As November approached, the wind coming through the gaps in the veranda suddenly turned cold.

My mother, who leaves early in the morning for cleaning work, looked at me worriedly as I struggled to even get up from bed to see her off, and said:

“So Hee, call me immediately if you feel contractions. I’ll keep my phone by my side while working.”

“Don’t worry, Mom. The obstetrics hospital is only 10 minutes away from home. I’ll call you right away if I feel contractions.”

This was what I said every day while seeing off my working mother after maternity leave, but as the due date approached, my mother’s eyes grew more desperate.

I had looked into facilities like postpartum care centers, but since the costs were not insignificant, I decided to just have postpartum care at home with my mother’s help, and made all the preparations.

While I had mentally prepared, I realized that there’s no such thing as being fully prepared for childbirth only when I felt my body’s sudden signal for delivery.

On November 5th, a week before my due date, I was lightly eating lunch and reading a book while listening to “Winter” from Vivaldi’s Four Seasons.

I had been praying every morning with a positive mindset, looking in the mirror and hypnotizing myself for a day full of good things, but it seems my prayer was weak that day.

Suddenly, I felt something like a popping sound inside my belly along with a sensation of something leaking downwards.

I instinctively felt that my water had broken.

I called my mother, but there was no response.

I slowly got up from the bed, but it was difficult to take even one step due to the amniotic fluid flowing down.

With each step I took, it seemed like more amniotic fluid was flowing out, and I realized this was an emergency situation, not a time to leisurely call a taxi and wait.

I had learned countless times in class and hospital practice to rush to the emergency room when the water breaks.

I called 119.

The 10 minutes waiting for the ambulance to arrive felt like the longest in my life.

Clutching my belly and praying for the baby’s safety, I was in tears.

The fear of being alone grew, but so did the desire to somehow safely bring this new life into the world.

About 5 minutes after calling 119, I got a call from my mother.

Mom said she had gone to the bathroom briefly to brush her teeth after lunch.

Hearing that my water seemed to have broken and that an ambulance would arrive soon after calling 119, my mother became flustered and said she would come straight to the hospital before hanging up.

My mother’s voice was a great comfort to me.

Shortly after, the ambulance came and took me to the obstetrics hospital.

They immediately did an amniotic fluid test, and as I had worried, my water had indeed broken.

Mom arrived and tried to comfort me by holding my hand, but my heart wouldn’t easily calm down.

Soon after, contractions started, beginning as mild pains like menstrual cramps, then gradually spreading to my lower abdomen and turning into pain.

I started feeling a pressing, sinking pain below my anus, and groans of pain involuntarily escaped me.

The doctor asked again about painless delivery injections, and I said I would deliver without injections.

I had learned the Lamaze breathing method during childbirth classes, so I mentally did the “hee hee hoo hoo” breathing with each contraction signal.

The delivery room nurse also said to hold my breath when contractions came and push down to push out the baby, but when the extreme pain started, neither the Lamaze breathing method nor the nurse’s instructions came to mind.

“Ah, agh… Ah, agh…”

The moment the baby’s head was coming out from below me, I felt a tearing, bursting pain in all the flesh between my legs.

For the first time in my life, I understood what it meant for one’s head to go white with pain.

Between my two legs, the doctor kept encouraging me for the final stage of delivery, and the nurse would cheer me on when the doctor tired, but my body wouldn’t follow my mind.

My sense of time disappeared, and so did my sense of space.

Through my fading consciousness, I seemed to see someone.

My child’s father… Hyun Woo…

Ironically, he appeared in my subconscious at the moment I was writhing in this extreme agony, having refused painless delivery injections to part with him in pain.

I couldn’t distinguish whether it was a dream or if I had seen an illusion in my unconscious state amid the labor pains.

He was looking at me with a faint smile, wearing a doctor’s gown, and beyond him, I seemed to see the blue sea of Baengnyeong Island.

Just as the sound of seagulls crying “kkiruk kkiruk” was about to faintly ring in her ears, a loud shouting voice was heard.

“Patient, patient… Don’t fall asleep. Stay conscious and give one last push.”

“The head is almost out. Come on~ Push!”

Clinging to my fading consciousness, I used all my strength to push down on my lower abdomen with my dying effort.

There was a pressure and pain between my two legs as if a large boulder was attached, but I gripped the delivery room bed sheets with both hands and gave my last ounce of strength.

“Mom, Mom…”

I called out desperately for my mother as I struggled.

My mother had felt the same pain when giving birth to me.

In those poor conditions back then, it was a birth assisted by just one village midwife grandmother, and my mother had given birth and gone through postpartum care much more difficultly than me.

Calling out for my mother, I gripped the bed sheet so hard it might tear and gave one last push, and finally the baby came into the world.

It’s typical for husbands to enter the delivery room and assist with the birth, but perhaps seeing my struggles as an unmarried woman looked pitiful, the doctor gave a word of comfort.

“In my 20 years as an obstetrician, this is the most handsome baby boy I’ve ever seen.”

After cutting the umbilical cord connected to the placenta that followed the baby, the doctor lightly patted the baby to make him cry his first cry in the world.

“Waah… Waah…”

The baby cried vigorously, roaring his emergence from the cramped womb into the vast world.

Placing the baby crying loudly with his tiny adorable mouth into my arms, the doctor said I had really done well.

Though the baby couldn’t properly open his eyes and was covered in red blood, the moment I saw him, tears of emotion flowed automatically.

My face was already a mess of sweat and tears during the delivery process, but these were tears like life-giving water that washed away all those moments of pain.

‘God, thank you.’

Words of gratitude to someone in heaven burst out of my mouth spontaneously, even though I had no religion.

“During natural childbirth, both the mother and baby experience stress and difficulty equally. We’ll put the baby in the neonatal incubator to help him adjust to this world a bit, then bring him back to you.”

“…Yes, doctor. Th-thank you so much.”

“You must be exhausted, so just get some good rest today without thinking about anything.”

The white light in the delivery room seemed particularly dazzling.

When a hospital staff member came to move me onto a transport bed and take me out of the delivery room, my mother, who had been anxiously waiting outside, rushed over to me.

“So Hee…”

Mom held my hand and couldn’t speak properly, shedding tears.

“You did well, you did so well.”

“…M-mom.”

“You’re exhausted, so don’t talk. I know you don’t have the strength to speak.”

Having realized in what environment and with what pain my mother had given birth to me, I cried more at her words.

Wiping away the tears flowing down my face with both hands, Mom repeatedly said “you did well” while standing beside the transport bed heading to the ward, following along while shedding tears herself.

Entering the ward, Mom unpacked and organized more supplies she had brought from home after I went into the delivery room.

The view outside the window was pitch black and nothing could be seen.

“So Hee, you’re exhausted now so don’t think about anything and get some sleep.”

“Mom, how many hours was I in the delivery room?”

“It’s 10 PM now, so about 8 hours.”

“The nurse came out in between and told me it was quite a difficult delivery. She said first-time mothers tend to have a harder time.”

“Mom, I can’t remember anything.”

That was true.

It was so excruciatingly difficult that I didn’t even notice time passing, and at some point, I didn’t even know where I was.

Is there any pain in this world as great as the pain of childbirth?

While working at the hospital, I had seen patients arguing that their respective pains – menstrual cramps, toothaches, hemorrhoid pain – were the worst pain in the world.

Having experienced the near-death pain of childbirth now, if those people were to have that argument in front of me again, I felt like I wanted to smear feces on their mouths.

The saying ‘Pain takes away everything from a human’ came to mind again.

I kept wanting to see the baby I had briefly held to my chest.

“Mom, did you see our little one?”

“Not yet. You just came to the ward, so I should go to the nursery and see my grandchild’s face.”

“The doctor said he’s never seen such a handsome baby boy in his 20 years as a doctor.”

“Really? I should hurry and go see our handsome boy’s face.”

Mom immediately left to see her grandchild.

I remembered his face that had appeared when my mind was hazy from the extreme pain.

I decided to think that Hyun Woo had appeared to me in that crucial moment to say a final goodbye.

I thought that only by giving it that meaning could I breathe and go on living.

On November 5th, I had the most difficult time of my life, experienced the most painful agony of my life, but brought the most precious being in my life into this world.

The pain of childbirth took away all memories of him and made me let go of that love.

I bid farewell to him in my heart, and embraced the child who resembled him in my arms.