Alyssa

We wait four years for a house to come so that we could have kids but unfortunately it did not happen, no thanks to government, they squeeze the supply so much that at its height the balloting was 10 applications to 1 house. We were quite worried as age is catching up and I was still hoping to have three girls, so we decide to go for our first baby without a house. I was hesitance but Eugenia wanted so badly so I agreed with the thought of no roof of our own still on our mind. We were staying in my brother’s place and after Aly was born, we moved back to Eugenia’s place knowing that there will be conflict with her parents. When we moved to her house her specific instruction for me is stay in the room and shut the door while she goes to work, I was doing night trading at that time; this was how bad it went.

 

We tried for the first month and failed but on the 2nd month she was pregnant, we were very happy but worried because Eugenia was 38-year-old, hers was considered high risk pregnancy. The first trimester was very unstable; she had bleeding just outside the womb and had to leave her work and stay home quite frequently, she had to go through extra test to see if the baby has Down syndrome and it was a very stressful moment for us. What if it’s tested positive, how are we going to handle that and are we going to end the pregnancy? Her gynae was recommended by her good Catholic friend but he seems to suggest an abortion if the baby was bad which was our greatest predicament as Catholics. We pray so hard and fortunately the test came back negative, it was a great relieve. Then there were other things like viruses which she had that will cause meningitis to the baby.

 

After the 1st trimester it was smooth sailing all the way to birth, Alyssa came right on time on the end of the nine months. The night before Eugenia felt the pain but wasn’t sure if the baby was coming, this was our first time and we were asking each other the same question, is it coming? Since she felt the pain my first reaction was let’s go to the hospital even if it was a false alarm. The moment we reached the hospital the pain got even more, and we knew this is it, so we asked for the epidural, she slept through the night with the epidural without any feeling and her gynae woke us up at 8am in the morning. He humorously asked her if she wants to give birth now, I was still in dreamland and reluctantly said OK let’s go for it, but Eugenia seems to tell us get my baby out now, she can’t wait to see Aly and hold her by her arms. The birth was very smooth and fast, he burst the water bag with a scalper follow by three pushes on the tummy and Alyssa was out.

 

My first reaction was no reaction; I was stunted and didn’t know what to do, then the nurse asked me to say hello to the baby and guess what, I wave to Aly said hi baby and that’s it. I didn’t know what to say to Aly, introduce myself? Hi this is your dad nice to meet you. I felt so stupid standing there snapping pictures didn’t know what to say to Aly to the point that I was avoiding her. Seeing a life came out of Eugenia totally stunted me, luckily the nurse took her away to the nursery. Then came the worst part, Eugenia was calling for me and I turned around both the gynae and she was laughing at me, I nearly puke when the gynae held up the placenta in front of me. I jokingly asked him to pack it up so that I could bring home and cook it for Eugenia to eat, I could still remember her reaction after that. That’s probably how much fun we had together.
 

When the nurse brought Aly to us for breast feeding, we realized that she was having menses and the doctor told us it was false puberty due to high level of growth hormone called estrogen in Eugenia’s body which later found to be part of the cause for her cancer or at least the reason why her cancer spread so fast. We didn’t realize that and the gynae also overlook it until it’s too late. Eugenia had vitamin D deficiency and super high level of estrogen when she was diagnosed with cancer, in fact, she had a cancer marker even before we got married but we just didn’t know what was that until the oncologist explains to us that it's a reading for the cancer. I’ll go into more detail on the cancer chapter.
 

On the day of discharge, sister Benedict brought us to the hospital chapel to pray over Aly and off we went. By night, Aly choked on her milk and we panic, at mid night we were back in the hospital A & E. The doctor check her up and found nothing but she was crying the whole night, so we went back the next morning, turned out she stopped crying when the pediatric gave her some milk. So much for parenting, how we wish this girl comes with an instruction manual.

 

As Catholics baptism is a big thing for us, my definition of baptism is the acceptance of the Christian faith and I wanted Aly to decide for herself if she wanted to be a Catholic, that means baptism will have to wait till she’s old enough to decide but Eugenia had a different ideas, she said baptism is a blessing from God that he recognize this is his child and will look after her but to me everyone on earth are god’s children baptize or not so why is there such things as membership privilege? Anyway, I’ll go along with Eugenia if this is her wish for Aly but we wanted to make it good for Aly, she was born just before Easter and we wanted so much for her to be an Easter baby. The Easter baby title will stick to her for life and it’s a once-a-year event, either you are an Easter baby or not for the rest of your life, doesn’t matter if there are more infant baptisms on that month but this title of Easter baby will be with her for life, so we were looking forward to it. Who doesn’t want the best for their children? I want my god son’s parents who are our friends from the same perish to be Aly’s god parents during baptism, but Eugenia wanted her god sister to be Aly’s god mum because they book her before she was born. She chose them on a first come first serve basis but I’m very different, I was thinking along the line of guardianship if something happens to us. I felt that my god son’s parents are more suitable to teach Aly about money and survival since they stay in Bukit Timah area and belongs to the higher income group, we probably have the same beliefs and attitude about money since they said they are interested to invest in our childcare center. 


We didn’t have a fight over this, but I could see Eugenia was very disturb with my decision, she was more like obligated to her god sister’s request so in order not to put her in a very difficult position I agreed to it which later turn out to be a big disappointment. Aly’s god parent wanted to go on a vacation and persuaded Eugenia to postpone the Easter baptism so we delay the baptism for two months but come baptism day the whole family were quarantine for H1N1 and we had to ask a proxy to stand in for them. We were so disappointed that we screw up our only child’s baptism and Aly was baptized without a god parents.

 



Weekend out, Aly was very sad.

On the brighter note when Eugenia was very sick, we couldn’t look after Aly and it was the god parents who were kind enough to look after her for those three very difficult months. We only get to see Aly during the weekends, we would pick her up and go for lunch and shop around at the mall and after that the god mum will pick her up at the mall. Naturally Aly will cry when she had to leave us and god mum has her own idea of stopping Aly from crying, she’ll approach us and snatch Aly away from us without giving Aly a chance a say goodbye to us. One time we could see Aly crying very badly behind their car calling for us while they drove off, it was so painful for Eugenia that she started to cry after the car was out of sight and I had a hard time trying to calm her down.

 

Eugenia was so happy to have Aly, I have never seen her so happy in that 10 years when we are together. It really broke her up in the last 3 months without Aly and every weekend incident took the toll on her, it has affected her condition so much that if I could do it again, I would just keep Aly by our side and employ a maid. Until the day she dies her main concern is still Aly.

 

Aly staring at whatever left of mummy

Immediate after Eugenia’s funeral I took Aly back and for the next two weeks she had nightmares in the middle of the night, she'll start kicking her legs and crying so bad that I had to wake her up and hold her in my arms to calm her down to sleep. I send her back to God mum again when I had to attend a meeting in Kuala Lumpur Malaysia for and week and when Aly came home the two weeks of nightmares started again. Aly was very uncomfortable with her God mum till today, she doesn’t want to talk about it even though she still calls her God mum and has phobia towards her. I was very puzzled and still can’t make Aly talk about it. Fortunately, when Aly was much older she finally told me, God mum made her sit in the kitchen crying while the family enjoys their meal. Aly was made to sit alone in the kitchen, scare and without us by her side at 2-year-old, this will be my regret that I will bring to my grave.