In July 2022, our little one came into the world. For someone whose job is basically to stay on the phone like a customer-service line, that was a huge challenge.
I still remember that about a week before the due date, we contacted the hospital ahead of time and checked in, just in case labor started suddenly. Almost as soon as we were settled, tests and examinations came one after another. A director happened to be making rounds that day. After looking at our reports, he told us the baby was in a critical situation: waste was blocking her mouth and nose, and she could suffocate. Surgery needed to happen immediately. Then came the pre-op signatures. There were more than a dozen forms in front of me. My eyes blurred just looking at them, and I signed in a rush without really reading anything. The whole time, one thought kept running through my head: if anything goes wrong, make sure the mother is safe.
After about an hour of paperwork and preparation, it was finally our turn. I wheeled her into the operating room and then waited outside. Looking back, I must have seemed ridiculous. I had watched plenty of TV dramas and short videos, so I assumed I would be worried about whether she was uncomfortable, whether the surgery would succeed, whether the baby would be a boy or a girl. But in reality, I felt almost nothing. I was not panicked or restless. I just kept answering work calls, one after another.
About thirty minutes later, a nurse opened the delivery-room door and placed the baby in my arms. She was not even as long as my forearm. At that moment, she felt like a live bomb in my arms, and I did not dare move. Then the nurse asked me to carry her to the examination room. It was only about fifty meters away, but I took twenty minutes to walk it. In my whole life, that may be the only time I have ever spent so long covering such a short distance. I handed her carefully to the examining nurse, who busily checked her limbs and eyes and asked me to confirm what I saw. To be honest, when the towel wrapped around her was opened, I was shocked. I could see that her limbs were all there, but her whole body was covered in waste. At 3.6 kg, most people would probably assume she was a big boy. Ha—she was actually my daughter, and she fulfilled a wish I had held for years.
After the examination, I carried her into the ward. Watching the little thing sleep peacefully, I felt my heart melt. She was a little ugly, ha, but which child does not come into this world with wrinkled skin?
In the days that followed, I started learning how to change diapers and mix formula. These things once seemed impossibly complicated to me, but now they became the center of daily life. I remember the first time I changed her diaper. I clumsily opened it, and the little one suddenly peed all over me. I fumbled around for ages and only barely managed to finish with the nurse’s guidance. When mixing formula, I either got the water too hot or the ratio wrong. Watching her cry because the milk was not the right temperature made me anxious and hurt for her. During that time, messages in my work groups kept coming, but I always put my phone on silent and tried to make more time to be with mother and daughter. When the baby cried at night, I carried her back and forth around the ward, patted her back gently, and hummed off-key nursery rhymes until she fell asleep again. Watching her even breathing and the occasional frown while she slept, I suddenly felt that all the earlier panic and exhaustion had been worth it. This tiny life had barged into my world without warning and completely changed the way I understood my own life.