Loves Painful Sting

Chapter 14 (Finale)

Sarah

When I first arrived back in the states things were very stressed between my dad and me. I wanted to go back and find another apartment but he refused to let me move out. This wasn't the first time staying with him at his home but it was the first time I was there for a long period of time. He said he couldn't sleep at night knowing I was out there alone and pregnant. When I told Hua and Park of the baby news Park was on dad's team with calling in death threats but Hua was there to let me cry out all the pain I had inside. The pregnancy wasn't too hard to hide thanks to baggy clothes and that I didn't carry too big. I made sure to keep up my appearances on social media but never took pictures of my whole body, it was always chest up. Any time I had video messages with Simon I made sure to be sitting at a desk with everything I needed at hands reach. I still felt like crap for keeping this from Jay and there were so many times my fingers paused over his name in my contacts. Whenever I got a new sonogram picture I wished he was there to share the news with but knew that it would only complicate things. I didn't keep in close contact with Gray and I was happy whenever I saw his smiling face on his Instagram, I knew things were getting better for him. Jay always had that goofy smile on his face as well in all the pictures and it was nice to see that the bond he had with Gray wasn't broken by what had happened.

As the months went by and the more I showed the more my dad got angrier, he hated that I was here going through this alone. He also hated that I was keeping this from Jay and threatened to call him many times, he said he needed to be there to support me because I didn't make this baby alone. Towards the end of the pregnancy when my feet and limbs started to swell up and I wasn't able to sleep comfortably was when he really started to get angry. I knew the anger was just his frustrations with seeing me this way and I tried to do things for him like making his favorite meal or talking about sports. Even Park was here to help keep my dad's mind off of things and Hua was there as well with her friend who was a doula. I had made the decision to go about this pregnancy in a healthy way, I didn't want it to be so strict and having to go by the rules of the medical world. With a doula I was able to go about things in a more peaceful way and was able to give birth at home. Hua was there to help coach me through this while Park was there as well but he sat with my dad in the living room trying to keep him calm. Park one night called me after working with my dad and had told me that my dad was so afraid for me and I couldn't believe that I was so blind to this. He had lost his wife and unborn baby to child birth, back then things weren't nearly as advanced. The cord was wrapped around the child and was suffocating him, they rushed his wife into emergency surgery where she bled out from complications. He never remarried and never thought of replacing his wife. When I found that's what was feeding into his anger I waited for him to get home from work and just hugged him. I told him that I would be fine and the baby would be fine too, that things have changed since then. He held me close to him and told me he didn't want history to repeat itself and he knew he was being silly with his fear but he couldn't help it. So that's why he waited in another room as I labored all day and well into the night.

It was just past midnight and Hua sat behind me in the little pool we had set up, she was rubbing my shoulders and telling me everything she could think of to keep me positive. The doula was at the edge of the pool urging me to keep pushing and that the head was coming. I was trying to hold back my cries because I didn't want to scare my dad. When the head was finally out she had me hold off on pushing to get the cord and make sure it wasn't around the baby's neck. I gave a couple of more pushes and my sweet baby boy was brought into the world, the doula lifted him to my chest and suctioned his mouth and nose clean and his little cries filled the room. I could hear my dad and Park down stairs hollering and hooting for joy. Hua sat behind me hugging me and congratulating me, my eyes were only for my baby boy who had a head full of black hair. He had a cute little squishy face that looked all silly as he cried out. Once everything was taken care for the aftercare I was helped out of the pool and to my bed where I was able to nurse him for the first time. Once he was finished and I was dressed my dad and Park came in to meet him. Park held back with Hua to let my dad come up and meet him first.