Perfectly horrific

Yesterday I saw my friend Hyo-jong's baby for the first time, and it's confirmed: I have no maternal instincts.

I may have mentioned this before. I even gave a speech in class to this effect. Perhaps it was growing up without young children around, or perhaps it's a genetic predisposition (both my parents aren't especially into children either) -- whatever the reason, it doesn't matter: I'd take a puppy anyday over a kid. Yesterday was no exception.

Hyo-jong's three-month-old baby girl is cute, I suppose, in a roly-poly, chipmunk-cheeked, helpless sort of way, but -- oh lord, I can't do it. I can't bring myself to lie that way. I didn't think the baby was cute, okay? I'm not saying she was ugly -- she looks like every other baby I've ever seen -- but whether I was watching her sleep, walking back and forth with her in my arms, or stroking her skin, I at no point thought, "Awww. Baby."

Instead, when I was watching her sleep: "Man, it would be so boring to be kept slave to the whims of a miniscule being who doesn't even recognize me." When I was walking with her back and forth: "Man, she's HEAVY! My arm HURTS. How does Hyo-jong do this?" And when I was stroking her skin: "Very soft! But -- ew, don't touch me with your slimy fingers, Miss Spitty!"

Another friend of Hyo-jong's came by, and my lack of mothering desire and capability was thrown into even further relief. The friend has a baby that 16 months old, and she was just all over Hyo-jong's chipmunkster: cooing, singing, massaging her legs. She tried to get me to sing a song, claiming that it magically soothed fussy babies, and I, feeling like 12 kinds of idiot, began singing, only to be exhorted to sing with feeling. I shut up at that point.

My mother has said for years that I'll feel different about my own children. My answer has always been, "That's a pretty big risk to take." Hyo-jong, who was sort of unsettled to find out she was pregnant a year ago, said that she also had doubts, but that she did feel absolute love for her baby. But then she told me about her 36 hours of labor, and that did it.

I'm sure my face was a perfectly comic mask of horror throughout Hyo-jong's retelling of her journey of torture (her word, not mine). She said that she thought of the Bible (she's not religious, but still) and how the curse of childbirth was the special property of women. She agreed it truly was a curse. Of really unfair proportions. I mean, what's a little work in the fields compared to 36 HOURS of torture?

To be fair, her labor took longer than most, and sounds like it incorporated the worst of the worst: at one point, because she wasn't dilating, the nurses gave her something to induce it, which was accompanied by extremely painful and nonstop contractions; then, at another point, because the baby wasn't dropping, the nurses got on top of her and pushed down; and then, when the baby's head crowned, the doctor finally came in and did an episiotomy (an incision made to the perineum, the muscle between the vagina and rectum, to widen the vaginal opening for delivery) and the baby popped out. (This procedure has come under fire in the last twenty years or so as unnecessary -- you can read more about it here -- and has dropped in frequency in the States. It seems to be very common in Korea, though.)

Hyo-jong said that she became a lot more understanding and sympathetic toward her own mother after giving birth. An admirable result, to be sure. I think I'll try to appreciate my own mother without going through that particular hell, though.

On somewhat of a side track: I came to Korea in October 2002, and since then, three good friends in the States and two in Korea have gotten married; two more are engaged to be married this fall; one good friend gave birth; and another is pregnant. Sometimes it feels like time has stopped, but just for me.

To go farther afield: on Wednesday night, I saw a great Thai martial arts movie starring "the next Bruce Lee," Tony Jaa. The usual "country boy trained in deadly martial arts by a monk who exhorts him to never use said arts except in defense goes to big bad city to retrieve a precious relic belonging to the village and gets totally bad ass with the bad guys" story, but the moves are amazing (and 100 percent real!) and the music's thumping, and I think Thai cinema's on the verge of busting out. No doubt the film aficionados are rolling their eyes and sniffing, "Yah, we were saying that in 2002, loser," but hey, we can't all be video store clerks.