My first born child recently turned 9, the last year of single digits, and is just chomping at the bit to be a teenager (the thought of that makes me want to curl up in the fetal position, suck my thumb and rock myself until I’m in my happy place). This means that Jamie and I are nearing a decade of parenthood, yet we still feel like newbies (honestly, we’re just not good at this). If you’ve ever met Reese, you know that she always has a vivid story to tell, with no detail left out, and often a few embellishments added for dramatic effect. Her birth story is no different, and it is extra special because it is also a story of first time parents.
Ten years ago, I had ACL reconstruction after a volleyball injury. I was not allowed to return to work with any restrictions, so I was out of work for nearly 5 months before my doctor cleared me. I was extremely bored and had no good hobbies to occupy my time, so I decided it was time to make a baby. After all, that’s how couples decide to start families, right, when they get bored? Okay, maybe not. But I had a shit ton of time on my hands to research fertility, ovulation, and of course the Chinese calendar to ensure we would have a boy first. Apparently, Jamie was bored enough too and was game to expand our family. Cue the Marvin Gaye music, it was baby making time.
Well, unlike my parents threatened for all those years in my teens and twenties, it didn’t take just ONE time for us to get pregnant. In fact, it took us much longer than we anticipated. We ended up needing to use the fertility drug Clomed to help me along my merry ovulating way. Eventually after a few cycles, it worked and I was pregnant. That was the first of many signs that Reese would be on her very own timeline, not mine. We were overjoyed and things couldn’t be better. I wanted a boy so badly because my sister’s and brother’s first borns were boys, and I wanted to carry on the tradition. To my dismay, the Chinese calendar kept saying I was going to have a girl, the necklace and pendant over the belly pointed to signs that I was having a girl, I had dreams that I was having a girl, and every Filipina nurse at the hospital I worked at just NEEDED to tell me that I was having a girl because my belly was really wide and my face was so big (why, Titas, just why?). Sure enough, at the 5 month appointment, they told us we were having a girl. Okay fine, no boy. I thought to myself that I had time to prepare for a girl, unbeknownst to me that there was no preparing for a girl this tenacious.
My pregnancy with her was as exciting and nerve-racking as any first time pregnancy, filled with horrendous all-day sickness, reading pregnancy books about which fruit size she was that week, not knowing if the baby moved or if it was the refried beans I ate earlier in the day, and learning how to eat better. No joke, I was eating fruit snacks everyday because the package said it was made with real fruit, and I felt like the wind was knocked out of me when my friend, Dimple, told me that fruit snacks were not a good substitute for fruit. She said no fruit was naturally a chewy, jelly-like substance, and I nearly cried, wondering if my baby was going to be born with some sort of fruit snack induced deformity. I’m sure I also googled if I was doing damage to my fetus by eating Burger King whoppers and pork rinds everyday. To this day, Reese’s favorite food is hamburgers, and she’d never turn down an opportunity to eat fruit snacks or pork rinds. Talk about a parent’s actions influencing their children.
I was determined to work until the very end of my pregnancy. Working at a hospital as a pregnant woman had its perks. Whenever I felt paranoid that I hadn’t felt the baby move in a while, I would go down to the labor and delivery floor and ask if they could detect a fetal heart beat. After a while, probably when they were tired of seeing me, they told me to just eat a candy bar and wake the baby up (best advice I received all pregnancy). There was another time at work when I was getting ready to help a patient out of bed and I nearly passed out. I told her to move over and I halfway laid in her bed until I could get help. Thank goodness for nice patients that share their beds and know how to use their call buttons to call the nurse. Turns out it is common to have low blood pressure issues during your second trimester, information that would have been helpful early on, rather than “this week, your baby is the size of a kumquat.” Perhaps the most vivid memory at work was when I felt like my pants were suddenly wet, and I thought my water broke and I was going into early labor. We were supposed to go to a Bull’s game that night, but instead ended up in triage to monitor the baby. Baby ended up being fine, and the diagnosis was…I just peed myself. Oopsie. That was the first signs of Reese having a propensity towards pushing my buttons, beginning with my bladder buttons.
As we were nearing the 40 week mark, due at the end of January 2011, I recall watching the weather on the news about a snow storm that was building in strength and heading towards Chicago. They were referring to it as “The Storm of the Century.” I laughed and said to Jamie, “Ha! Watch Reese try to be born during that storm! Thank goodness she’s due before it is supposed to hit us.” Well fuck me. Guess who was 5 days overdue. Most hospitals, including the one I worked at, were planning on having a skeleton crew when the storm hit. My boss told me not to come in to work the next day because the conditions were too dangerous. That night, our neighbors in the condo were having a game night because no one was planning on going into work the next day. Before Jamie started drinking, he asked, “Do you think the baby is coming anytime soon? Because if you do, I won’t drink tonight.” And sure as shit I said, “No way this baby is coming. I haven’t even dropped yet.” And off he drank, and we stayed up late playing games and partying like it was a weekend.
We went to bed late that night, and the storm was roaring by then. 3am rolled around, and nothing says ‘good morning’ like your bloody show followed by your first set of contractions. I wasn’t sure if I was in labor or not, but just in case, I woke Jamie up. His response: “What the hell, Ely, I asked you last night if you thought you were going to have the baby today. You said no! I’m still drunk and I need to sleep!” And he actually went back to sleep. Dumbfounded and confused as to what I should do next, I opted to clean the bathroom and the rest of the condo, instead of murder my drunk husband in cold blood. Besides, I needed him alive to drive me to the hospital. I called the doctor to let her know the situation, and she told me to sit tight and keep timing the contractions. Hours went by, Jamie still passed out, contractions still inconsistent, and I had so much nervous energy to expend, that I hopped on the treadmill for a nice brisk walk, took a shower, and cleaned some more until there was nothing left to do. I started to get tired but didn’t want to go to bed because I was afraid my water would break and ruin our mattress. Early mom lesson learned the hard way: always choose sleep over cleaning.
Finally, Sleeping Beauty himself arose from his slumber, ready to tackle the day. He woke up a few of our neighbors and asked if they could help him shovel our shared parking area so we could head to the hospital. It snowed so much, that it took at least 2 hours to clear a path for us. When the contractions were more consistent, we headed to the hospital, in fear that more snow was coming. Chicago looked like a ghost town and roads were eerily quiet and clear, like a scene out of an apocalyptic movie. We went to Prentice Hospital at Northwestern, and we could see abandoned cars parked along Lake Shore Drive. It set a tone of foreboding, you know, exactly what you want to feel when you are having your first baby.
When we arrived at triage, the doctor examined me and said I was not dilated enough and suggested that I either go home or labor in the lobby. I told her that I didn’t want to get stuck at home if more snow came, so she was willing to admit me and induce me. Our labor and delivery room had a nice view of Lake Michigan and the traffic that looked frozen in time (much like my labor). Once we got settled, the doctor gave me Pitocin to kick my labor up a notch, broke my water, and told us to start walking. I remembered the labor videos the hospital made us watch a few months prior, and I had it in my head that I was going to walk a lot, and then as labor progressed, perhaps do some breathing exercises on a giant exercise ball. Nope, none of that. I walked maybe 5-8 minutes, got to the end of the hall, felt like I was going to take a giant shit in the middle of the hallway, and speed walked back to my room to sit on the toilet. No one in the video said I was going to have the majority of the labor pains on the damn toilet. I kept saying to Jamie, while holding his hand and bracing myself on the toilet, “I gotta take a shit, I gotta take a shit!…Oh, never mind. Wait, wait, I gotta take a shit, I gotta take a shit! Oh, it’s gone.” This went on for a solid 20 minutes until Jamie finally said in the sweetest way, “Monkey, haven’t you noticed that the sensation of pooping is coming about every 2 minutes? I think you’re just feeling contractions.” “In my ass?” I yelled. “Does this baby think she’s coming out of my ass?” Still got the jokes, even in all that pain. But no one was laughing, except maybe Reese.
The nurse came in to check on me and asked me how my pain was. Jamie said, “If your ACL tear was your worst pain ever, what is your pain now?” And I told them both that I was in so much more pain than a stupid ACL tear. The nurse gladly called in the anesthesiologist for my epidural. The anesthesiologist positioned me, palpated my spinal landmarks, and I’m not even kidding, asked me if I thought that was “the middle.” The middle of what? Was she really asking me if she was in the right spot to stick that giant needle in my spine? I told her I wasn’t sure, and all she said was, “Okay, okay, yeah, that’s the middle.” I started to freak out, and my mind went to all the mom patients that I had in the past who had nerve damage after their epidurals. I was not in a good head space by the time Jamie came back into the room. He tried to calm me down, put on some American Idol and a basketball game afterwards, and we eventually fell asleep (as if he needed more sleep).
I was woken up several times by numerous nurses and residents, so I didn’t get a ton of rest. The baby’s head was tilted to one side, which was slowing her progression downward, and they decided to place monitors on her head to keep an extra close eye on her status. As if my anxiety was not already at an all time high, I noticed that I lost movement in both of my legs, and the numbness began to climb up my torso and all the way up to the right side of my face. So to answer your question, anesthesiologist, no you were not in the middle. Also, you overdosed me. I said to the doctor and Jamie, “Okay guys, my vagina is numb, I was having contractions in my asshole but now that’s numb, and now my mouth is numb. Can someone please clarify which orifice this baby is exiting from?” They reassured me she was coming out the vag way, and encouraged me to relax as much as possible.
I labored for over 30 hours before it was push time. Jamie said since day one of my pregnancy that he was not going to look down there when the baby was coming out, in fear that if he was grossed out he’d never go down there again. But there he was, holding my limp leg and staring at the train wreck that was my vagina. There was a first year resident observing the delivery, and after my first few massive pushes, I heard her ask the doctor what “that” was. I gave her this look like, “Dude, you know what that is.” You don’t need to go to med school know what poop looks like. I mean, yeah shit happens in there, and I couldn’t help but giggle at her question. Many women feel mortified when that happens, but I felt like it lightened the mood. After a quick wipe and a guilty shrug of my shoulders, we were back at it. I pushed for a good hour, and it was so incredibly exhausting. Then I heard Jamie, his voice in the octave of an operatic soprano, excitedly exclaim, “Oh my goodness, here she comes! Look at all that hair!” And there she was, tiny and tired, with a cry that sounded like a 1 year old having a full blown tantrum. The lungs of that baby girl made me feel proud, like she was going to be outspoken like her mom. I held her and cried, and I think I said, “Damn, she’s so white!” It wasn’t my most articulate moment, but in my defense, she was really white compared to me. We were instantly in love with her.
As I held her close, we stared at her dark curious eyes, her beautiful face, and her weird ass cone-shaped head, in the back of our minds hoping it would round off after some time. The nurse was at the foot of my bed aggressively massaging my abdomen to get the placenta out, and I noticed her do a Matrix style move as if she was dodging something. I asked her if everything was okay, and she said, “Woah, you just passed a softball sized blood clot!” My first thought was, “Eewwww, my vagina is bigger than a softball! What the hell did that kid do to my body?” Then I started feeling woozy and told Jamie to take the baby. Jamie took her in his arms and peeked at the where the blood clot was, and he said he remembered seeing a waterfall of blood flowing out of me. Within seconds, a team of doctors and anesthesiologists came rushing in, and all I could hear was, “She’s hemorrhaging and I can’t find the source.” I was losing so much blood at such a fast rate, that my vessels were blown and they couldn’t start an arterial line on me. Finally, after what felt like a million pokes everywhere on my body, they found an artery in my foot. I was shivering with cold and vomiting while doctors and nurses surrounded my bed, taking turns trying to find and stop the bleeding. I watched Jamie swaying back and forth with Reese, facing the window, Jamie hardly able to look in my direction. They seemed so far away. Someone from the peds team came in to give Reese a bottle. I said, “No, no, don’t give her a bottle. I want to nurse her first. And I need to do skin to skin stuff with her. It’s part of my birth plan.” And then I passed out. I would come to and pass out several times after that for the next hour while they worked on me. I heard someone say, “Page the OR, tell them we’re coming.” I grabbed the nurse’s arm and said, “No! No hysterectomy. I won’t consent to a hysterectomy. I want to have more kids.” Then I turned to Jamie and said, “Don’t let them do it, Jamie. Don’t let them take my uterus.” He looked at me with helpless eyes, whispered something in the baby’s ear, and just tried his best to smile. At some point, when I felt like things were possibly taking a turn for the worse, I looked at Jamie and baby Reese and mouthed ‘I love you.’ Then I held my nurse’s hand and said, “Please don’t let me die. They need me.” She told me I was going to be okay and she wouldn’t let me die, and then I passed out again. That is some Shonda Rhimes shit right there. Play the Maxwell song, “This Woman’s Work,” in the background of all that, and you have the workings of a Grey’s Anatomy episode!
When I came to, the doctors were cleaning up and clearing out. I wasn’t sure if I had just dreamt that all, or if I was dead. Then my sister came storming in, looked around and said, “Why does she have an a-line? Why is her pressure so low? Why are they hanging blood? Why is she gray? What the hell happened in here?” Oh, my sister is here, so I’m either alive or in hell (kidding, kidding). We explained to my family everything that happened, and that they eventually had to inflate a balloon in my uterus to firm it up and stop the bleeding. See, this uterus party even involved balloons, a sure sign that Reese would be a future party animal. My mom, in her very Filipina mom way, said, “Oh my God, you’re having a blood transfusion? Are you going to get AIDS? They should have just taken blood from me instead of a stranger’s blood! Do you want to take my blood?” I can’t even type that without laughing. Classic Mom. I didn’t want all the attention to be on me (just most of it), so I told them to meet and hold Reese, if Jamie would ever let her go. And soon, they were in love with Reese too. Jamie’s family came in afterwards to meet the first grandchild on his side, and I witnessed this extra special moment of wonder and new love. Jamie finally, after hours of nonstop buttocks clenching, allowed himself a break and went out to dinner with his parents. It was then that he broke down and cried. He knew it was safe now to let the brave facade go, and he let out all his fears, sadness and snot on his mom’s shoulders. And there I was, finally alone in the room, jello in one hand, ginger ale in the other, and a giant ice pack on my lady parts held in place by enormous mesh panties. Also not in the video. It was perhaps one of the last times I was ever left alone in a room again for the next 9 years.
I finally got the movement in my legs back after a little more than 24 hours. Reese had many more family and friends coming in to meet her. They enjoyed watching us try to figure out how to handle a new born. Jamie would often say as he was changing her diaper, “I don’t know what to do, there are so many cracks to clean!” And I would respond, “Always front to back.” The excitement died down and the anxiety ramped up as our discharge neared. Jamie and I donned our celebratory matching orange Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups t-shirts (because we’re dorks), ready to conquer parenthood. I looked out my window one last time and saw the frozen lake, a snow-covered field, traffic on Lake Shore Drive back in action, and the city slowly inching back to life after that fiasco of a snowstorm. And I thought to myself, “Oh yes, shit’s about to get real.”
And I was right, shit got real really fast, and continues to get more challenging and rewarding with every year that passes. We learned quickly that there is never a dull moment with Reese. Reese, as our first child, became our everything; our every joy, our every worry, our source of pride, our main reason to google things, the culprit of our sleepless nights, our built in alarm clock, our button pusher, and a revealer of our most humbling weaknesses. Her birth story tells so much about her; her disregard for following a timely schedule, her love for hanging upside down, her perseverance and athleticism (30+ hours of labor is a lot of work for a baby), her natural draw towards dramatics, and mostly, her closeness with Jamie. Jamie spent those crucial first moments of her life with her, in a room full of commotion and anxiety, holding her tightly, protecting her from sensing one of his greatest fears, whispering loving things in her ear to keep her (and himself) calm. And to this day, if there is one person in this world that could comfort my girl, it is her daddy.
Reese walks along a path that her story set for her, one of great anticipation, hard work, patience, adventure, fear, pain, love, and gratitude. She is a kid who will always choose dancing over standing around, cartwheels over walking, singing over talking, forgiving over holding grudges, and kindness over cruelty. Cheers to my Reesey girl, one of my greatest life teachers.
The Mundame 
Enjoyed ur story. 🙂 i also have a recent “tenager” and man….lol
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