Letters to Poetwig: Sugarcanes

Dear Baby,

Tomorrow, I take my first liver ultrasound in pregnancy to make sure my liver functions are in order. I got Hepatitis B from your grandma, at birth, Baby, and am now a permanent carrier of the virus. I want to make sure the same thing doesn’t happen to you, so I will be regularly monitored by a Gastroenterologist with blood tests and ultrasounds. Your father asked me why I’d go through all this. To me, it’s simple: So that you would not be born with the same thing that plagues me now; so that you do not have to fear passing it on to your future wife or children, and feel guilty for following your heart; so that you may not have to face a liver transplant or worry about dying of liver failure one day. And maybe it’ll never be that dramatic. But if I can save you from any kind of pain, I would.

The liver ultrasound requires fasting from food and water after midnight until 9:40AM the next day. Not a huge feat if you think about it, but possibly made more difficult by the demands of pregnancy’s constant hunger and thirst. When I think about how little we go through with technological conveniences and nutritional abundance today, it really puts into perspective what your maternal great-grandmother went through when she was pregnant with her first baby. She earned a little money by selling pre-mixed fishsauce—the culminating sauce for Vietnamese cuisine, one that your own mother learned to make very well. Every morning, she’d carry two big buckets of fish sauce suspended by a pole draped across her shoulders, balanced like an old-fashioned scale, and make the trek to sell her goods.

The hunger of pregnancy is like no other; even after you’ve eaten not long ago, lack of food can claw at your stomach as your baby demands more and more from your body. That’s how it feels like to me, and your great-grandmother had even less to eat. On the side of the road along her journey were disposed sugarcane stalks from a plantation; they had been juiced dry, and it was these that she picked up to suck on, the last remaining sweetness that remained hidden in the fibrous husks. I think of your great-grandmother making this long trek alone, the hot sun beating down on her, hunger haunting her footsteps, the baby inside her wanting more and more and not getting nearly enough. I think of my last meal before my ultrasound being but a mere twelve hours prior, and a fulfilling one at that, and how I spent my work hours before that sitting in an air-conditioned office, well-fed, well-hydrated, and you sitting happy in my belly.

I have no reason to complain. I did not suffer as she did. And I am doing my best to safeguard your health and your future. So bear with me one night, my hungry little bean, and we will meet the hour after the ultrasound with a delicious meal, with your father beside us to entertain us as we eat, my perfect little family.