Mrs. Hotaka (a.k.a. my wife, K, and Special K) was supposed to come to the house on Sunday and help put things away in the kitchen while I worked the living room, office and guest room. But her pains were coming on more frequently and she saw blood when she went to the toilet. After her belly contracted more often than recently, she went to her clinic for a quick check. Her womb was still closed and they said it was probably just advance labour pains but they scheduled her for an appointment the next morning anyway. By the time I talked to her in the evening and again at night she was dealing with stronger and more frequent pains.
Monday morning, at about 5:30, her sister called me and said that K was feeling stronger pains and that she was going to the clinic and would like me to be there. I got up right away and washed and ate. I had been looking for the digital camera since the day before and I finally found which box I had packed it in. The battery was low but I knew I could still get a few photos with it. Off I went to the station, enjoying the local scenery of rice paddies lined with purple and white irises and gardens off green, and thinking to myself how fortunate that the baby seemed to be coming on my day off so I could be there for the delivery. “What am I doing today? Well, I am going to help my wife bring our first child into the world. You?”
I was a hot morning already, the sun glaring down from a hazy sky. The cool breeze of Sunday was gone and the air stagnated with the climbing heat. At the station I sent a text message to her phone to announce the time of my arrival at the station nearest the clinic. I waited 15 minutes for the train and rode it two stops. I checked my phone but there was no reply. I called her phone and got the answering service. I left a message saying I was at the station and I couldn’t remember the name of the clinic but I would start heading there. I felt so unprepared suddenly. I didn’t remember the name of clinic, even though I had been there three times already. We hadn’t practiced the massage techniques the husbands had to learn and I forgot the different breathing techniques for the different stages of labour. I had been too occupied with moving to the house, work and my own projects to take the time to remember everything. Bad husband.
I didn’t know exactly where the clinic was either. I turned down one street and found a convenience store. There I asked to check a map. I was sure that if I found the clinic on the map I would recognize the name. But only one clinic appeared on that map and it was not the one. I tried K’s family home number and got her sister. I explained my predicament and she was able to tell me the name of the clinic and then she started giving me directions while I walked. But she wasn’t exactly sure of how to get to the clinic from where I was though she knew it wasn’t far. Then I saw a sign with an arrow and I was able to get there on my own. After 50 minutes of walking from the station I made it to the clinic.
K was in bed on her side. A machine next to her was trailing two cables under her long night shirt. One set of numbers on the display showed the baby’s heart rate and the other showed another number that rose up to 60 sometimes but dropped to 1 or 2 sometimes. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I watched K try to massage her back but when I offered to help she said she felt hot and uncomfortable to have someone standing so near.
The nurse came in, a young woman of about thirty-ish, very pleasant and all smiles and laughter. I asked about the numbers and she said the second display was a measure of the contractions, the higher the number, the stronger the contraction. We said we hadn’t practiced the massage techniques. Deftly the nurse began massaging K’s back and showed me how to do it. With the heal of my thumb I had to press hard in the small of K’s back, just around the tailbone and in a circular motion push with my hand. It was not easy. My thumb muscles got tired quickly and K said she needed me to push stronger. It took a bit of practice to get the right pressure and the right spot but K was an angel by instructing me what to do without irritation when she could have been ripping my head off like you see on TV. But I would not complain. My efforts would hopefully alleviate some of the pain she was feeling.
Sometimes I was asked to leave the room while they did a brief examination. The womb had dilated past 3cm when I arrived and was opening more. At one point I came in and was told her water had broken. It was hot in the room and I was sleepy while K rested in between bouts of labour pains. But when the pains came back and the numbers rose up quickly I tried my best to do the massaging right. The numbers climbed over 100 and once or twice reached 199, the highest number that could be displayed, and a flashing plus sign was added. K kept trying to keep her breathing under control. At first she had to inhale and exhale slowly. After her water broke, she had to exhale in two short burst followed by a longer one with a quick inhale. Fu-fu-fuuuu, inhale, fu-fu-fuuuu, inhale…
The doctor came for a look and then came to me in a waiting room when I was sent every time. He asked if I was the husband and I said yes. Then he said, “You’re not Japanese, are you? Are you?” Was he in doubt? I was pretty sure I looked Caucasian enough. Then he explained the problem he had just now discovered. The baby was big. K is very slim, disregarding the bulging abdomen. The baby’s head was up against the pelvic bone. He called it cephalo-pelvic disproportion. Normally baby’s heads will deform as they are squeezed out through the narrow opening but there was a chance in our case that the baby’s head would actually get mashed. Very not good. It seemed a caesarean section was the only way.
I called K’s mom and told her what was up. She had given birth to two daughters by C-section as well. Then I stayed with K a few minutes longer trying to help with the breathing and massaging. The doctor came in a scribbled on paper in very hard to read Kanji (he even wrote the wrong character at one point and scratched it out). He threw in English words such as foetal distress and caesarean section, just to make sure I knew what was going on. Then I had to leave the room again but not before giving K’s hand a squeeze.
I knew what was going on. I trusted the doctor and nurses. There was nothing to worry about. But I was a nervous wreck, pacing back and forth like the dads in the movies. The idea of my wife being vivisected? Well, not exactly vivisected but put under the knife and given the old snip snip anyway, made me scared for her. She had wanted natural childbirth but there was nothing that could be done for that. She was going to be cut open and the baby taken out that way.
K’s mom and sister showed up. I was glad they were there. Talking with them allowed me to calm down a bit. Barely fifteen minutes had passed when we heard a baby cry. We looked at each other and then at the nurse sitting at the nurse station. She mouthed the word, “Umareta,” which means (he) has been born. We were all standing in the hallway now. My feelings of nervousness and anxiety were suddenly replaced by relief and excitement, and a level of joy that was amplified by anticipation. Just then, K’s older sister came. I felt like grabbing her and giving her a big hug, I was so happy. A purplish infant was placed on a scale in another room behind the nurse station, just within view. He cried a bit and then fell silent as he was turned around, swaddled, weighed, measured. He fussed when he got eye drops and didn’t like the tape measure on his head but he calmed down again soon after. Someone came out and told me I would meet my son soon.
It is hard to sum up the overwhelming flood of elation I felt. I can only compare it to the happiness and excitement I felt walking down the aisle holding K’s hand in that stone church in New Zealand, back in March. My hands were pattering against my legs. My legs were bending and straightening with anticipation. And then the door opened and a bundle of white blanket held a small reddish face with wet eyes. The bundle was handed to me and I felt the weight of my son in my arms. His hair was black and short, his eyes dark. Somehow he looked a little like me but still Asian. I looked at him and told him I was daddy. Photos were taken and then in the blink of a camera flash I had to hand him back. We tried to get a couple of last photos and I tried for a close up but forgot to turn off the flash and *POP* his little eyes got flashed at point blank range. He didn’t seem to care though. He remained remarkably calm.
Next we had to see K. She was ready for meeting after a while but when I went in her oxygen tube had slipped from her nose and she was groggy and almost couldn’t speak. It was her mother who informed the nurse about the slipped tube and when I heard from her sisters how much she had spoken to them after the oxygen tube was adjusted I had to go back. Meanwhile, MiniHot was on display in his incubator and we looked from the window as he kicked, turned his head, grabbed his cheek, clenched his fists and threw his hands in the air. He was hiking, climbing, jumping and running. And he was sneezing and yawning. I hoped he hadn’t inherited my allergies. He was labelled as arriving into the world outside the womb at 12:14PM, with a mass of 3,310 grams and a total length of 49.6 centimetres.
After talking with K more we left her to get some rest. MiniHot was concealed behind a curtain and so we set out to eat lunch in the shady part of the parking lot. K’s older sister had bought us convenience store meals. After eating I wanted to contact my parents. It was already 10:30 PM at home and I needed to find a public phone from which I could make long distance phone calls. The reception desk recommended going to city hall. I borrowed the car K’s mom was driving and went to city hall. At the reception desk there I was instructed to go to the third floor. A woman there recognized me as I used to teach some classes for the city hall junior and senior English classes. She asked how I was, how K was, had we married, was I teaching in Japan, could I teach for them again, was I still photographing landscapes, and so on. After about 10 minutes I was recommended to go to the station to buy a phone card and use a phone there. I could park for free at a nearby shopping mall. This all took time and at last, over an hour later I finally called home to get an answering service. Mom and dad had already gone to bed. I left my good news anyway and returned to the clinic.
Back at the clinic K’s dad came and her youngest sister too (she has three sisters) though she is never seen without her cell phone in her hand and her eyes glued to it as she sends and receives text messages from friends. We took turns talking with K and I used the digital camera video setting to capture MiniHot’s movements. He seemed to enjoy putting his right fist in his mouth often. K had only seen her child when he came out and touched him briefly. Then she was separated from him and was so very eager to hold him.
At last we left. It was hard to tear myself away from my wonderful wife, especially knowing that she would spend the night there alone. We held hands and looked in each other’s eyes, proud parents who had done their best to get through the birth together as much as possible. K said she was really grateful that I could be there and massage her when the pains became bad. I was really grateful that I could be there too. I know the mother does most of the work so I was glad to have been there contributing in anyway I could.
It was also hard to tear myself away from the glass where I could see my boy kicking and moving about. Each time I looked at him I thought, “Whose kid is that? Is he mine? He’s not just another infant. That’s my boy. It seems so unreal, like a movie.” I knew once I went home where I live by myself everything would seem like a movie that had ended. I didn’t want it to end. So I looked a little longer to make the reality stick in my brain. “That’s my boy. That’s MY BOY!”
