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We Didn't Have A Plan, But The Baby Did | With Paul Sun-Hyung Lee

2017-11-22 | 🔗

Paul Sun-Hyung Lee ("Kim's Convenience") reads a story about a man improvising a birth plan.

This is an unofficial transcript meant for reference. Accuracy is not guaranteed.
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the from the New York Times and W B. You are Boston. This is modern love, the stories of love, loss and redemption. I'm your host magnetar puberty. The last week we brought you part one of our live performance of modern love at the hot Docs podcast Festival in Toronto. This week part two: here's Paul Sun, Hyung Lee of the CBC show Kim's convenience reading Carlos caught kins essay. didn't have a plan, but the baby did I about a year into our marriage, my wife and I decided we were ready for the adventures of having a child
Despite our best efforts, it wasn't happening. We didn't know why one night as we are watching television. My wife turned to me and said I think, you're the problem she had no medical background. She was going by a woman's intuition to Cetera I did ease. I paid a visit to my doktor. It was my first time seeing this doktor. She looked to be out in her early thirties with dark, hair and bright red lipstick. plain to her that my wife and I were trying to have a kid, but so far no luck. She said she would refer to a fertility clinic. In the meantime, she suggested my wife and I have sex three times a week. I asked if she could please put that in writing, a month later I went to the fertility clinic alone if I were married in our late thirties, hence our urgency as a bachelor.
I never imagined the marriage would one day lead me to a small room in a medical office that contain to a plastic specimen cup, a sink, a chair, a tv and a dvd entitled young and horny. A sticker on the dvd read property of fertility. Clinic Please do not remove with the use of visual aids. I started. To do what I had been sent there to do now. It was difficult the concentrate, because I could hear two women on the other side of the door talking about where they should have their lunch, despite less optimal surroundings. I managed to complete my task.
it then dawned on me that there wasn't a secret drawer in that room where I could discreetly leave my sample. Instead, I had to exit the room cup in hand and walked down the hall passing several employees. Until I got to the last desk where ponytail woman was working, she smiled and thanked me. I did my best to pretend I just masturbated and placed the cup of semen on her desk. Shortly after I received the call with the results, as it turned out, I was the problem, or so it seemed my sperm count came in at seventeen mill. Seventeen million may seem like a high balance as well as far go, but at the Sperm Bank, its below the poverty line. I assured my distraught wife that most of my swimmers probably stayed on.
Sidelines at day, because I knew it was only an exhibition game. This did little to console her the next day she brightened after discovering she was pregnant, which meant she'd already been pregnant. When I was in that stupid room with the pornography. If I just waited one more day. I wouldn't have had to drive to an office building and humiliate myself, but I was happy. I was going to be a father. We heard the baby's heartbeat during our first appointment with the obstetrician. I asked it for the baby's due date. She took out her phone and use an app to calculate it October. Tenth, she said from that moment on October tenth became a date that
The large it was like when a hurricane shown on the weather Matt getting bigger and bigger only in my case it was my wife's belly getting bigger and bigger, but the time my wife looked as if she had a basketball under her shirt. The baby was moving a lot, but I kept missing it one night when the baby was particularly the active, my wife placed my hand on her stomach. I waited and waited nothing happens. I said this is kind of like we're watching in retrospect. That was a damn thing to say. I didn't know what I was doing. I read this is a new experience for me. For my wife too. We had dinner with there friends and in mark where three kids and plenty of insight mark was upset. When he found out, I did not have a birth plan. You have to have a birth plan insisted need to know where to park weather
she's going to get an epidural. If there's going to be a shame in the room, I hadn't thought of these things, because early on my wife decided she did not want mean the delivery room. She was determined to face things on her own there's a small park on the grounds of the hospital. I decided that on the day our child was born. I would sit on a bench in the park and maybe have a snack at some point. I would receive a text that read come and meet your baby with a smiley face. Emoji. I pictured myself sitting in that park on October tenth many times on August tenth. However, my wife woke me up around ten thirty and thirty p dot m with a look of concern happening uttered something's happening, broken, I jumped out of bed and thought I need get a birth plan. First step in my plan. Put some panza we're ready to leave within minutes. There was just one obstacle we needed to get past. My in laws,
I happened to be visiting. You were sleeping on an air mattress in the living room. I asked my wife. What do you want to do about your parents? Oh, she implored, so we rushed out. I didn't even look at them. got to the car, I received the text from my mother in law. Where are you going? I wasn't sure if I should tell you the truth and scare her or play cool. Everything was fine, we're just headed to a rave, decided I'd. Let her know what was happening when I knew what was happening. We arrived at the hospital in record time and as a security guard where people go to have a baby, he told us to make an effort to take out a beta to second floor naked eye and
I and that I go down the hall, make a right and a left and other right then ring the doorbell his exact words. Incredibly, and somehow we did exactly that. A nurse examined my wife and explained that the baby wanted to show up early but there'll be able to delay the birth for about a month. My wife would have to stay in the hospital. Until then, a cot was
in. For me, it didn't look nearly as comfortable as my wife's bed, but I didn't say anything: we updated the in laws advising them to stay at our place, no sense having them come to the hospital and watch us try to sleep. Despite the medication, my wife was given to delay our child's arrival. Her contractions began an hour later. My cock was hastily wheeled out and a pit crew of people raced in including two nurses carrying an empty desert tree. The on call doctor took one look at my wife and said to me the baby's coming. Do you have any questions I asked? If there was anything we could give my wife, because she was in so much pain. The doctor explain there wasn't enough time. I wanted to ask if there was anything they could give me for my
paying since I was supposed to be in the park under a tree. Instead, I turn to my wife and asked if she wanted me to leave the room she grabbed my hands so hard. I was certain she had crushed the bones in it. I took that is a no. There was moaning and breathing in squeezing and pushing, and then there was or baby smaller than a Teddy bear crying loudly fantastic. The doctor said that morning I called my in laws and told them. There had been a change of plans. They are now grandparents, as I awaited their arrival. I saw a group of pregnant Women with their husbands, taking a tour there are giddy and chatty as if on a field trip. I couldn't help but think what a bunch of amateurs after five weeks in the hospital we finally brought our daughter home, healthy and happy. I was officially father
being a father as I am happily learning involves a lot more than sitting on a park bench having a snack. that Paul polls on we reading Carlos Kotkin as a we didn't have a plan, but the baby did how's This is daughter doing now more after the break The back its modern love. The pod cast a magnetic Roberti Carlos. Top is a screenwriter and says he doesn't hesitate to tell deeply personal stories, but is why,
a little more reluctant on our first date when she found out that I was a writer. She made me promise that I would never write anything about her and I told her I wouldn't, in parentheses a except for maybe a story in the New York Times about her giving birth but other than that. I would not write anything about her Carlos says his wife accepted that some parts of their life together would make it into his writing, including their daughter's birth story. She we went back to work and Carlos remembers the days when he was responsible for taking care of the baby. and a lot of one sided conversations. I told my daughter that I had never done this sort of thing before so we'll see how it goes. I remember one day I showed her a papaya I gave it to her. She held it was very proud and at the shore the papaya said: this is your first papaya here when you held your first papaya and when my
I got home. I told her about the papaya and she said that's great, it's a spaghetti squash, so we both learned that day Carlos says that now his daughter has a lot of opinions and a lot of personality. I was sitting in my day The other day working on something in the blinds and then I heard her behind me and her four year old accent asked me to please close the blinds and I told her I would but I forgot that I said that I was involved in work Suddenly behind me come on man close. The blinds also sometimes she'll tell me mostly at the dinner table. You're, not a very good dad out of nowhere. And I'll ask her why she said that and she'll say I'm just kidding so she's got a very dark sense of humor. She's also prefer and in the particular way that four year olds can be met.
My daughter- and I were in the car not too long ago and we drove past the building that I used to live in, and I pointed it out to her. I said I used ten is to live there, and she asked me who did I live with, and I said I led by myself, which was shocking to her by yourself she wanted to know where she was and where mommy was. And I told her that I had not met either of them yet and she responded. I bet you missed us very much. I miss them very much. I told her that. Carlos Kotkin he's a screenwriter and his latest project is the animated feature, the star after the
Daniel Jones editor of the modern love column for the New York Times. Dan Jones says this essay reminded him of his own daughter's birth. The expectations of having a first child and how you think you're going to be sitting in the park. Reading the newspaper. Well, you know everything care for you like that. That was just exist. play my experience, and you know we ended up with an emergency c section and getting stuck in midtown traffic when we are trying to get to the hospital and just all of these expectations that I had probably a lot of men have thinking like I'm that I'm the sort of assistant here it it just gets thrown out the window. So,
I thought his sense of humor about it and just confessing to It's like lack of preparedness and it's sort of fantasy expectations just mirror my experience so exactly and faced by people responded to it. That was something that was familiar to a lot of other husbands and wives. Thanks again to Paul son him leave for reading this week's essay, you can see him on a c b c show Kim's convenience. Modern love is the production of the New York Times and W B you are Boston, NPR station, its produced directed and edited by Jessica, Albert John Parody, Emory secrets in and Caitlin O Keefe special thanks. Andrew Rannells, Paul Sun Hyung, we and Helene joy for performing thanks as well to the team. At hot dogs,
here for the model of pod cast was conceived by these atonement. Adler executive producer Daniel Jones is the editor of modern love for the New York Times and adviser to the show music for the part, gas courtesy of GDP we can always get more. Modern love on Facebook join the community at base dot com, slash, modern love, We talk about. You see you next the.
Transcript generated on 2022-04-17.