On the occasion of Mothers’ Day and his one lunar month birthday, I wrote a note to our son who was born at the peak of the Coronavirus pandemic in the UK.
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“Dear Lucas,You marked one lunar month on earth today. In good Chinese tradition, we made red-dyed eggs to celebrate this day. As a boy, we made you an odd number of eggs, as custom dictates. In this time of the pandemic, we could not go around to visit our relatives to give out the red eggs as one would usually do. Instead, we video-called your grandma, grandpa, aunty and cousins in Singapore and they made red eggs too to show you on a screen.A month ago you had a traumatic entry into the world. Your heart rate was falling after I had been in labour for more than 20 hours in a busy hospital at the peak of the Covid 19 pandemic here in the UK. A team of doctors burst into the delivery room and pulled you out with forceps. I developed sepsis in labour and lost about one-third of my body’s blood. There was no happy, picture-perfect photo of us and Papa right after your birth, with you suckling on my chest. I was in a state of shock and no milk flowed. You too seemed dazed from been clamped over your head and yanked out. For a week after, your face bore the marks of the big metal forceps, and even now a scab remains on the right side of your head. It was not at all the birth we had planned and longed for. Pandemic-related hospital rules meant I had to labour alone for part of your birth, and one bad thing led too another. I’ve had nightmares and shed tears, but what’s important is that you are here, and we are watching you grow daily, marveling at how your eye lashes and legs grow longer and longer.In the month since, I have been guilt-ridden about not being able to breastfeed you from the get-go, and have been playing catch-up since. It’s been an intense start to motherhood. At 41 and into my third career, I’ve done a fair bit in life, but this has got to be the toughest gig yet. It’s harder still in this lockdown here in London, where most of your health checks have been by video or phone, where we’ve found it hard to get help as new parents, or to even buy food or diapers. May things turn around by the time you mark your next lunar month here.
7 May 2020, 5:37pm”
Also published in National Geographic’s Mothers’ Day Special 10 May 2020: https://www.nationalgeographic.com/photography/2020/05/pictures-reveal-intensity-motherhood-under-lockdown/
