Enjoying the preciousness of life

THE PARENTS: Tanisha Rivera, 26, and Felix Miranda, 29, of East Camden

THE CHILD: Emma Elise, born April 12, 2021

A POSTPARTUM REVELATION: Tanisha put her own newborn photo and a picture of infant Emma side by side. “I didn’t realize she was my exact twin — like I had a little replica of myself!”

Tanisha Rivera didn’t know she could be in control of her labor and delivery. She didn’t know she could question a doctor or refuse a suggested intervention.

It wasn’t until her 37th week of pregnancy, during a conversation at her partner’s aunt’s house, that someone recommended Tanisha work with a doula.

“What’s a doula?” she asked.

Within days, Tanisha was meeting via Zoom with Giovonna Clifton, who works with Community Doulas of South Jersey.

“She asked me if I had a birth plan. She said, ‘What do you want during your labor?’ She said, ‘You don’t have to agree with everything the doctor says. You can always ask why.’ She gave me so much knowledge, and that eased my anxieties.”

Tanisha had planned on having children — five, Felix suggested, while she thought three might be more realistic — but wasn’t figuring on having one quite yet. Like the someday-house of their own, like the church wedding, parenthood hovered in the distance, a stage she didn’t feel quite ready for.

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“Everybody told me, ‘You’re never ready to have a child,’ ” Tanisha recalls. She used birth control for several years, until the medication began to cause unpleasant side-effects: stomachaches and headaches. A month after she stopped the pills — Aug. 14, at 6:22 a.m., she remembers — she sat on the bed next to a still-sleeping Felix and set a pregnancy test with two bright lines in front of him.

“He looked up: We’re having a baby? I immediately started crying. He said, ‘We’re going to be OK. We got this.’ ”

The next day, Tanisha bought three more tests, the expensive ones that flash a word instead of lines. They were in accord: Pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.

When she and Felix met in 2014, Tanisha had just moved back to Camden from Florida, where she lived with her mother from age 5 to 19. A cousin arranged a double date; Tanisha reluctantly went along.

“Felix was different from anybody I’d dated. He was just really sweet and really funny,” she says. When the two huddled in the car on that frosty November night, she remembers, he could have made a move. Instead, they talked.

“He was a complete gentleman. We got to know each other. Ever since that day, we hung out every single day until he decided to ask me to be his girlfriend.”

Felix remembers that night: Tanisha in sweatpants and a worn hoodie. “When I first met her, I thought: I could talk to this girl for a while.” A year later, he recalls another click: “I could spend the rest of my life with this woman, and I’ll be happy.”

Tanisha moved into the home Felix shared with his mother, a period of adjustment as she discovered her partner’s gift for cooking elaborate breakfasts and arroz con gandules, along with his inability to get dirty clothes to land in the hamper.

“His mom told me, ‘Learn to pick your battles; otherwise, you’re always going to be fighting.’ ”

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And it was Felix’s mother who whooped on the morning Tanisha took the first pregnancy test. “I’m going to be a grandmom?” she asked, amid tears. Tanisha wept again.

The pregnancy — at least, the first two trimesters — was an easy ride: no morning sickness, a healthy appetite, an early baby-bump that Tanisha relished.

Felix was delighted by the post-Thanksgiving gender reveal, when family members discharged a confetti cannon and the couple opened a series of boxes to uncover a framed sonogram image reading, “It’s a girl!”

“I was definitely anxious and nervous being pregnant during COVID,” Tanisha says, especially since Felix wasn’t permitted to attend most of her prenatal appointments. But after meeting with Clifton, learning more about the labor process and practicing pain-management strategies like massage, she felt more confident about the delivery.

She had her first contraction on the way to church. Her second came at the end of the service. They ramped up, steady but breathable, all day and evening. By the time the couple arrived at Cooper University Hospital around 11 p.m., Tanisha was 5 centimeters dilated.

“An hour later, a doctor said, ‘We’re thinking about giving you some Pitocin to help you labor.’ I said, ‘Why?’ Like Giovonna had taught me. He said, ‘You’re still at 5 centimeters.’ I said, ‘What’s the rush?’ ”

As the pain became more intense and exhausting, Tanisha opted for an epidural. She continued to dilate slowly — 6 centimeters by early morning, a hard-earned 9 by lunchtime. When Tanisha was finally ready to push, her heart rate and blood pressure spiked.

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“They had me do one big push — I finally felt the ‘ring of fire’ — and the baby’s head was finally out. …This whole army of doctors rushed into the room. Felix said, ‘You did great.’ I said, ‘You need to call my mom.’ ”

What Tanisha didn’t know was that a cardiologist was on call, in case her own heart rate continued to rise. She didn’t know that the umbilical was coiled around the baby’s neck so tightly that it had to be cut off. She didn’t know that doctors were administering oxytocin to stanch postpartum hemorrhage.

All she knew was a long 10 minutes of flurrying medical hands and tears and pain before she heard her daughter cry. After a brief moment with the baby snuggled on her chest, nurses whisked Emma to the NICU — she needed breathing support — while Tanisha spent the next four hours in recovery.

Felix remembers spotting his daughter among the NICU Isolettes: “Yeah, that’s my baby right there. I was in love.” Tanisha recalls finally getting to hold Emma around 3 a.m., an 8-pound, 2-ounce infant with wires and tubes snaking from her body.

“Anything could have happened to me or her during that labor,” Tanisha says. “Things could have gone south pretty quickly. It opened my eyes to how precious life really is.”