You were born.
But I didn't see you right away.
Later, the nurses told me what you had looked like when you were born.
They said that before you were born, everyone had been worried.
Because they already knew there was something wrong with your heart, they had even wondered whether you would be born with your whole body blackened. Whether you would make a sound. Whether the worst thing anyone could imagine would happen the moment you were born.
But you were born.
And you completely took them by surprise.
You cried.
Everything about your appearance looked normal.
You didn't look anything like what they had been afraid of.
Instead, you were a beautiful little baby with delicate features.
When the nurses later told me about you, they made a point of saying:
"I never expected her to be so beautiful when she was born."
That was probably the first compliment you received after coming into this world.
But I hadn't seen any of it with my own eyes.
I could only piece together what my daughter had looked like at birth from what other people told me.
Because you were sent to Gaoyi Hospital very soon afterward.
And I was still in pain from my C-section.
I hadn't even had time to really look at you.
I didn't know how small your hands were.
I didn't know what you looked like asleep.
And I didn't know what it would feel like to hold the "beautiful little baby" everyone was talking about in my arms.
Very quickly, the question was no longer whether you were pretty.
It was—
You were going to have surgery.
A Mother Outside the Operating Room
At the time, I had just given birth by C-section.
The incision in my abdomen still hurt.
It hurt to get up.
It hurt to walk.
Even using the slightest bit of strength made the movement pull at the wound that had just been stitched closed.
But your father kept insisting that I go to the hospital.
I had to go.
I didn't understand.
It wasn't that I didn't want to see you.
It really hurt.
I even wondered why I couldn't rest for a while. Why did I have to go right then?
Only later did I learn—
You were going to have surgery to have a pacemaker implanted.
And the reason your father insisted so strongly was that he was afraid.
He was afraid that if something went wrong during the surgery, I, your mother, might not even make it in time to see you one last time.
So he insisted that I go.
I went.
I dragged my body, still recovering from a C-section, to the hospital.
But even after I got there, I still didn't see you.
You were already in surgery.
All I could do was wait.
You were so small then.
You had only been born a short time, and already you were lying in an operating room.
I hadn't even truly held you yet.
I hadn't carefully looked at your little face.
I didn't know what it would feel like to pick you up.
And yet I was standing outside, waiting for someone to tell me—
that my baby was safe.
I no longer remember how much time passed.
I only remember that when the surgery was over, the doctor came out and told us:
"The surgery went fairly smoothly."
That was probably the thing I most wanted to hear at the time.
Then the doctor looked at me and suddenly asked, a little surprised:
"Huh? Didn't you just have a C-section? What are you doing here?"
I pointed at your father.
"He told me to come."
After hearing that, the doctor reminded me:
"You don't need to come. He can come from now on. You need to get some rest."
It was an entirely ordinary medical instruction.
A mother who had just had a C-section was supposed to rest.
But from the day you were born, it seemed our life had already drifted a little too far from the word "normal."
After the surgery, you were sent to the intensive care unit for observation.
I went home to recover.
One of us had just given birth.
The other had just had surgery.
We were mother and daughter, yet we were each struggling in different parts of the hospital.
All I got was one sentence:
"The surgery went fairly smoothly."
But at that moment,
that one sentence was enough for me to hold on to tightly.
The First Time I Held You
You stayed in the intensive care unit for about a week.
For that entire week, I didn't see you.
I had already given birth to you, yet I still didn't know what it felt like to hold my own baby in my arms.
It wasn't until your condition gradually stabilized and you were transferred from the intensive care unit to the intermediate care ward that I was allowed in for the first time.
That was also the first time I truly saw my tiny little you.
You still had several tubes attached to you.
I stood beside you, looking at you, and for a moment I didn't even know how I was supposed to touch you.
The nurse tried to encourage me.
"Mom, you can try holding her."
Hold you?
It should have been the most natural thing in the world for a mother to do, but for me at that moment, it suddenly became something that required courage.
I reached out my hand.
Very gently.
Very gently.
I was afraid of touching the tubes on your body.
Afraid of pressing on you.
Afraid of hurting you.
Even more afraid that one careless move would injure that tiny body that had just undergone surgery.
There was a little fear in my heart.
But there was also a kind of joy I couldn't put into words.
So this was you.
The baby I had carried for so long.
The baby who had been hurried away the moment she was born, leaving every adult on edge for a week.
And now, finally, you were in my arms.
I didn't dare hold you tightly.
I simply let you rest carefully against my body.
At that moment, I felt for the first time:
I had a daughter.
You weren't a medical condition described by a doctor.
You weren't a result I was waiting for outside an operating room.
You weren't the words, "The surgery went fairly smoothly."
You were a tiny life with weight and warmth, something I could gently hold in my arms.
You were my Pengkuan.
That embrace was actually very awkward.
Other mothers had probably held their babies countless times soon after they were born.
But the first time I held you was about a week after you were born.
Someone beside me had to teach me.
You still had tubes attached to you.
I was so careful that I didn't even know where to put my hands.
But I remember that day.
The fear was real.
The joy was real, too.
And clearer than either of those feelings was—
I had finally held you.
On the Twenty-First Day, We Went Home
You spent a total of twenty-one days in the hospital.
From the intensive care unit to the intermediate care ward.
From a time when all I could do was wait to the moment I could finally hold you in my arms.
On the twenty-first day, the hospital told us we could be discharged.
Before we left, the medical staff carefully went over everything with us.
Once we got home, we had to pay attention to your heartbeat.
We had to feel your pulse, keep an eye on your heart rate, and constantly make sure you were breathing normally.
I committed every word to memory.
After completing the discharge paperwork, I could finally hold you in my arms and truly leave the hospital.
Your father drove.
I held you in the car.
We didn't return to a home separate from work. We went straight back to where we were living at the time—
the pharmacy.
It was both my workplace and our home.
Twenty-one days earlier, I had given birth to you, but I hadn't even gotten a good look at you before you were taken away.
Twenty-one days later, I finally carried you home in my own arms.
But I soon discovered that for us, being discharged didn't mean everything would return to normal.
At the hospital, there had at least been doctors, nurses, and equipment.
Back at the pharmacy, there was only us.
And one tiny little you.
When you were asleep, I would hold my hand in front of your nose.
Just to feel.
Were you breathing?
After a while, I couldn't help reaching over again.
You were.
You were still breathing.
Only then would I relax a little.
I would also touch your tiny hand and try to find your pulse.
It wasn't as if we could measure it accurately.
Sometimes we didn't even know whether we had found it in the right place.
But as long as I could feel you moving, as long as your breathing looked even, I would tell myself:
Okay.
You should be fine.
That night passed, too.
It was probably the period in my life when my sleep was least like sleep.
You slept. I watched you.
I would close my eyes for a little while, then wake up.
Reach out.
Touch you.
Then put my hand beside your nose again.
Only after confirming that you were still breathing would I lie back down.
That was how I spent about a week, trembling with fear.
One day.
Two days.
Three days.
Every night was more or less the same.
But every morning when I woke up and saw that you were still okay, I believed a little more:
You really were home.
The First Time I Understood What It Meant to Give Something Your All
After bringing you home, I finally understood a phrase I had heard countless times before.
"Give it everything you've got."
Before then, I had never really thought about those words.
How tiring could eating be?
Weren't you just hungry, sucking on milk, getting full, and falling asleep?
That changed when I started feeding you.
I put the bottle to your mouth.
You began to suck.
Once.
Then again.
You sucked so hard.
Gradually, I noticed you starting to sweat.
Your forehead was damp.
Your face was damp.
Before long, your entire tiny body was covered in sweat.
I held you and watched you use every ounce of strength you had just to finish a bottle of milk.
That was the first time I understood—
feeding really did take strength.
For other children, it might have been the most ordinary thing in the world.
They cried when they were hungry.
They drank when the bottle arrived.
They slept when they were full.
But for you, it seemed different.
You worked so hard for every sip.
I watched you covered in sweat, feeling both heartbroken and shaken in a way I couldn't describe.
This tiny child in front of me
had to work this hard even to feed herself.
But you kept sucking.
When you got tired, you stopped for a moment.
Then you sucked again.
I held you and fed you slowly.
I didn't dare rush you.
And I couldn't bear to rush you.
After that, whenever I heard someone say, "I gave it everything I had," I would think of you.
Because I had truly seen a child
give everything she had just to eat.
That child
was you.
What I Feared Most Was Giving You a Bath
During that first period after we came home, feeding you wasn't the only thing that made me feel like I was facing an enemy every time.
Giving you a bath did, too.
You were so small.
Your body was soft and floppy.
But I wasn't only afraid of the things that scared most new mothers.
I was afraid of touching the pacemaker beside your abdomen.
Your body was so small, and the pacemaker beside your abdomen made a very noticeable bulge.
You could still see the marks left by the surgical stitches.
Every time I took your clothes off and saw that spot, my movements became even gentler without my realizing it.
I was afraid of pressing on it.
Afraid of touching it.
Afraid of making you uncomfortable.
Even more afraid that one wrong move would hurt you.
So every bath became an ordeal.
I would hold you a little higher, afraid I wouldn't have a firm grip.
Then I would lower my hands a little, afraid of touching the pacemaker.
Even turning you over had to be done carefully.
It was only a bath for a tiny baby, but I was often more nervous than you were.
After one bath, nothing happened.
After another, nothing happened either.
Again and again, I slowly learned how to hold you, where to put my hands, and how to avoid the spot that had frightened me so much at first.
I was still careful.
I just wasn't quite so afraid anymore.
I learned that being a mother was like this in so many ways.
You didn't suddenly know how to do everything the moment your child was born.
It was because there was a child in front of you who needed you,
so the things you didn't know how to do
were things you could only learn little by little.
Mom Still Had to Work
The days slowly moved forward.
I began to feel more comfortable holding you.
More comfortable bathing you.
And I no longer had to put my hand under your nose every few minutes.
You grew a little more each day.
And reality slowly returned.
I had to work.
Working while caring for a tiny baby who needed special attention wasn't easy.
At the time, the wife of my former pharmacy's landlord knew about my situation. She told me that her daughter could help take care of you.
I thought about it.
Maybe this would be better.
At least someone could focus on taking care of you.
When I was working, I wouldn't have to worry about you while trying to manage everything else.
So when you were about two or three months old, I tried leaving you in her care.
At first, everything seemed fine.
They even took quite a few pictures of you.
I gradually began to think that maybe this really could work.
Until one day—
You developed a fever.
No Matter How Tired I Was, I Would Raise You Myself
That day, I picked you up.
Only then did I discover several abscesses on your scalp.
One.
Then another.
Then another.
They were infected hair follicles that had already filled with pus.
I looked at your scalp, and the alarm that had just begun to quiet down inside me suddenly started blaring again.
You weren't a child I could bring myself to treat any infection as a minor matter.
Later, I shaved your hair off.
Little by little, I cleaned and treated the wounds.
By then, I already knew what I had to do.
Forget it.
No matter how tired I was, I would raise you myself.
I would figure out what to do about work.
If I couldn't keep up, I would figure that out, too.
I could work hard.
I could sleep less.
I could work and take care of you at the same time.
But I couldn't bear hearing myself say—
If only I'd known.
Ever since you were born, I had been afraid.
Afraid of the surgery.
Afraid you wouldn't be breathing.
Afraid I wouldn't be able to find your pulse.
Afraid feeding would exhaust you.
Afraid of touching the pacemaker during your bath.
And afraid that I simply wouldn't be capable of taking good care of you.
But in just two or three short months, it seemed you had forced me to learn so many things.
From the first time I was afraid to hold you too tightly,
to the point where I actually began to feel—
I could only relax if you were beside me.
At the time, I didn't know how difficult the days of working while holding you would become.
I didn't know how attached you would be to me.
I didn't know that you would gradually develop your own temper and preferences.
And I certainly didn't know that this little girl who kept me on edge every day would one day fill my life with so many things that still make me smile whenever I think of them.
At the time, I knew only one thing.
I had brought you back.
This time,
no matter how tired I was, Mom would raise you herself.