The mountains are dusted in white, so we know it must be spring. Cherry blossoms adorn hillsides like sprigs of baby’s breath, green buds burst forth, ducklings hatch, and crocus bulbs cleave. As I witness these spontaneous births across South Korea, I can’t help but think of our own daughter’s unpredictable debut 3 ½ short months ago…

Years ago when I was in labor with my first child—cervix 10 cm dilated, baby’s head crowned, my body readied to push—I was told to hold back my son for almost 30 minutes as we waited for my OB-GYN to arrive. Being very young and my first delivery, I dutifully did as I was told. But to this day I still don’t know how. It felt like one of
The Five Chinese Brothers trying to swallow the sea: completely unnatural. The first time I saw Saemangeum Seawall in South Korea I thought of this children’s book as well as this memory. The 21 miles long dyke is a 2 billion dollar land reclamation project, converting 150 square miles of tidal flats into arable farmland. At low tide fishing boats and crab traps look like shipwrecked derelicts in the salty wasteland. In my imagination, I can see the disobedient little boy of that children’s book running off into the horizon, chasing after briny treasures, as the poor Chinese brother struggles to swill the ocean in his mouth. Ultimately, the brother fails. The dammed water breaks and the little boy drowns. In my first labor, I felt this same overwhelming pressure. Perhaps my second son was born so quickly because of it.
These are two concerns I carry with me into my third delivery: doctors dictating my birth story and not making it to the hospital in time. So when my OB-GYN announces he will only allow me to labor a maximum of five hours before initiating a C-section, my husband and I decide to leave the practice. Despite telling him about my large babies (both nearly ten pounds), my quick deliveries (both under six hours), and my desire to avoid both induction and C-section (if not medically necessary), he is uncomfortable with my baby’s size and a natural delivery. At 40 weeks, we transfer to a university teaching hospital almost an hour away. The distance scares me as I imagine a roadside delivery. The loss of my relationship with Dr. Um depresses me, as I begin a sudden one with our new doctor—the one willing to give us more time. I knew delivering a baby in a foreign country would have its challenges, but I’m starting to feel more anxious about hospital policies than the birth itself.

Everyone makes guesses about when the cherry blossoms will appear.
Mid-April. Before Passover. After Easter. When the virus passes… It feels like waiting for our baby girl to arrive all over again. We look for the tells—warmer temperatures, succulent buds, news reports from the subtropical south—as we eagerly anticipate the explosion of pale pink flowers. Back in December, as our baby demurred, we tracked labor sign in much the same way, hunting for creaky joints, a dropped belly, or a bloody show. And as we waited until the limit of our induction date—42 weeks—new fears supplanted old ones. I no longer worried about a fast delivery or a doctor who ran late. I worried about my aging body—one that might no longer have the hormones to kick-start a labor or the muscles to push out a baby. But I tried to remember that birth is as unstoppable as spring.
The night we are supposed to go to the hospital to be induced at 42 weeks, I’m feeling funny. It may have been 22 years since I last gave birth, but my memory for labor is indelible. We want a natural delivery. We want the fewest medical interventions possible. We want a little control. And so we decide to wait and travel to the hospital once the contractions are ten minutes apart. While our new doctor has promised to give us more time in labor before calling a C-section, we feel a little snake-bit by the system. Before we worried about arriving too late; now we worry about arriving too soon. Unlike my previous fast and furious births, this labor is lazy and light. Contractions remain 30 minutes apart for the entire next day. But when they finally narrow, I’m confident my body is well on its way. We leave in the evening, even stopping off to look at puppies and have a light meal first. We are circling the hospital parking lot as we calculate the timing of my contractions, always keeping that “five hour labor window” in mind, and feeling annoyed we even have to “game” the system this way in order to have a natural delivery.
A few months after I deliver my baby girl, in the height of the COVID-19 crisis, I will sign a petition online to prevent hospitals in the United States from banning the support person in the delivery room. It’s an unconscionable proposal. More than just a hand to hold, the support person in the delivery room is oftentimes a laboring woman’s only advocate. I know my birth story would have read very differently if my husband hadn’t been in the delivery room that night. In fact, I know the hospital staff didn’t want him to be.
At check in, we are informed that my husband will not be allowed in the delivery room. I was mentally prepared to not have my mother or friends near me during this very important time, but my husband too? At the Woman and Baby Center with Dr. Um, we had discussed our birth plan—my husband in the room, waiting 5 minutes to cut the cord, the hope of a natural delivery—so we wrongly assume this modern facility will follow suit. After many minutes of wild hand waving and language app translation, where my husband insists on either his presence or a suggestion as to where we should deliver our baby—in the ER? on the street?—the admitting staff relents. My husband is allowed to be with me. However, staff will continue to try to lock him out, as he hammers on doorbells, tries to sneak in through side doors, and considers going Mission Impossible as he looks up at a ceiling access hatch.
Looking back now, we laugh at the absurdity of the situation. We even laughed quite a bit that night at the funny things about delivering a baby in South Korea. Funny things, such as the drops of dried blood on the floor and hospital bed from the previous patient. Even as we point them out, the sheets remain unchanged. I simply lean away. Funny things, such as a nurse telling me to clean up my own hair after she shaves me. I try to joke with her I haven’t been able to see that region for a couple of months, but okay, where are the Kleenex? Her response: You didn't bring your own? Or when I try to get up to use the toilet, and she tells me to use a bedpan. I ask: Where is it? Again, her reply: You didn’t bring your own? Which brings us to the next funny thing: It’s BYOMS (Bring Your Own Medical Supplies) in South Korea. Upon admission, they hand my husband a list of supplies needed for the delivery: Blue Chux underpads, large sanitary napkins, bedpan, urine bottle, sitz bath, that box of Kleenex... You purchase everything at the 7-Eleven in the hospital—one of the many small errands my husband goes on resulting in yet another lockout. The following morning it’ll be BYOC (Bring Your Own Chopsticks) for your seaweed stew, but our roommate (one of at least 6) will loan us a spoon.
But what isn’t funny is the continued pressuring to have the surgery. Even though my husband declines the procedure multiple times, as soon as he leaves the room, they push the paperwork in my face again to sign off on a C-section. When I ask about my dilation, they tell me I’m not making progress—even as we eye high peaks on the computer screen. I know I’m feeling at least 4cm quality contractions, but when I point to the evidence, they turn off the monitor. My husband pokes at random buttons on the cardiotocograph until the printer spits out a hard copy; the nurse promptly returns and tears it up. My husband and I are utterly bewildered, and so he hunts down someone to turn the monitor back on. They finally do. The baby’s vital signs are normal and steady. The contractions are regular and intensifying. Everything, based on my experiential knowledge, feels textbook. But I’m starting to doubt myself, and as I labor blind, I wonder if I’m succumbing to paranoiac thinking.
They finally leave us alone. A nurse makes one last attempt to get me to sign off on an epidural and episiotomy. I refuse both, having had neither in my previous deliveries. She leaves frustrated, after drawing detailed pictures of the episiotomy and tapping her pen vehemently on a cartoon anus. In this way, South Korea’s obstetric system is similar to America’s in the 70’s. My mother said it was standard back then to be shaved, drugged, and cut, regardless of what the patient wanted. We were halfway into the haircut earlier before I realized this was protocol. But we are left maybe too alone now. I labor intensely and keep wondering where I’m at. No one checks on me for a couple of hours, so I finally ask my husband to find someone. When they finally check me, they say I am only 2cm. I know, to the core of my being, this is wrong. I request to be re-checked. Suddenly, I am now 6cm. This happens again an hour later when, once again, my “advocate” has to seek out help. Based on my pain, I’m certain I’m almost fully dilated. Again, they say I’m only 6cm. Again, I request to be re-checked. All of a sudden, I am at 10cm and 3 nurses and 2 attending doctors pour in. Later I will learn the doctors were on standby for an emergency C-section.
They say all’s well that ends well, and that is certainly true for our birth story. Our baby girl is born without complication and, at 9 pounds 14 ounces, is a superstar in the nursery. Babies this large in South Korea are so rare, in fact, that they want to put her in the NICU for observation. My husband—who has followed after the baby into the nursery--laughs and declines. She is 3 ounces heavier than my first son was and 1 ounce lighter than her father was. She is born on the first night of Hanukah, which is meaningful to my Messianic Jewish husband.
As I sit here on Easter eve thinking about what I’m grateful for—second chances, new life, a recommitment to my spiritual life—I also think about the blessing of that experience in the delivery room. While a hard won natural delivery, I’m still grateful for the vigilance of South Korea’s national health care system. Ranked first in the OECD for healthcare access, South Korea has, in the end, taken very good care of us. They delivered our baby girl, protected us from COVID-19 with their highly effective trace, test, and treat program, and detected our daughter’s Ventricular Septal Defect, providing her with immediate care.
When our daughter is almost two weeks old, I take her to see Dr. Um. While there were no hard feelings between us when we left his practice, I still feel nervous for some reason. But just as the front desk staff starts to fawn over the baby and boggle at her size, Dr. Um emerges from his office, rushes towards us, and lights up like a sunrise.