Heritage and Destiny: January 2016

This is how birth stories typically go: they state the facts and stats, like how I needed to be induced at 37 weeks due to developing Interhepatic Cholestasis of Pregnancy, a condition where my liver bile became elevated, causing extreme itchiness all over my body and putting me at risk for complications if I delivered later. At my last OB appointment at 36 weeks, I was already at 2-3 centimeters dilated and 80% effaced, so things were already progressing on their own. A major storm rolled in the week of my baby's induction, and like any anxious, nesting mother, I kept checking and re-checking the contents of my hospital bag and organizing the nursery, hoping the storm would not cause downed power lines or other complications for my big day.

I was scheduled for induction on 1/5/16 at El Camino Hospital and ended up waiting 24 hours due to lack of room in the hospital. I dragged the phone everywhere I went, and finally Tung and I were fed up with waiting and decided to "tempt fate" by running errands and getting out of the house. We had lunch at Merit Vegetarian with Tung's aunt and her husband; on our way to drop them off afterward, my phone finally rang, summoning me to the hospital on 1/6/16.

It felt surreal walking up to the Labor & Delivery reception desk at 3:00pm and telling them I was there to be induced, then being shown my delivery room #8 and instructed to change into a gown by my first nurse, Carolyn, one of my favorites at the hospital. By 4:00pm, they started my pitocin drip.

I was hoping to last as long as possible before asking for an epidural, but my blood pressure was creeping up during labor. One of the OBs on duty, Dr. Cary Hill, suggested a magnesium sulfate drip that would help lower it, but Carolyn advised that it would most likely sap my energy and make me tired for the delivery; she suggested administering the epidural right away as it has the convenient side effect of lowering blood pressure as well, so at 7:00pm, I met my anesthesiologist, Dr. Chen. A poke, some stinging, a cold, cold feeling, and the catheter was in.

Things progressed quickly after that, with my main discomfort being developing the shakes from the epidural. At 10:56pm, I was 8-9cm dilated, and the baby was at the +1 station, doing very well. At 11:00pm, the nurses changed shifts, and I met Teresa, the nurse who would see me through delivery.

At 1:10am, I began pushing, but the baby did not move from the +1 station, so I was instructed to rest at 2:00am and waited an hour for passive descent. Then came a moment when I felt true fear. The epidural was numbing one side more than the other, so Tung helped me roll to my right side. The constant beeping of the fetal monitor slowed, and suddenly Teresa rushed back into the room and moved the monitor sensors around, trying to locate the once-rhythmic heartbeat. The monitor went from the normal 150 beats per minute down to 60 and suddenly flat-lined. Teresa pressed the call button for three more nurses to come running in: "My baby's down--can I get some assistance?" she barked to the reception desk. Tung and I shared a look of helplessness and sheer terror before they placed an oxygen mask over my face and told me to take slow, deep breaths for the baby. Just minutes later, his vitals came back online on the monitors.

At 3:00am, Teresa came back to coach me through active pushing, and two hours later, the delivering OB, Dr. Lynn Gretkowski, who had made her introduction earlier, came back into my room to see my baby into the world after having delivered one right next door. She suggested an episiotomy that would be the equivalent of a second-degree tear, something I would have rather avoided but for the baby showing signs of distress toward the end.

At 5:08am, my son slid into the world, and just as I felt an immediate lightening in my womb, my heart became full as he let out his first shriek. They cut his cord, prepped the cord blood and tissue for banking as we desired, and then placed him immediately onto my chest, a hot and slippery bundle. He immediately started rooting, searching for comfort and familiarity outside the only world he had ever known. The nurses changed shifts again at 6:00am. Alison weighed, measured, bathed, and immunized the baby.

Luc Aiden Sen was born on 1/7/16, weighing 6 pounds 13 ounces, 19 inches long. From my bed, I watched him turn a healthy red color in his newborn bassinet. He scored an 8.5-9 on his Apgar, feisty and practically ready to roll over, lift his head, and almost take a step on his own when supported in a standing position. The attending pediatrician, Dr. Cappioli, also checked him out and gave him the all-clear.

My blood pressure did not come down after delivery, so I finally accepted the magnesium sulfate drip and lebatalol pills. After an hour of recovery to check that my vitals were stabilized, I was transferred to my postpartum room, 173, and met Madylyn, another favorite nurse of mine. She also happened to be my last nurse a few days later who discharged me.

That's how birth stories typically go, anyway. But that is not entirely the birth story I wish to tell. My story of Luc begins long before that call from El Camino Hospital for induction. People don't so much remember stats, but they remember poignant moments, fleeting images, lasting memories. I remember staring down at my light-blue checkered pajama pants with teddy bears that were also wearing pajamas during the winter of 2014, taking my umpteenth pregnancy test, to be met with another stark-white negative. I cried into my lap, sitting on the toilet and staring at those teddy bears, thinking I only had them for company, not foreseeing that I'd be expecting a summer-conceived baby, or that I happened to be wearing the same pajamas that I neatly folded and placed on my bed with a surreal feeling the day I was called in to birth my son.

There were things that didn't and would never get done despite my best nesting intentions, like knitting my baby a blankie, a labor of love to remain as a keepsake for him. Or cleaning out the nursery closet of my old office paperwork after we moved the majority of the contents to the guest bedroom to make room for the baby. There were unopened boxes of baby shower gifts, instruction manuals left unread, and paraphernalia left unassembled because he came three weeks early and there was so much to do at the end.

I remember being driven on the familiar road to the hospital where we took the majority of our child-prep courses, passing the Marshall's department store and the Erik's Deli at the corner. There's a warp-hole-like feeling to the hospital; you get sucked into an unfamiliar world of fluorescent lights, staff in scrubs, medical terminology, and the relentless beeps of monitors; after a few days' stay, you feel so removed from commodities such as sunshine, fresh air, and privacy.

People tend to ask how my labor went, what I remember the most. For me, it's not so much the pain or the waiting, and not even so much the fear of uncertainty; what I recall is how much pregnancy and labor taught me about love. It's the selfless love of knowing that little being growing inside you caused you to develop high blood pressure, an elevated Hepatitis B viral load that could cause liver cirrhosis, and being diagnosed with cholestasis, spending the final weeks of pregnancy scratching and tearing into your skin in your sleep, but hoping instead through your own self-inflicted corporeal torture that your baby is well and healthy, convincing yourself that he'd be that way if you could hold off labor a little while longer so he could continue developing. It's love you learn after your body has been poked, prodded, and stretched beyond what you thought was possible, your muscles exhausted and your air spent at the end of each day, but you still stroke and pet your swollen belly and talk lovingly to your unborn child. It's the love that breeds calmness and forgiveness as you tell the nurse administering your IV on labor day, "It's ok," even though she missed your rolled veins three times in a row before calling in someone else to get it right as you lay there bleeding on your hospital bed. It's love that makes you struggle to use your right arm to hold and nurse your baby, despite the trailing IV still stuck in your vein. It manifests in the decision to refuse a magnesium drip for the duration of your labor, a drug that could lower your rising blood pressure but could be passed on to your baby en utero.

Exhausted and overwhelmed by the mental, emotional, and physical trials of labor, some women admit to not feeling an immediate connection or powerful love upon meeting their baby for the first time. But I loved my son from the very beginning--the moment they placed his wriggling body onto my chest as I listened to his strong cry; the moment his practically blind eyes were seeking my face as I watched him turn a healthy shade of pink and then red, the moment he strained his underdeveloped neck muscles and formed his mouth into an "O" shape to find my milk, my scent, my warmth--I felt a love for him that was "without walls, without ceilings," as my Filipina boss used to say.

It's the kind of love that breaks your heart as you wait, pump, squeeze, curse the magnesium sulfate drip for drying you out, curse your incompetent body for not immediately providing milk for your crying, starving, dehydrated baby toward the third day of your hospital stay, feeling a defeat and shame that crushes you as you beg the nurse to bring in some formula since your few drops of mother's milk is not enough to flush out the jaundice turning your baby's body yellow.

It's the tugging, stinging, gutting love you feel as your son gets his first or tenth heel prick for his bilirubin test, and you lay your hands on him, stroking him as he inconsolably screamed and you weren't allowed to pick him up and hold him during the blood collection when they squeezed and squeezed his cold foot for several more drops. It compels you to not break down, holding back the tears, teaching your son strength by summoning your own, all the while turning into liquid inside.

It's the love not even borne by all your life's biggest accomplishments combined: the educational degrees you got, the new cars you drove, the house you bought. It drives you to get up every two hours around the clock and especially throughout the stillness of the winter nights, when all else in the world seems to be asleep as you keep your lonesome vigil, holding your baby to the breast or the pump parts against you to catch the precious drops of milk so you could freeze your supply for when you leave your child and go back to work. And it's all worth the tight shoulders, sore back, sleep deprivation, and bodily torture when you gaze at your sleeping newborn, watch him suddenly open his panicked eyes to seek something familiar in the inky darkness, settle upon your face, and melt into a comforted smile.

The first three weeks of motherhood has been a trial by fire, a straight streak of winging it, making mistakes, doing your best to rectify them, testing your social graces as people come (not all invited) to your door to meet your new baby.

It's perseverance through exhaustion, sending you into despairing pits of lows and euphoric highs you've never felt before. It is truly the hardest job in the world, a "no refund, no exchange" ticket into a journey that no amount of reading, educational videos, or shared stories of others' experiences can prepare you for. Three weeks into this. I already couldn't imagine my life being any other way than this perfect chaos.

Northern California has been in a drought for years. The hills turned yellow, the dirt grew packed, people let their lawns die, and lakes receded, leaving a wake of fish bones and reeds.

We adapt to circumstances, paying raised prices for this precious resource, save water from washing our vegetables to feed the garden, stop washing our cars and drawing baths, take quick showers. Eventually, we forget what it's like to live without rain. We get used to days upon sunny days, tuck away our raincoats in the dead of winter, lose track of all our umbrellas.

In winter of 2015, our house at the foot of the hills got pelted by rebuff winds. The gangly trees in our garden snapped in two, and the orange and brown leaves of the persimmon tree were blown clean off in one night as the first of several storms roared through town. I woke up to the sound of hooting wind through the crevices around our house, to huge drops pelleting the resin roof of the the tool shed near our bedroom. The grounds became wet with washing, worms wriggling on the sidewalks to escape drowning in the mud.

On January 5, 2016, the day you were supposed to be induced, another big storm blew through. Droplets of rain hit our window with a ping-pinging sound as your father and I anxiously awaited the call from the hospital to come in. Your father joked you should bear the name "Stormborn" as we haven't seen such rains in years.

We often don't know what we are missing until it comes back to visit us, the way the heart forgets with absence, until it is reminded of a great necessity it used to have. The land has been thirsty for a long time, waiting and waiting for rain to drench its parched surface, much like how we've been eagerly waiting for you for a long time. I take walks every morning. With routine comes less acuity in the perception of your surroundings. Houses I pass all look alike, and the seasons blend together like an eternal summer. But this I will remember: the year you come to join us, it is also the year the rains came.