After 3+ days of labor, excruciating pain, no sleep, and a tear of my perineum, the first thing stated after my daughter was born was “She looks just like her father! She looks just like her father!” Just in case I hadn’t caught their drift, the OB stated in English. “She’s pink. Not like you.”
At this point my child was taken to be seen by the pediatricians. I had barely seen much of what she looked like. I wouldn’t get to hold her until they were done with their checkup. During that process, they decided she had my eyes, which was code for, “She has double eye-lids.” Before moving to China, I had never thought too much about my eye-lids, but it’s a big deal in China. Women will have surgery to create the impression of double eye-lids. I believe this is meant to make the eyes look bigger. Eyes that look bigger are considered more beautiful here.
In the moment, these comments weren’t what I wanted to hear, but they didn’t bother me that much. I knew the context in which I was giving birth, and she was here, and I was happy. Upon her first cry, I broke spontaneously into tears. The OB, perhaps trying to be sympathetic, told me to stop crying. It’s hard to tell. Maybe if she had used Mandarin to express the suggestion, it would have sounded caring. In English, it came across as “Stop crying. There’s no point to your tears.”
I didn’t pay her much mind though. I had just brought a human being into the world. No one was going to tell me how I should and shouldn’t respond to it. But at the same time, the doctor was working on stitching me up, so I didn’t want to be distracting or annoying. While receiving care from others, it’s important to be careful oneself. Doctors and nurses could always improve their bed side manner in the same way any human being can always improve on their skill of compassion. But these doctors and nurses were doing their job well enough. My baby was here. Comments aside, they had all helped me bring her into the world. I was grateful.
It wouldn’t be until 5 days later when I went back to the hospital for Alaya’s first checkup that these comments and the comments I would hear that day really pierced my heart. After a checkup that showed that Alaya was almost back to her birth weight, which was a sign that she was getting enough from exclusive breastfeeding, I ran into one the nurses at the hospital who worked in the Labor and Delivery department. She actually wasn’t there for the delivery, but I suppose she heard about it. She rushed over to me sympathetically already speaking as she went.
“You must be so upset to find that after all you went through, the baby doesn’t look like you! How do your parents feel about how the baby looks?” Well, I actually didn’t have any feelings about how the baby looked. She was healthy and whole. She was feeding well enough to be back to birth weight in less than 5 days. To give you a sense, it can take a baby as long as two weeks to return their birth weight. When babies are born, they have a lot of water in them, perhaps from IV fluids given to the mother during labor or simply from hanging in amniotic fluid for nine months. When they are born, they lose a lot of that water before they even leave the hospital. As such, it is considered normal for the baby to lose as much as 10% of their birth weight before leaving the hospital. Alaya had gone home having lost 7% of her baby weight. Just two days later, she was almost back to her birth weight.
Besides baby weight, I also had a lot to think about. For instance, since the hospital was in Shanghai, we had to arrange travel back and forth with her to the hospital, and I was worried about her getting sick. They do very intense things to babies who get a fever within the first month. I wanted to travel by methods that didn’t expose her to a lot of germs. I was also struggling with engorgement at that time, and I was nervous that I would get a plugged duct or mastitis. In fact, I had just had an appointment that morning with a lactation specialist who helped me massage my breasts so that I could avoid a plugged duct or mastitis. I was also still recovering from the major physical ordeal of pushing a human out of my body. There were so many things to think about those first few days after becoming a parent, I really had no strong feelings about what she looked like. And I was confident my parents couldn’t care less either.
So, I told the nurse that my parents were happy to have another grandchild. I wasn’t sure what else to say. She responded, “Yes, it’s good that she’s white. It’s better.”
I’m really not sure what my face must have looked like in that moment, and the conversation somehow carried on. I moved past that comment like a speeding car on a highway, but I was shocked and hurt. And I would ultimately cry, though only when Ben and I were alone. You see, I was suffering from the baby blues, and I cried at the least provocation. This was a lot of provocation. I could not believe she said that to my face and with the certainty that I also knew this to be true.
In that moment, I felt like a puppy who had been kicked for no reason at all. Actually, there’s never a good reason to kick a puppy. You shouldn’t kick puppies, but they kicked me anyway.
The conversation moved on to advice about keeping the baby awake during the day and making sure my in-laws didn’t kiss her on the lips. As she was about to take her leave, she asked “Do you like the care we provide here? We provide good care, yes?” I wasn’t sure that I was in a position to say no. I just nodded my head and smiled and moved it right along. We had been waiting for a car to take us back to Kunshan and the wait seemed forever. I just wanted to get back home.
As I waited in the coming weeks and months for Alaya’s skin to darken, I would continue to get many comments about her skin color and how it was more like a Chinese person’s or her father’s. My baby does look very Chinese. I don’t mind this. I honestly don’t think about it very much. I don’t think very much about what I look like either.
Occasionally I’ll see a photo of us, or we’ll look at each other in the mirror, and I’ll realize how very different we look in terms of skin color. Sometimes it does feel strange to think that this baby came from my body. But these moments are rare, and they often only occur because of society’s continued obsession with skin color, and I’m a member of that society.
I also feel that it’s still possible that Alaya’s skin color will darken further. It has darkened some, though not as much as I would have expected. I’m not attached to the way she looks now though. I think she’s still growing into herself. For instance, the knuckles on her handd are not visible due to the baby fat. There’s just this indented shadow where her knuckles are or should be. That’s how much baby fat she has now. When that fat recedes, we’ll start to get a better sense of her features. In the same way, her skin may darken, and her straight, wavy hair may start to get some real curls. It’s too early to announce who she looks like. In fact, the only thing I’m sure of is that she looks like Alaya.
She looks just like my daughter.
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