Born.
January 5.
This was the day I was going to give birth to our daughter.
The night before, I had rested my hand on my large belly in the hospital room and whispered to her again and again,
“We’ll meet soon.”
Please breathe.
If you can, let me hear your voice.
And please, let us see your face.
Those were the wishes I carried with me as morning came.
At around seven in the morning, the medication to induce labor was started.
Because this was my first delivery, I had been told that labor probably would not begin immediately.
I believed that too.
I even told my husband,
“You don’t have to come that early. It probably won’t happen so quickly.”
I thought it might be a long day.
There was even a part of me that wondered whether our daughter would actually be born that day.
So when the induction began, I was still relatively calm.
This is just the beginning.
Things will probably move slowly from here.
At least, that was what I thought.
But my body responded much faster than anyone had expected.
About two hours after the induction began, the pain started to grow stronger.
At first, I wondered,
Is this labor?
But I did not have much time to wonder.
Soon, the pain became impossible to ignore.
It hurt.
That was almost the only thought left in my mind.
The pain came in waves unlike anything I had ever experienced.
One wave would finally begin to fade, and just when I thought I could breathe again, another would come.
I immediately contacted my husband.
“The contractions started. Hurry.”
Only a short time earlier, I had told him there was no need to come early.
Now, none of that mattered.
I just wanted him there.
Suddenly, facing the pain alone felt frightening.
After that, I was given anesthesia for the epidural delivery.
I thought,
This should make it easier.
But for me, it did not work as well as I had expected.
The pain remained.
Every time another contraction came, my entire body tensed.
Perhaps I had imagined that the word “epidural” meant the pain would almost disappear.
But in that moment, it still hurt.
A lot.
Then my husband arrived.
The moment I saw his face, I felt a little safer.
Throughout the pregnancy, we had traveled to this hospital together again and again.
We had listened to unfamiliar medical terms together.
We had heard frightening possibilities.
I had cried many times.
And now, on the day our daughter was finally going to be born, he had come to stand beside me again.
We both thought labor might take a long time from there.
But around three hours after the induction had begun, the contractions had already become intense, and the atmosphere in the room began to change.
I was being prepared to give birth.
Everything was moving much faster than I had expected.
That morning, I had only just begun the induction.
I had told my husband not to hurry.
And now, suddenly, it felt as though we were already approaching the moment when our daughter would be born.
When the contractions became stronger again, my husband was asked to move temporarily to another room while the medical staff performed the necessary procedures.
The pain continued while he was gone.
My sense of time gradually disappeared.
I did not know how many minutes had passed.
I stopped caring what time it was.
I had no idea how much longer it would take.
There was only the next contraction.
And then the next.
When the doctors thought the birth might be getting close, my husband was allowed back into the delivery room.
Until then, everything had progressed smoothly.
My body had responded quickly to the induction.
The contractions had started.
I was ready to push.
So I thought,
Maybe it won’t take much longer.
But that was when time began to feel unbearably long.
Push.
Rest.
Another contraction.
Push again.
Again.
And again.
But she did not come.
Every time, I thought,
Maybe this time.
But she still did not come.
Another contraction would arrive, and I would gather every bit of strength I had and push harder than I thought my body was capable of pushing.
Still, she did not come.
My husband stayed near my head the entire time.
There was not much he could physically do to help me.
So he kept gently stroking my head.
Again and again.
It hurts.
I can’t do this anymore.
I’m exhausted.
Those thoughts came into my mind, but every time another contraction arrived, I had no choice but to try again.
The medical team explained that for a baby to be born, it was not only the mother’s pushing that mattered—the baby also needed some strength of her own to move through the birth canal.
They thought our daughter’s strength might be a little weak.
The moment I heard that, all the fears I had carried throughout the pregnancy briefly returned.
Is she okay?
Can she make it out?
But there was no time to disappear into those thoughts.
All I could think was,
Come on.
Please come out.
We’re doing this together.
Just a little more.
Come to us.
One hour passed.
Then two.
Still, our daughter was not born.
My own strength was fading, but the doctors were also concerned about how long the baby could continue.
Eventually, we were told that if she could not be delivered, a cesarean section might become necessary.
After coming this far, I might still need a C-section.
But strangely, when I heard that, I did not think,
I have to give birth naturally.
I did not care how she came into the world anymore.
I only wanted her to be safe.
For months, I had worried about her diagnosis.
Her breathing.
Possible complications.
Her future.
But now, before any of those things mattered, there was only one thing I wanted.
Please make it here safely.
Eventually, the decision was made to use vacuum-assisted delivery.
By that point, I suddenly realized how many people were in the delivery room.
Doctors.
Midwives.
And others who may have been residents or observers—I did not know.
In my memory, there were around fifteen adults in the room.
Even in the middle of labor, part of me wondered,
Are there usually this many people at a birth?
Is our daughter’s birth unusual?
Is everyone here because there is something special about her case?
It was a strange thought to have at that moment.
But then another contraction came, and there was no room left in my mind for anything else.
It was time for the vacuum-assisted delivery.
I pushed again.
Then a very tall, large male doctor stepped in.
At the time, I had no idea who he was.
Only later did I learn that he was the most senior doctor there.
He positioned himself above me and pressed down on my abdomen with tremendous force, pushing from the upper part of my belly downward as though he were helping guide our daughter toward the outside world.
The vacuum.
My pushing.
And the doctor’s powerful push.
Everything happened together.
And then—
she was born.
After all those hours that had felt endless, the actual moment happened in an instant.
The daughter who had lived inside me for all those months was suddenly outside my body.
The daughter I had only ever seen through an ultrasound screen.
The daughter whose bones we had been told were short.
The daughter who might have congenital spondyloepiphyseal dysplasia.
The daughter we had been told might have difficulty breathing after birth.
She was here.
In the same world as us.
Born.
That was the only word that came into my mind.
I could not immediately think beyond it.
She had really been born.
And almost immediately after her birth, our daughter was taken to the NICU.
We had waited so long to meet her, but our time together did not begin in the way I had imagined.
I remained in the delivery room.
Our daughter went to the NICU.
For months, I had imagined what life would be like after she was born.
The beginning we were given was a little different from the one I had pictured.
But one thing was certain.
She had been born.
January 5.
The daughter we had planned to meet on this day had truly made it to us.
The night before, I had repeated the same wishes over and over.
Please be born safely.
Please breathe.
If you can, let me hear your voice.
And please, let us see your face.
I still did not know all the answers.
I did not know what was waiting for her in the NICU.
I did not yet know exactly what was happening inside her tiny body.
I did not know how our lives were about to change.
There was still so much we did not know.
But on that day, one thing finally became certain.
After all the months we had spent fearing the future,
you were born.
— End of Chapter One —
Chapter Two — The First Three Months
Our daughter went straight to the NICU after she was born.
We began to learn about her body in ways we never had before.
There were days spent in the hospital, unfamiliar experiences, and the beginning of a family life that looked different from the one we had imagined.
And little by little, beyond the diagnosis and beyond the fear, we began to discover who our daughter really was.
Ito-chan’s story continues—
into the first three months of her life.
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