Letters to Lucas – birthing in the time of a pandemic #2

In anticipation of the birth of our baby at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic here in the UK, I wrote a series of letters to the unborn Lucas.
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“Dear Lucas
This is the view of the sky from your cot… from a corner of our bedroom in this one-bedroom apartment in south London. Usually there is the constant daily drone of aeroplanes streaking across this piece of sky, from around 4 or 5am till past 11pm, because we’re on a path here for flights bound for the super busy Heathrow Airport.

In the past week or so, even that now-familiar noise has disappeared.

This afternoon, I lay in our bed next to your cot, watching big puffy clouds float by, in a clear blue sky. (I recalled that this was one of my favourite things to do as a teenager, lie on a patch of grass, watching clouds float by, often upside down.)
We had come home from meeting the midwife — our first appointment in three somewhat anxious weeks — feeling more reassured. The team is working even on a Sunday now, as the hospital does its best to cope in these extraordinary times. We listened to your heart beat. We discussed the options for an induction  – if needed because of my “advanced maternal age”, if you don’t arrive on your own by due date. She said the hospital staff in the maternity ward was doing its best to keep things going in this time, and that morale was high. That was really reassuring to hear as we anticipate you arriving as the virus situation hits its peak here in London.
Your dad has been bicycling around the neighbourhood, buying nappies for you one, two packs at a time from the supermarkets near us, and cooking food to freeze in case we get so busy with you. He has also been writing you a series of letters as a log of this unusual time in human history, building a time capsule of sorts for you. I’m going to keep doing my yoga and pilates stretches to get you into a prime position as we now wait for you to arrive into this crazy world.