock on my nightstand. The fifth or sixth time, before I dropped back into a fitful doze, I thought about how strange it was that my indigestion seemed to flare every nine minutes.
By four a.m. I had given up on sleep and the delusion that I might not be in labor. Brenda had promised us that early labor would be “manageable,” and so it was. I breathed through what I now knew to be contractions, sitting up in bed with my body still and my heart threatening to run away.
Later, when we told family and friends how this night and day had gone, they would laugh at my choice to let Dan continue sleeping while I labored on my own. I would fire back that I knew I would need him soon enough, and decided one of us, at least, should go into the biggest day of our lives well-rested. But the truth likely had less to do with the kind of clear-eyed pragmatism even labor could not take away from me and more to do with needing time alone, in the darkness and the quiet, to accept that this was happening. There was something special about being the only person who knew our baby was on her way, feeling her scooting ever closer to the world while everybody else slept. In a few hours everyone would know she was almost here, but for now it was still our secret, hers and mine.
When I woke Dan at dawn, ready for some company, he saw that I’d been doing well enough during my silent vigil. The two of us were both fairly calm, united in a sense of purpose: this was the day we had prepared for, trained for. Dan helped me time contractions for a few more hours, writing them all down—what time; how long—on the back of an envelope. We called the birth center when it opened at eight, and I heard Dan chuckling as he spoke with the midwife. Things were moving slowly, I heard him explain; no, her water hasn’t broken yet; yes, she says she feels good so far.
Once he had answered all of her questions and hung up, he told me the midwife had predicted a slow and steady labor for us. “She just said, ‘First babies,’ and laughed,” he reported. “They want us to call back when the contractions are about five minutes apart, and come in when you’re in active labor. She said be sure to eat; you’ll need your strength.”
I didn’t feel especially hungry, but I munched on some peanut butter toast and then took a shower. Strange, I remember thinking, that a day in labor could begin like any other day. Throughout the morning I moved from position to position, room to room, trying to stay comfortable. Sometimes I walked up and down the stairs; for an hour or two, I straddled a chair and tried to watch a movie. I was tired and not a little terrified, but I also felt encouraged by how easy labor seemed so far. It was a relief to find that our classes, our teacher, and our trusty workbook had not misled us: things would start slow, and build. Naturally.
Hours later, I was a lot less calm. The pain from contractions had moved into my back, and even sitting and rocking on the exercise ball didn’t provide much comfort. At our request, our doula had come over to offer support, and the counterpressure she applied to my lower back felt like a gift from God himself. In between contractions—now every six minutes apart—I tried to relax and carry on conversation. Talking made me feel like myself, like I was still in control. I found I often had to grunt, hum, or issue a low groan during the peak of each contraction. Our doula called these “good, productive noises.”
The bag for the birth center was already packed in the car, ready to go when we were. The contractions still weren’t all that close together, edging closer and closer to five-minute intervals, but the pain was now severe. I hadn’t expected so much back labor. Many hours later I would learn it was likely due to our daughter’s unusual compound presentation, her arm raised next to her head; in that moment, it felt like more than I could bear for very long. I tried to carry on conversation, but kept slipping into a kind of trance, failing to catch all the words.
So it was with less than total focus that I checked my email around four in the afternoon, sweating and whimpering and desperate for a distraction. My contractions had finally settled at five minutes apart, and Dan was double-checking to make sure we had everything: overnight bag, infant car seat, iPod with my “labor” playlist, snacks and phones and chargers. Refreshing my inbox gave me something to do other than think about the pain. I saw a name in black, bolded Arial, a name that had never before appeared in my list of contacts: CHUNG.
I clicked on the message just as my body seized in another contraction. Words leaped out at me. I knew they must be important, but I couldn’t focus on the sentences.
Dear Nicole
I received your letter
please forgive me
My birth father had read my words, looked at my pictures. He had written back immediately—today, of all days. My eyes swam, but it had more to do with pain and fear than emotion. My body wouldn’t allow me to focus on anything except the job at hand.
When Dan came back into the house, I closed my laptop and he helped me into my coat. I wanted to tell him about my birth father’s email, though I can’t remember if I did. I would think of it, off and on, through the long, strange hours that followed. But in this moment, as my husband helped me into the car, news of my birth family didn’t seem to belong. It was time for us to meet our baby.
Part III
In the hours following our daughter’s birth, the day and night I spent in labor would feel like something someone else had lived through—beginning with the long drive to the birth center in Friday-afternoon rush-hour traffic. At several points I convinced myself it was too hard, too much; I couldn’t do this, so somebody else must be doing it for me. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was already in transition when we left for the birth center. As the contractions were still five minutes apart, we assumed I must be just on the cusp of active labor.
In the car, though, things felt more intense. Strapped in and unable to bend or move or walk, it was much harder to breathe through the contractions. Dan drove with one hand most of the way, letting me grip his other hand tightly, while the doula followed us in her car. We got stuck behind two school buses. Every bump in the road shuddered through my entire body. Every red light lasted forever. My seat belt seemed too tight, stretched across a body that now felt possessed, but I was afraid to unfasten it.
We finally made it to the birth center around five o’clock, daylight giving way to winter dusk. Jenny, the midwife on call, brought us to the Blue Room, a homey birthing room with pale blue walls and ocean-themed pictures. She checked me quickly and said, “You’re eight centimeters dilated and one hundred percent effaced!” I couldn’t believe it. At home, we had thought I was only four or five centimeters dilated “at most,” based on the timing and how I had seemed during contractions. “What a great job you’re doing! See how prepared you were?”
I allowed myself to feel optimistic; transition was supposed to be the hardest stage of labor, and I did feel I was managing it well so far. But nine months of pregnancy and all our books and classes had not taken away my fear of birth itself. Of crowning, and pushing, and giving way to new, insistent life.
I was able to talk in between contractions, so that’s what I did—partly as a distraction; partly because it was reassuring to still feel like myself. I remember babbling at the nurse and midwife about my labor playlist. Our doula stood behind me, continuing—thank god—to apply pressure to my spasming lower back, while Dan supported my weight, counting me down from the contractions. “You’re doing so well,” he told me, over and over; “you’re getting so close.” I held on to his words. As hard as it was to bear, the pain did have a purpose. It would end soon.
But the pain escalated while dilation slowed, then halted. Hours passed, a second nurse came on call, and still I was only at eight and
a half centimeters. I’d endured many long, agonizing hours of transition, which was supposed to be the shortest stage of labor. We all knew that if labor had proceeded as expected, I would already have given birth. The intense back labor seemed to concern Jenny, who wondered if the baby might be in a bad position for delivery.
We had met all the midwives in the practice over months of prenatal appointments, and while they all seemed wonderful, Jenny was one of my favorites. She was quiet and unruffled and professional; something in her kind, elfin face also reminded me of a dear college friend. So when she sat on the edge of the bed and asked whether I might be scared (of course I was) and if there was anything the birth team could do to help me push through this last phase, I gripped her hand and didn’t cry, even though I wanted to. I wasn’t scared for our baby—we kept checking for signs of distress, and she was holding up like a champ. But I was so discouraged, and I didn’t know how much more I could endure.
When I finally made it to ten centimeters and got the go-ahead to push, it felt like such a relief, a miracle in itself, I wanted to laugh. Time slowed to the point of having little meaning. I made myself focus on just getting through one more contraction, and then one more minute; when even a minute seemed like too much, I lived second to second. Though I couldn’t quite focus on his face or register his words, I knew Dan was telling me how much he loved me and our baby; how proud he was of us. How he knew that it was hard, but I could do it. If he was scared, or worn-out, plagued with doubt, no one would have known.
If it were up to me, I knew I would have long since given up. I’d been in labor for nearly twenty-four hours; I was exhausted, digging deep for every push, and had no energy of my own left. But I felt as if someone else’s will to be born had taken over.
“You’re doing great, Nicole,” Jenny said suddenly, and these seemed like the first clear words I had heard in hours. “One, maybe two more pushes and she’ll be born!”
It was the most powerful moment of my life, that moment shortly after one in the morning when I heard her cry and knew she was finally with us. Our daughter decided to come into the world with one fist raised. Seconds later she was placed on my chest, beautiful and flushed and still screaming at the shock of birth, and I touched her hair, her warm little cheek. Her skin felt impossibly soft, softer than I knew anything could be.
At seven pounds, fifteen ounces, twenty inches long, she was not a small baby—her wails were also lusty, much louder than I’d expected—but she felt new and fragile in my arms. She stopped crying and gazed up at me, and my world shrank to the arresting dark blue pools of her eyes. It was such a strange color, I thought—I had never seen anyone with eyes like that. In a few days, I suspected, they would darken to brown, but for now I reveled in their uniqueness. Her skin, ruddy from birth, would likewise settle into a shade that nearly matched mine. She was born with a tiny bump of a nose—I recognized it as my own in almost comic miniature. My chin. The shape of my eyes. A look on her face that I recognized, one that struck me as already impatient to know and explore and understand.
As I looked at her, I knew the person I had been was gone, unmade in an instant by this tiny girl. The rebuilding, I was certain, would take a lifetime.
“Do you have a name picked out?” Jenny asked us.
Dan and I had spent hours talking about names, digging through books and searching our own memories for favorites. For a few weeks I even toyed with the idea of suggesting the name Susan, after I learned it was the name my birth parents had picked out for me, but then dismissed the idea—it felt like too much to lay on a newborn’s tiny shoulders. I did not want her to imagine that I had her only because I’d been given up; that I expected her to live out her life with us the way I might have with my original family. She wasn’t here to make me feel complete or make up for the choices of others. She was here because we loved her.
Dan and I had chosen a favorite name years before we had even thought about starting a family. After all this time, it was still the one we both wanted for her. Abigail nursed, then fell asleep on my chest, content in the swaddle the nurse had expertly wrapped her in. Dan slept, too, after calling our families. I had never been so tired, and I was sore to the very roots of my hair, but I couldn’t seem to close my eyes—how could anyone expect me to sleep when I had this fascinating little face to watch? It was almost impossible to believe this was the same unseen being who’d done jumping jacks on my bladder, greeting me with kicks and pokes and slow stretches for weeks on end. She was so small and so new, barely and yet wholly herself, already.
As I looked at our daughter, sleeping peacefully in her swaddle and her flannel hat, I felt a little bad that she’d been forced into clothing after months of being tucked up safe and warm. Moments after my own birth, I’d been moved from someone’s arms to the impersonal if life-sustaining embrace of the incubator. I wondered if my mother had gotten a chance to hold me. Had she even wanted to? Had she seen me after the crisis, the premature birth, before the adoption? Had my father ever seen me again?
My daughter would always know me. She would never have to fight to know her story. She would never have to wonder if we had loved her, wanted her. Suddenly I remembered the words of a friend and fellow adopted daughter, also a parent of young children: I love telling my kids their birth stories. It’s such a privilege to be able to do that.
Yes, I thought, and also a miracle. The clichéd word didn’t embarrass me; this day and night was a wonder I’d never get over. As many times as this had happened before, to billions of parents since time immemorial, it was the only time it had ever happened to me. I had a child now, and she was mine. We were together. We would stay together.
When Abby was old enough to ask me—to wonder, and to listen, and to care—I would tell her about her birth, her first days with us. You were born with one arm raised, which wasn’t very nice, I would say. When it was over, you and Daddy slept, but I couldn’t. All I wanted to do was look at you.
Cindy, thank you so much for the teddy bear you sent! Please thank Rick for us, too. I’m sure Abby will love it when she is interested in something besides milk.
I’ve never felt so inadequate, so exhausted, or so glad. We’re still trying to establish some semblance of a daily pattern, and when she cries I can’t help but feel I am failing her somehow. I knew it would be hard. But I am aware this season is brief and soon she’ll be different—less needy—and I’ll be glad and also wistful to see her grow. She’s changing so fast; already she is so much bigger and more herself than she was when we first brought her home. She has my chubby cheeks and a dimple in her ear that came from her daddy. She has hair that sticks out a little, just like mine. She likes to rest against my chest, use her strong little arms to push herself up, and crane her neck to stare up at me for a few seconds before she loses control of her head. She watches me as if she expects me to reveal the secrets of the universe. She watches as if she could understand me if I did.
Everyone told me she looked like Dan. While I thought so, too, at times it still stung. I’d waited so long to see our shared inheritance spelled out in the shape of her eyes, the curl of her hands, her fast-dawning facial expressions.
I could see Dan’s influence, of course, without even trying. But I saw myself, too, every time I looked at her. She and I had the same full cheeks, though hers were chubbier than mine. Her keen eyes did turn a deep, dark brown, and when she closed them in sleep she reminded me of photos I’d seen—me, as a baby, sleeping on my new parents’ chests. It was incredible to see so many well-known features blended in one small face; to watch a smile I thought of as more my husband’s chased across her face by a look of confusion or consternation that was all me. It all made me wonder how much I had looked like my birth parents as a baby. I wondered if I would ever have the chance to ask either of them.
New parenthood was a blur of sleeplessness and soreness and wonder, of dramatic milestones and timed feedings mostly contained within the four robin’s-e
gg-blue walls of our bedroom. Abigail’s bassinet was hooked to the side of our bed, where she slept, sometimes swaddled, in between feedings and diaper changes. We became adept at changing her on a changing pad on the bed and quickly transferring her to my arms for a feeding in the rocking chair. She liked to fall asleep on my chest, or on Dan’s, but once awake would dig her little arm in and push her head back so she could stare into our faces. I got the distinct impression she wanted to communicate with us already. I had no frame of reference for any of the shocking physical sensations of motherhood—the jolt I felt close to my heart when she cried, needing food only I could provide; the satisfaction that unfurled through me when she fell asleep in my arms; the bone-deep tiredness of sleep deprivation and giving over my body and my mind to this entirely new endeavor. Everything was somehow unexpected, even when I should have expected it.
My parents had met me when I was two and a half months old. They didn’t spend nine months anticipating or preparing for my birth; they didn’t experience the high drama of labor or those sweet moments of relief just after delivery. As Dan and I learned how to take care of our newborn, I wondered if my parents had ever felt cheated out of so many of my firsts—by the time they brought me home, someone else had changed my first diaper, caught my first funny stares and smiles, taught me to drink from a bottle. I couldn’t imagine missing a moment of Abby’s early life. How long it had taken for them to feel like my real parents?
After a week or so, she was already a different baby than the one we’d brought home, so sleepy and fussy because we didn’t know how to swaddle and bounce her the right way. In time she noticed her own reflection in the crib mirror, and began babbling at it. She couldn’t control her hands at all, but whenever they landed on something, the textures fascinated her endlessly. She began to wake us up not just with cries in the middle of the night, but coos and gurgles in the morning—sounds that were strangely conversational, reminding me of my dad’s old line. She’s talking to her angels, I thought.