This post is for our secondborn, Tov’s little sister, Woori Grace Lee-Herrmann.
Woori Grace Lee-Herrmann was born on August 19, 2024, at 7:39 pm, on a Monday in which I had planned to make no-cook tomato capellini for dinner using the sun-burst heirloom tomatoes we picked at the farm.
I did not get to taste that pasta, but I was told Tov ate very well that night.
But this post is about the birthday of Woori, and to tell that, I need to start on Sunday, the day before.
For weeks before Sunday, I had been having some pretty nasty contractions, some up to level 4 pain. Some nights, I woke up convinced I was going into labor from painful contractions, only for them to subside by morning, and every morning I rolled out of bed surprised and annoyed that I was still freaking pregnant.
It wasn’t just because I was suffering from the discomfort of contractions, cramps, backaches, and sciatica. Tov will be starting school on Sep 3, and I was worried that he’d have to deal with this huge transition mere days after his sister is born. That’s enough big changes in his life within the month. So I had been chugging about five cups of raspberry leaf tea each day, hoping to trigger the labor process, but all that happened were a frustrating series of false alarms.
On Sunday, I had a level 5 contraction during our family afternoon walk that lasted at least 20 minutes straight, my uterus clenching as tight as an Olympic gymnast’s abdomen, refusing to loosen until I finally sat down on the edge of somebody’s flower bed and rested.
Then that night, around 11 pm while I was snacking on homemade sourdough banana bread, I felt a wetness that imprinted a damp spot in my sweatpants. The last time I had gone into labor, it had started with my water breaking as well– not a gush like in the movies, but a small, clear steady trickle that very quickly rolled into intense contractions. Could this be it? I put the banana bread down and started walking around the house, wincing from the back and leg pain. But no more trickle, no building contractions. Ugh. Of course. Another false alarm. I returned to my banana bread.
The next morning, on Monday, I woke up 38 weeks and 6 days pregnant, irritated that I’m rolling out of bed with a watermelon belly once again. “Come on, Woori,” I grumbled. “You can come out now.”
I decided to start the week assuming Woori wasn’t coming any time soon. I made a pediatrician appointment for Tov to get his lymph node checked. I filled the inflatable pool and let Tov splash about the backyard. I refreshed my sourdough starter and baked sourdough Irish soda bread. I texted my neighbor and a friend to plan playdates for Tov. I made plans to do an inventory of the deep freezer and pantry so I can stop buying things I already have. I put Tov down for a nap, crushed tomatoes to make the pasta sauce for dinner, and headed down to the gym to work out.
During my workout, I felt wetness again. It certainly wasn’t urine. And it was too watery to be discharge. But from my last experience and everything I’d read on ruptured membranes, shouldn’t the leak be constant, rather than sporadic? It’s probably a false alarm, wistful thinking on my end, I thought. But it wouldn’t help to message my ob/gyn, just in case, so I texted a message to the ob/gyn office, marking it “non-urgent.”
An hour later, they responded. They told me to go to the hospital to get myself evaluated. “That would be the safest thing to do,” they wrote.
Eh. Seems like a lot of fuss and work for something that’s probably nothing. Besides, it was soon time to take Tov to the pediatrician.
I texted David what happened. “I think I’ll go probably after dinner,” I wrote.
“Why don’t you go now?”
“I have to take Tov to the pediatrician in 5 mins.”
David offered to take Tov instead, which gave me time to take a shower, do my skincare routine, and get dressed to go to the hospital. I briefly considered finishing packing my hospital bag, just in case, but decided against it. Nah. Too much work.
At 3:30 pm I drove leisurely to the hospital, listening to a podcast on book recommendations and munching on chocolate-covered pretzels, ignoring the cramps and contractions that were by then too familiar. I felt silly. I wasn’t leaking anymore. It was nothing. I was wasting time.
Thankfully, check in was swift. A nurse greeted me within five minutes of waiting, and ushered me into a room. She hooked elastic bands around my belly to monitor the baby’s heart rate and my contractions. When she saw I was having a contraction, she pressed her hands on my stomach and looked down at me in surprise. “You said you’ve been having contractions for weeks? Did they always feel this tight?”
“Yep,” I said.
“These are really strong contractions,” she said.
While we waited for the test results on whether I was indeed leaking amniotic fluids, she told me what’s likely to happen. If I test positive for amniotic fluid, I’d be admitted immediately and induced, because that means I’m at risk of infection. If I test negative, I’d be admitted or released depending on the dilation of my cervix, and whether I choose to be induced anyway.
I tested positive. And surprise! I was already 5 cm dilated.
The nurse looked at me with arched eyebrows. “Oh, you’re not going home.”
And for reasons I cannot understand, after all that impatience to give birth, my immediate reaction was, “Oh crap. But I need to go home and make that pasta.”
The nurse saw the expression on my face and she softened. “How are you feeling about this? You feeling OK?”
I couldn’t tell her about the pasta. She wouldn’t understand that I’d been really eager to put those $16 heirloom tomatoes from the farm to good use and make sure Tov eats it. Instead, I told her I needed to call my husband.
I called David and told him what happened. “Good thing I didn’t wait till after dinner,” I said.
“I had a feeling since yesterday,” he said. “That’s why I offered to take Tov to the pediatrician.”
I gave him detailed instructions on how to finish making the pasta. The plan was to call Mimi, Tov’s former nanny, to come help watch Tov until my cousin got off work and take over until the baby was born. David would feed Tov, take him for a walk, put him down to bed, and then head over to the hospital around 8 pm.
While David called Mimi and my cousin, the nurse wheeled me to a labor & delivery room. It was about 4:15 pm then. She called the ob/gyn on call and he recommended I get induced right away, as my water had broken nearly 18 hours ago by that point. They wanted me to have the baby in my arms by 11 pm that night. I told them I wanted to wait before being induced. From everything I had read, induction makes the labor process even more intense and painful, and I had been hoping to have an unmedicated birth so I can still move about freely before and after birth.
So the nurses left me in my room and I bounced on a grey yoga ball, waiting for a spontaneous labor to happen.
Praise God, I didn’t have to wait long. It was like my body knew it was game time. The random contractions I had been having for weeks started picking up in pain and intensity. They were a level 5 pain, and within half an hour, a level 6. The nurses came to check in on me once in a while, offering an epidural. By 6 pm, they were at least a level 7.
“Am I officially in labor?” I asked a nurse when she came in to readjust the monitor.
She shrugged. “I suppose you can say that?” She looked at the chart. My contractions were still irregular and inconsistent, ranging from 3 to 6 minutes apart. But I was having a harder time breathing through them. I told the nurse my husband isn’t coming until 8 pm. Would that be too late? “Oh, you will have time,” she assured me.
I texted David anyway. “Come here around 7 pm? I’m definitely in labor.”
He FaceTimed me so I could instruct him on which skincare products to pack into my suitcase. I might be in excruciating pain, but I need my Skinceuticals CE Ferulic serum.
He arrived at a little past 7 pm with my suitcase. By then, no position and breathing could keep me relaxed. Every contraction seized my shoulders and curled my toes. I know this pain. I remember this pain. It was the same pain I felt two years ago as we sped up the 405 at 4:40 am on May 4, 2022, the day Tov was born, while I clutched to the side of the car, fetal-positioned in agony.
But this time, I knew what to expect. I knew the pain would get worse. It meant I was transitioning into delivery, like the guillotine at the end of a torture session: sweet, cutting relief.
A new nurse knocked then and entered. A new shift was beginning. She introduced herself, asked about our birth plan, started typing things into the computer. Meanwhile, I gripped onto the bed with both hands and groaned. “I feel pressure,” I gasped.
“Oh, OK,” the nurse said, floundering. She started explaining that because my water had broken, she was hesitant to do too many cervical checks, which increases the risk of infection. She talked about getting an epidural, but I’d need to be able to sit still to get it, she said, eyeing me uncertainly as I twisted the bedsheets in the midst of a whooper of a contraction.
“You don’t have to get an epidural if you don’t want to,” David told me, which I believe he learned from a YouTube video titled “Support Tips for Birth Partners for an Empowered Birth.”
I was only half-listening. “I feel a lot of pressure,” I repeated.
The nurse slapped on a pair of gloves. “OK, we can do a cervical check now,” she said.
I was a 10. Now the nurse looked and sounded frantic. Nothing was ready, nothing was prepared. “Don’t bear down yet,” she yelped, paging her ob/gyn and her team to bring in a table or whatever it was they needed. It was all background noise to me by then.
I knew what was going to happen then. I was no longer moaning but bellowing. As I felt another contraction, this one so familiarly uninhibited and powerful, like a tsunami of pain and force, I flipped over, got on my knees, grabbed the headboard of the bed, and let my body go.
Fluids gushed out, like guts from a fish. Then a searing pain.
I heard someone– David? The nurse?– screaming, “I see the baby!”
Another contraction. Another ripping pain. And it was over. Shouting, but not from the baby. A hatter patter of activity– thundering footsteps, squeaking wheels, exclamations and mutterings and orders.
Then I heard the cry. Woori. They laid a sticky, wailing purple little thing into my arms. I pulled her to my thudding chest, adrenaline and blood still pumping through my veins. I did it. It was done. And the delivery itself couldn’t have been more than 4 minutes. She had come even faster than Tov.
As my cousin marveled, “Faster than Uber Eats.”
Or as my friend in London remarked, “Faster than Yuriy (her husband) pooping.”
About 15 minutes later, the ob/gyn strutted in, very late to the show. I could have had this baby at home. Oh well.
About thirty minutes later, everyone left the room, leaving David, Woori, and I to enjoy silence together. The sun was setting, and the room was shimmering blocks of shadows. I had finally wound down, and only then did I properly look down at my daughter to meet her.
She was beautiful. She had a full head of light brown hair, like Tov did, and bright blue-grey newborn eyes that peered up and around in surprise. She refused to grab hold of our thumbs like Tov did. Perhaps she’s got an independent streak, like me, but from her tiny semiformed features, I saw a petite, prettier David, with his furrowed brows and expressions.
My second child, and I’ll never get over how beautiful, how sacred, how astonishing it is to meet the child you’ve carried in your womb unseen for nine months.
Woori Grace Lee-Herrmann. 7 lb 1.1 oz, 19.45 inches. Welcome to the family, our Woori. You came just in time.
Writing for Sophia 