-dedicated to all the women who are expecting and could not get their families to visit because of Covid-19.
I was 8 months pregnant when my mom and dad came to visit me from India. I had been living in the USA for about 5 years and they were visiting me for the first time after I got married. My dad had a heart attack the day he landed in the US. We had to rush him to the ER, he had to undergo surgery. Doctors were able to save his life, but he needed more treatment and follow up surgeries, so after 20 days of recovery my parents flew back to India. I was due anytime now. I wasn’t mentally prepared for this; my husband held my hand at the airport as I watched my dad being scrolled away in a wheelchair while my mom followed him with heavy steps.
I spent the next couple of weeks preparing for the day. I was a full-time master’s student then, so I prepared a hospital bag with essentials and enough clothing for me, my husband and the baby for 4 days, and kept it in my car in case I had to rush to the hospital straight from my university. Crib, car seat, shower tub, diapers, bottles, and everything Google told me was ordered and assembled. I bought and packed enough clothes for the baby to last me a month before the need to do laundry. I had a c-section, first-time parents, me, and my husband knew nothing about taking care of a baby, except for what some YouTube videos taught us. I made a conscious decision to feed her breast milk only during the day and formula during nighttime so that my husband can take care of it while I could rest. I was too overwhelmed already to ace the pumping game. I knew it wouldn’t matter after 5 years. I slept 6 to 8 hours most nights, and my husband napped during the day. It wasn’t easy, but we were a team. Maybe it was the satiating formula milk, or our little baby could sense our struggle, she started sleeping 6 hours straight through the night in a couple of weeks. I was concerned, so I called her pediatrician, she told me “relax mommy, you earned it”. I switched all my courses online, did continue with my semester, got straight A. It wasn’t easy, but has any woman ever signed up for easy? My daughter was 6 months old when I graduated, I walked my commencement ceremony holding her while she drooled all over my diploma, what could she have done otherwise, she was teething.
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