04. The Betrayal
The Irreversible Beguilement
On a Sunday evening, Sandara’s water breaks, without the company of contractions. She informs Seung Hyun and Yuri on what is happening, but it’s just the waiting game now.
At midnight, she is rudely awoken by constant painful tightening on her stomach. It comes and goes every fifteen minutes, but is enough to keep her from her sleep. She decides to not wake up Seung Hyun and deal with the contractions until they are closer to each other.
To her disappointment, the waves of tightening ebb away at some point of the night. She has only realised this when her alarm rings at 06:00 and wakes up to find herself still at home, pregnant. Seung Hyun is already making breakfast.
“Do you think I can go to work today?”
It reminds her that the week is Seung Hyun last week of work before his three weeks’ break that he has requested at the beginning of her pregnancy. She has not expected herself to go two weeks early considering first-timers are usually overdue, though it is possible to go into labour before the due date.
Sandara tells him to go since nothing much is happening, but by the afternoon, her contractions resume to take its toll after she gets on her knees and scrubs the bathroom floor. She decides it has to be cleaned today after being unattended to for a month because of her pregnancy and Seung Hyun has been busy with work, and her. On the bright side, she thinks she needs the break with the extra weight she is carrying.
She proceeds to have a warm shower as the pain keeps assaulting her, but the warm water helps exceptionally well. The women she looked after have described labour pain like period pain, with or without the back pain, but Sandara has always imagined it to be more similar to a hard, intense massage that goes on for hours on end. Why? Because all this pain ‘pushes’ the baby down and opens up the cervix, and with the pressure the contractions place against her womb and her baby, it would be more similar to muscles being squeezed, right?
Sandara doesn’t know how time has gone so fast, but she doesn’t think it has gone long before she texts Seung Hyun to inform him that “it’s getting more intense”. She then calls Yuri to give the same information.
“You’re doing great!” Yuri says positively after Sandara huffs and puffs through a contraction. Sandara personally thinks she is not doing great at all and wonders whether Yuri has said that due to habit of saying them to women she looks after. “I’m serious,” Yuri adds, as if reading Sandara's mind. “You’re breathing through the contractions and you focus on them.” She then suggests that Sandara should come in to the Birth Centre to be examined. “Is Seung Hyun home yet?”
“He is on his way home. We’ll go as soon as he comes.”
“It won’t be long, right? He usually comes home now, around four o’clock?”
It’s four o’clock already?
Sandara quickly agrees with a groan as she feels another pressure building up on her abdomen. She puts the phone away to God-knows-where and Seung Hyun returns home to find his wife in a bowing cat position on the living room floor, panting and groaning. She looks up towards the door to see him standing there agape.
He rushes over to her and attempts to help her up, “Are you okay?” She holds up her hand to indicate to him to wait a minute. She releases a deep, shuddering breath, her fingers gripping hard on his hand. When the waves depart, she sees worries etched at the corner of his eyes and lips. “I’ll get the bag and car ready!”
It’s going fast, she muses during the car journey. She does not expect herself to go this fast for her first baby since first-timers usually have long pre-labour that lasts for a few days, but considers herself fortunate with her progress.
Yuri assesses Sandara’s cervix as soon as she arrives at the Birth Centre to discover it to be five centimetres dilated. For the next hours, and the next tens of contractions, Sandara loses touch to her surroundings; she is so in tune with her body and all she knows is just trying to get from one contraction to the next. She mobilises as much as she could and holds on to the couch, the bed, the TV, the table, or Seung Hyun through the throbbing surges. Her eyes warm up as she checks the time to be 19:50.
There is no point placing time frames on this type of thing. You know that.
Still, she couldn’t help the tears that flow out at the end of the recent pain that comes. She is glad Yuri has sent Seung Hyun down to get coffee before the café closes at 20:00 and not there to see her like that. Yuri rubs Sandara’s back to console her as Sandara sniffs and lets the tears pour down.
I know this. I just have to stay calm. Each contraction is another strength I have to overcome. Just hang on, Dara.
“You’ve gone this far without any pain relief, Dara. You should be proud you did it all yourself.” She gives a genuine encouraging smile, and offers Sandara the tissue box.
As Sandara wipes the moisture off her cheeks, she asks, “Can you please check me now? It’s almost three hours since last time.”
Yuri agrees and helps her over to the bed. She grabs the Doppler that has been lying for a while at the nightstand and turns the button on as she places the transducer on Sandara’s lower right abdomen. A whooshing sound breaks through silence in the room before a determined, rapid beat resonates between them. She leaves the transducer on for another minute to ensure there is no deceleration.
“Baby sounds good,” Yuri remarks, “as you know.”
Sandara smiles in relief and Yuri proceeds to prepare the gloves and obstetric gel for the examination. To Sandara’s satisfaction, Yuri announces cheerfully, “Eight centimetres!” Sandara lets out a weary smile of victory as Yuri continues, “I’m just going to feel the head at the next contraction to make sure that it’s pushing the head down.”
“Should I get into the bath after this?” Sandara enquires, but she grimaces when the new ripple of pain arrives. She growls as the pressure is pressing on her every being, but knowing that she is close to the end makes her feel better and more positive.
I can do this! she tells herself. For me, and Seung Hyun.
As she breathes in and out, she hears a knock on the door and its opening almost immediately. Footsteps follow as she feels Yuri stiffening, supposedly for being interrupted during an internal examination. “I’m just examining her,” she hears Yuri’s whisper before Seung Hyun’s reply, “Okay.”
It is only when the contraction is over that Sandara realises there is another presence in the room. For a moment, she freezes and wonders whether the pain has sent her head into dizziness and now, she is hallucinating. Yuri finishes up and disposes of the use equipment as the new presence speaks up, “Hi, Dara, how are you feeling?”
Right there, sitting at the couch, is her elegant mother-in-law smiling warmly at her as her husband, Seung Hyun Choi, sits quietly next to his mother, bowing his head down in shame, not looking at Sandara at all.
Comments