Letters to Keziah
Decca Muldowney
_______________________
14th March 2020
Dear baby,
Yesterday afternoon the
President declared a national state of emergency. A few hours later, while Noah
was sitting on the sofa with his hand on my belly, he felt you kick for the first
time. Amid so much anxiety and panic, that kick was like a message: “Hey, don’t
forget about me.” I have been able to feel you move and kick for a week. It
felt strange to have such a profound new connection to you that Noah couldn’t
share. I was so happy when he felt you too. “The person in your stomach just
kicked me!” he said. A reminder that, despite the insanity around us, you
continue to grow and develop, oblivious, just reaching out for life.
Every time I find myself on the
edge of an anxiety spiral, thinking about my parents or Noah’s parents or other
vulnerable people, you move or kick and it brings me back to the present moment
with a jolt. Thank you for that,, baby.
On Monday we have an
ultrasound scan at the hospital. Neither of us feels great about going into a
medical facility, but we’ll take precautions. This “anatomy scan” is important
because the technician makes sure that all your organs and limbs are in the
right place and developing correctly. We can’t miss it. We’re going at 9am and
I know we’ll spend the next few hours calling around each member of the family
to tell them the news.
We’ve spent a lot of time on
the phone over the last couple of days. Whether it’s FaceTime or Whatsapp or normal phone calls, the instinct to reach out
and speak to people has been strong. We’ve spoken to some of our closest
friends in New York City. Sam, for example, who has a newborn
baby with his Norwegian wife, Line. They’re thankful to have a healthy
baby at home, and to have got through the labour and birth before hospitals
become overloaded. They made it just under the wire. We FaceTimed
with Luke and Bridget as they went out to get pizza at Pauli Gee’s in
Greenpoint one last time, guessing that a complete social lockdown is just
around the corner. Today Noah spoke to his friend Guy Henry as he went out on a
big grocery run. Cynthia has been posting that the bars and restaurants on the
Lower East Side are packed as though nothing is happening, and no one is
obeying the social distancing rules that are becoming ubiquitous. She says the
streets of Alphabet City now feel as lawless as thirty years ago, when she was
growing up. No one wants to call the police. When someone tried to break into
the apartment below through the fire escape, she leaned out of the window and
poured boiling water from the kettle onto the man’s head.
I’ve also been speaking to
Samantha in London, who is home with her newborn baby Hazel. Jackson is still
going out to work, performing in a play at the Royal Court, but she expects the
show to close soon. Things are strange there because the British government
seems reluctant to ban mass gatherings or close schools. They are not following
the model of other European governments that are sacrificing the economy for
the sake of public health. My old friend from university, Richard Braude, is living in Palermo, where they are on complete
lockdown. He posts dispatches on Facebook called “Notes from Quarantine”
describing the situation. They are supposed to fill out a form every time they
go outside that explains why they should be allowed to leave home.
Meanwhile my parents are in
self-quarantine, concerned about their age and my mother’s asthma. They are not
going anywhere or seeing anyone. Even my aunt is not allowed to come over. A
week ago my Dad did a big shop at Asda, stocking up on cans and dry goods. Now
my mother is baking bread and sewing and mending. They go for walks on the
common, but the stress of avoiding people is hard. Yesterday while I was on the
phone with them, my father told me I needed to focus on myself and not them.
“You need to focus on what’s birthing, not what’s dying.” I was in the bath,
looking down at my stomach with you inside. “I wish I was with you though,” I
said. That wouldn’t do any good,” my father said. I burst into tears. “And
crying won’t do any good either. This is like wartime. You have to be very
brave.”
I’ve been thinking about my
grandmother, Marjorie, who was pregnant in Birmingham during World War Two, and
gave birth to her first child during a bombing raid. At one point, all of the
nurses rushed out of the room to attend to an emergency elsewhere, leaving her
all alone. She was young and terrified. Later, she was in an air raid shelter
with the baby when the building above was destroyed by a bomb. She handed her
baby to rescuers who were pulling them from the rubble. The baby was taken
somewhere and she didn’t know where. She went from place to place looking for
him. It took three days to find him.
I don’t know exactly what it
takes to be brave or what it means to live through a time like this.
Right now, Noah and I and you are a tiny little unit, weathering the storm.
We’re confined to our small apartment and to short walks on the surrounding
streets, as long as they are empty. You are what is
giving me the strength and resolve to be brave, if that’s what I’m doing. Thank
you for kicking me. Thank you for kicking so your father can feel you. Thank
you for being alive. Thank you for what you’re already teaching me.
17th March 2020
Dear baby,
Yesterday we found out that
you are a girl. We went to the Kaiser hospital building to get my twenty week
anatomy ultrasound. It’s hard to explain the anxiety around walking into a
hospital at this moment. I was so flustered that I initially left my wallet –
with ID and health insurance card – at home, and we had to drive back to get
it. I found the N95 mask that we have left over from the fires last autumn and
wore that. I’ve had an asthmatic cough since I had a cold three weeks ago, and
it’s refused to clear up despite a course of steroids and a steroid inhaler.
I’m more worried about other people’s reactions to me coughing in public than I
am about the cough itself. I know it’s the same cough I’ve had for weeks and
not the virus, but no one else is to know that.
As we went into the hospital
there were staff members standing behind a makeshift table with a bottle of
hand sanitiser on it, asking if we had an appointment
and whether we had any symptoms. The hospital wasn’t busy but it was the
closest we’ve been to strangers in a week, and both of us found our hearts
racing as we negotiated elevators and waiting rooms. Sitting in the waiting
room I had to close my eyes and concentrate on breathing to stay calm. We had
to wait about twenty minutes before the technician came out to fetch us. She
explained she had been cleaning the room with extra care. She wore a mask, and
asked us to sanitise our hands on the way in.
She was an incredibly sweet
woman, who told us she specialises in high-risk
pregnancies and always double-checks for every potential problem. But you
didn’t have a single problem. You were lying upside down, curled up, and we
could see every tiny vertebra of your spine, so perfectly formed as to seem
utterly miraculous. How did you do that? There was your four chambered heart,
pumping away. There were your kidneys, your two feet, both with five toes. Your
two hands, held in front of your face as though you’d had enough of the
intrusion. You seemed much sleepier than in other ultrasounds we’ve had, and I
didn’t feel you move or kick. But she said you were perfect, and you are. She
asked if we wanted to find out your sex and we said yes. “You have no idea at
all?” “None.” “I’ll let the father take a guess,” she
said. She scanned down your spine to the bottom and asked Noah what he thought.
We both looked at the image for a few seconds. “That doesn’t look like a
penis,” he said. “That’s right, she’s a girl.”
A few weeks ago I had a
dream that we were in an ultrasound scan, almost identical to the one we were
actually in yesterday. The technician suddenly began to refer to you as “she”,
saying “she’s doing this and that”. Strange because the family consensus was
that you were a boy, and we were even referring to you as “he”. But perhaps I
knew subconsciously, or even wished, that you would be a girl. And there you are, a daughter.
We raced out of the hospital
as quickly as we could. I was desperate to get home so I could take the
uncomfortable, bulky mask off. And then we could kiss. And call our parents and
Noah’s siblings. So went a series of Facetimes and phone calls. My mother burst
into tears of joy. My father said it reminded him of the day 31 years ago when
he got the same news about me.
After that, we felt totally emotionally
exhausted. The anxiety of going into the hospital, the exhilaration of seeing
you on the scan, of finding out that you were not only healthy and perfect, but
also a girl, the desperation to get to the safety of home, the thrill of
telling everyone the news. It felt huge. It was the first time we’d been
outside together into a semi-crowded place, or at least a place that felt
risky. My limbs felt watery and weak.
And that’s around the time
that we started to see online that London Breed, the mayor of San Francisco,
would be announcing a “shelter at home” order at an afternoon press conference.
It closes down all businesses that are not deemed “essential” and requires
everyone to stay at home and avoid contact with others for three weeks until April
7. It’s basically what we’ve been doing for a week, but on a mass scale. On
social media, businesses began to announce their closure. City Lights
Bookstore, where I used to work, closed its doors at 6pm inside of
midnight. In downtown Oakland, businesses boarded up their windows.
The consequences are
enormous. So many people will be laid off from work, especially in the food
industry. Restaurants are able to function, but only for takeout and delivery
so their services are massively reduced. Healthcare workers can, obviously,
keep working, as can anyone providing essential services. Hardware stores and
vets and laundromats can stay open. Even journalists are exempt as they can
continue to cover the news and get people information.
But Noah is permanently
working from home. His fieldwork for the wet season is over. The samples that
his colleagues took yesterday and dropped at the lab in San Francisco will
undoubtedly never be analysed. Those who can’t work from home, but aren’t
deemed essential, will no doubt be laid off or asked to take paid time off. The
stock market has been tanking for days, despite Trump injecting $1.5 trillion –
an amount that’s hard to understand but apparently could have cancelled all
outstanding student debt. But I can’t see how anything can save us from a
recession, or even from a depression. All over the world, industry,
manufacturing and shipping has halted. Capitalism cannot function. The status
quo cannot be maintained.
Lots of things run through
my head. Some are awful and I have to try and control them. I fear that my
parents will die and I will never see them again and won’t be able to help
them. I fear sickness spreading through my family. I fear Noah or I getting sick. I worry about you, about the unknowns of
risks to babies in utero, or to newborns. A couple of days ago the BBC reported
that the youngest confirmed case of the virus in the UK was a newborn. Passed
from the mother? From the hospital? Who knows.
I wonder about your birth. I
always planned to give birth at Kaiser, because of insurance coverage. Who
knows what will be happening by the time you’re due at the beginning of August?
Babies will keep being born despite any chaos unfolding around them, so I
assume the essential functions of the Labor and Delivery unit will have to be
maintained. But the consensus seems to be that the healthcare system will be
overwhelmed, that all beds will have to be given to the sick, that there aren’t
enough ventilators and supplies. In Italy, doctors triage patients and choose the
most likely to survive, sacrificing the old and weak for the young. My friend Yemile, whose father is a big doctor in
Some thoughts are better.
Because we have you, we have a future. We have something coming. We can’t give
up or give in to despair. You keep kicking. You are oblivious. All you want is
to live, like every baby. All we want is for you to live.
Right now, Noah is on a Zoom
call with his work colleagues. He’s holding the pictures of you that the
ultrasound technician printed out and gave to us. Left foot.
Right hand. Hope.
22nd March 2020
Dear baby,
On Thursday (the 19th)
Governor Gavin Newsom instituted a “stay at home” order for the entire state of
California. It runs along similar lines to the one we were already under in the
Bay Area; no travel outside your home unless it’s for essential services, only
essential workers going out to work, only essential businesses open. We haven’t
ventured far enough from the house to really know what that looks like for the
city. Our world has shrunk to the back streets of Temescal, where the blossom
is blooming and the squirrels and crows have reclaimed the streets in the
absence of so many cars.
Yesterday Noah had a
freak-out. The shower kept breaking while he was in it, and then he smashed a
ceramic pot I’d made and was using in the bathroom to store hair brushes. He
said he felt like the walls of the apartment were closing in. Fair enough,
we’re sharing a very small place. Right now he’s at the desk in the bedroom
playing poker online with Nico, Martin and Edgar. I’m writing this at the
kitchen table. Yesterday he went out to buy groceries and returned with meat,
vegetables, milk, frozen food, beer, whiskey and half a gallon of chocolate ice
cream. He felt much better.
But there are moments when
it gets to us. We’ve decided that one line of thought that’s banned is “what if
this lasts for months and months?” Like they say in Alcoholics Anonymous, we’re
trying to take it one day at a time. We made a schedule that we’re trying to
stick to that includes exercising, eating regularly, taking breaks from work,
going outside to walk, playing games etc. I find the days much easier now that
we have it, as I always know there’s a next thing to do. After lunch we walk,
after dinner we watch TV.
The heating at my parents’
house went out and they had to have an engineer over to fix it. No mask, and he didn’t respect their worry about contamination,
announcing that he’d used the bathroom. He needs to come back tomorrow with
parts. It’s stressful to imagine a stranger in their home after they’ve been
so, so careful to isolate themselves and stay safe. Yet another thing I can’t
do anything about.
We’ve had some social
moments. Neighbours who stand in the street six feet
away from each other to talk now greet us and ask how we’re doing. People nod
and smile and ask how we’re doing when we walk past them. We had dinner last
night across the plastic garden table, six feet from our downstairs neighbours, Sarah-Katherine and Andrew. Today we took two
cups of tea to Mike and Flo’s and sat in their outdoor chairs six feet across
from them. These all feel like risks in a way. Or at least a
slight elevation of risk. How strict should we be about our isolation?
How lonely do we risk becoming?
This morning my
father-in-law Neal joked on the phone that if he doesn’t get to meet you on the
day you’re born, he’ll shoot himself. On Twitter I saw a picture of a
grandfather meeting his grandson for the first time through a window to
maintain distance. At New York Presbyterian hospital they announced today that labouring women can’t bring anyone into the delivery room
with them, even partners. Noah said he’d like to see a doctor trying to stop
him coming in. Of all the things I’d considered might happen when you were
born, this was one possibility that hadn’t occurred to me. It made me think
more seriously about the idea of a home birth, but I know there are attendant
risks to that, and a possibility I might end up in hospital anyway. Again,
worrying about it doesn’t change anything. Who knows what the hospitals will
look like when you do decide it’s time to come?
I’m torn between the desire
to meet you as soon as possible, and the wish that you’ll stay in there as long
as possible. As long as it takes for the world to be less
chaotic and frightening.
_______________________
20th September 2020
Keziah was born on the 8th of
August, 2020, at 9.23am. She weighed 8lb, 3oz. I laboured for more than
thirty-three hours – wearing a mask – to bring her into the world. When they
put her on my chest I thought: hello, stranger.
In her first week on earth,
I nursed her in a rocking chair in the corner of our bedroom while dry
lightning crackled outside all night, lighting up the skyline. These freak
lightning strikes sparked fires that started to burn across California.
The skies went dark. One
day, we woke up and the sun didn’t rise. The sky was a strange, choking orange
colour all day. It was permanently dark from dawn until dusk, and I couldn’t
help but think of 1816 – "the year without a summer" – when a
volcanic eruption caused similar conditions across the world and Mary Shelley
wrote "Frankenstein" on Lake Geneva. Shelley, like me, was a nursing
mother with a newborn at the time – although her child died before the book was
published.
For the last few weeks we've
been trapped inside, unable to even open a window for fear of damaging our
lungs or permanently harming Kizzy. It's a stark reminder that the
intensity of climate change is not coming, but already here.
It can feel like the world
is ending. We can’t go into anyone else’s house because of Covid.
We can’t leave our own because of the smoke. The Trump presidency moves wildly
from horror to horror; denying the virus, denying climate change, denying
racism.
But for Keziah, the world is
only just beginning. At six weeks old, she stares into our eyes. She coos her
very first sounds, already trying to communicate. She reaches out with her
hands to see what she will find. She experiments with smiling. She falls asleep
in our arms and wakes up if we put her down.
This cannot be the end. She
is the beginning.
_______________________
