aya came on Tuesday morning, with the typhoon Onyok. It was 3:03, roughly twelve hours since we were admitted at Cardinal Santos Medical Center in San Juan.

Monday, 0700
I woke up to the sound of the air conditioning unit and contractions. These were painfully different from the pre labor contractions I’d been having since the sixth month. I woke JP up and told him it was time for work, then I got a piece of pandesal from the brown paper bag that still smelled like the bakery. Then I went back to sleep.

Monday, 1000
A painful contraction woke me up.

Monday, 1000 ½
I went back to sleep.

Monday, 1005
A painful contraction woke me up.

Monday, 1005 ½
I went back to sleep.

This went on until about noon. I had the vague feeling I should be timing the contractions, but I still wasn’t sure if I just needed to empty my bowels or something equally different from labor. But I was so sleepy I just kept dozing off in between the contractions. Finally my mom came in and looked at me. “Mm?” she asked. “I don’t know if these are regular contractions or I just need to go to the bathroom… I already tried but I’m still constipated…” (Me, sleepy) “Are you timing them?” (Mama, alarmed) “I don’t know if they’re contractions… They make me feel like I have to go…” (Me, sleepy)

Then I tried to go back to sleep. “I better put on make-up now.” (Mama, who will not leave the house without make-up) “Where are you going?” “I might have to take you to Cardinal now! Hello?” (Mama, excited and harassed) “But I don’t know if this is it…” “Hay nako Melay you better time those.” (Mama, ready-to-hit-the-hospital) “But I want to sleep… okay…okay…” (Me, sleepy)

So I timed the contractions while my ma finished rushing checking her papers (trying to reach the deadline of course card distribution). They were around 4 minutes apart, but lasting 40 seconds. I told her. I could see she didn’t want to leave her papers, so I sent a text message to JP. I said, I think we should go to the hospital now… (or something equally tentative). He wasn’t replying, but I was starting to get the feeling it was indeed time to go. So I took a bath. When I came out, JP had replied. Turns out he attended mass during his lunch break, that’s why he took long replying. “Happy birthday?” his text message asked.

About thirty minutes later, we were last-minute checking the hospital bag, and in about twenty minutes we were in the car singing Happy Birthday.

We found a parking space and asked Dra. Aguilar where to go because I had predictably misplaced our admitting orders. We went to the admitting office, then were sent to the prep room to be checked. They had me lie down and took my BP and temperature. I understood it was all procedure but I was getting pretty impatient. I just wanted to know if it was time. Funny, but my biggest concern was whether or not we would be sent back home. I guess it was just a case of laziness to leave the house. In my mind, I had already taken a bath and worn outside clothes and I just didn’t want to be sent back home anymore. About an hour later, they brought me to the labor room and did the NST, which I hated. I don’t even like using the seatbelt in the car and there I was, with two thick uncomfortable elastic straps across my tummy.

Thirty minutes later I was in the Lamaze room, wondering what was taking JP so long. He came in wearing my dad’s old scrub suit and a cap that made him look like a mushroom. But I didn’t laugh… I was just glad to see him.

We discovered the television set had only uhf channels, and kept switching from MTV to the news. “And bagyong Onyok ay palabas na ng….”

“What if we name her Onyok?”

The resident looked at us strangely while we laughed our heads off.

Later on she got chatty, asking us questions, sharing about her baby (born in St. Luke’s). Traitor!

Every once in a while I’d be asked if I could still handle the pain. I could, and it annoyed me to be asked. So I said, if I can’t take it anymore I’ll just say so. I was starting to feel irritated and I wondered if it would get like one of those movie deliveries complete with shouting at the fathers and violent stuff like that. But the closest I got to violence was covering JPs mouth when he was trying to coach my breathing. I just couldn’t deal with any sounds.

I got stuck at 6 cm, but my thighs were hurting like hell and I really wanted to push already. I was a hundred percent effaced and our baby’s head was already really low, but the opening was just too small. Finally Dra. said I could push to make my cervix reach 10 cm, and I did. For lack of accurate adjectives, I have to understate the feeling. It hurt.

Then a whole lot of people came in and it got really busy. They turned my bed around, put my legs up in stirrups, and got ready with the instruments for cleaning our baby up. Dra. Injected local anaesthesia, saying she might have to do an episiotomy. I just nodded and watched her inject. Finally, I was told to push again. Actually, I’d been pushing the whole while already cause it was my way of distracting myself from the pain. I also bumped my IV needle and it got dislodged so they transferred it to my right hand.

Dra. called JP to look at the head and he grinned at me and said there’s a lot of hair. I smiled cause I was hairless until past my first birthday. It was good news. It took two sets of ten pushes before I felt an immense wave of relief. I wasn’t pregnant anymore!

I had a natural tear and a small episiotomy, so while JP watched our baby meet the world, I watched Dra. stitch me up. I guess she stitched until a part the anaesthesia didn’t reach, cause every now and then I could really feel the needle prick and the thread running through. Then they brought our baby to me to latch on, it was just a few seconds, and all I remember seeing was the full head of black hair, then they took her to the nursery. They cleaned me up and brought me to the recovery room. I heard them say I would stay there for two hours. They hooked me up to an automatic BP machine. After around thirty minutes, I got so irritated I took the arm band off. I thought they might just think I pushed it off while I was sleeping. Actually, I didn’t sleep at all. I was just watching the clock, waiting for five thirty so I could go to our room and be with my JP and our baby.

Someone came in and put the arm band back on me. I asked if I had to consume the fluids and she said yes cause it would help my uterus contract and stop the bleeding. At five thirty, someone came in again and checked my bleeding, then they transferred me to a stretcher and brought me to my room. We stopped by the nursery and they brought our baby out. I looked at her but my eyes are pretty bad and she was kind of far so I still couldn’t see her well. When I got to my room my Mama and Papa were there and I told them how it went and I ate leftover Shakey’s pizza from their dinner the night before. Then we requested for our baby to be brought to us already. It took quite a bit of time, but at seven o’clock I was with the most beautiful tiny person ever. Her head was so round, and her eyes weren’t open fully, but she looked like she was thinking very deeply about everything that was happening. Her back and shoulders were really hairy and her skin wasn’t wrinkly like some newborns. Her lips were so red and they looked like they were painted, with a perfect bow shape. And her nose was exquisite. I don’t generally like babies, but I love mine in a ridiculously fierce way.

So there she was, our beautiful wolfbaby, my puppet master who holds my heart in her tiny fingers.

Today it’s Tuesday, and she is one week old. There’s another storm, bagyong Pogi. Pauline Maya is asleep on her Tita Ro-an’s bed, while I write this and JP fixes her Ninang 3xc’s laptop. We’re still doing what we used to do, except now, at the slightest cry everything is insignificant and Maya is our world.