Reporter/Liu Sijie
In November 2020, Zhang Qian and her children returned to Wuhan from their hometown in Suizhou for eight months. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she was diagnosed with mild illness while still pregnant, and later gave birth to a healthy baby.
Before the pandemic, she lived with her husband, father-in-law, mother-in-law and grandmother. When the epidemic came, the father-in-law who was the doctor himself fell first, and finally four people in the whole family were infected, and the father-in-law, mother-in-law and husband were seriously ill. Fortunately, the family finally survived the epidemic, and Zhang Qian took the baby's nickname as "Grace", hoping to remember people's kindness to her family and Wuhan during the epidemic.
Although the epidemic has passed, the impact of the epidemic has not dissipated in this home. More than half a year has passed, and the family still adheres to the meal sharing system. The in-laws are particularly sensitive to the news of the sequelae of the new crown, and to this day, they still have sequelae of the lungs, knee joints and other organs. Unlike externalized physical influences, more subtle changes occur in the atmosphere of the family and in people's psychology.
The following is Zhang Qian's dictation:
<h1>The shadow of the virus has been hanging over the home</h1>
I returned to my home in Wuhan in November 2020 with my children, and when I got home, I realized that the atmosphere at home was a bit deserted. I thought that because of the arrival of the baby, the connection between the three generations of the family would be closer. But the panic about the coronavirus has made this intimacy disappear, and since they have returned, the family has not sat at a table and eaten a good meal.
The family implements a meal sharing system, and every day the mother-in-law makes a meal and divides it into a fixed number. When eating, someone sits at the dining table, someone sits in the living room, and someone goes back to their room. Perhaps because we all felt that our families had fallen one after another during the pandemic, one reason was that we ate at the same table. My husband's grandmother is in her eighties, she has been living with us, she is the only one of us who has not been infected with COVID-19, and she has never eaten at the same table with us.
I slowly embraced this new habit. When my husband first went to see me at my parents' house in Suizhou, he wouldn't eat at one of our tables. At that time, my mother would persuade him, but he said it was good to pay attention, and he was afraid that he was not completely well and would infect everyone.
This change is tacit, and the in-laws still wear masks when they are at home, and they also live separately. There was no discussion about whether this should be done, and no one objected. Although I feel that everyone is not intimate anymore, I have accepted this change.
The in-laws also pay special attention to "Grace", do not dare to hug too much, and occasionally sit on the sofa wearing a mask and watch the baby play by himself for a while. The task of child-rearing fell on me alone, and my in-laws did not even dare to touch the child's bottles, clothes and other personal items. The mother-in-law does not dare to bring "grace", one is afraid that she is not completely well and infects the child, and the second is that the mother-in-law now has sequelae and her physical condition is not very good.
The sequelae, my father-in-law, my mother-in-law, and my husband have it. At the beginning, the family bought an oxygen generator, and the in-laws had to take oxygen every day, and their self-breathing ability was very poor, and the oxygen saturation dropped to more than 70% at one point. The father-in-law's lungs have not yet been fibrotic, and the mother-in-law always shouts that her knees hurt and her legs hurt every day. The mother-in-law also had some standing water in her knees before, but it was not as serious as it is now. Every day, the mother-in-law usually goes to buy vegetables and walks ten minutes to the market, which is a little difficult for her, and she needs to stop and rest many times. My husband's physical strength is not as good as before, and sometimes he will gasp for breath when doing some heavy work.
The home is not as happy as I imagined, and the shadow of the virus has always hung over the home. When the whole family was sick, they thought that everyone must survive and then sit neatly at the table for a reunion dinner, but now this seems to be a luxury. When we go out, we will still do a good job of comprehensive protection, and when we get home, we will disinfect the whole body with alcohol. And baby, if someone wants to hold her, I will refuse. We were really scared.
<h1>"Grace" should remember people's kindness</h1>
Now my family and myself are reluctant to recall the days when we were sick and hospitalized. Family members rarely communicate about the outbreak. After all, it was a painful memory for us. The epidemic came too fiercely, and it was my father-in-law who fell first in our family. The father-in-law is a doctor, has his own clinic, and perhaps he is exposed to too many patients all day long, and he is infected.
Children of the East Lake Movement after wuhan was unblocked in April.
I also got the infection, and I developed symptoms on January 25, 2020, two weeks before my due date. At first, I thought it was very difficult to do a nucleic acid test, and I couldn't do it in several hospitals. At that time, Lao Gong took my mother-in-law and me to the major hospitals in Wuhan to find a hospital that could receive us.
I was in a special situation, both a COVID-19 patient and a pregnant woman, and many hospital operating rooms were not in a position to give me a caesarean section. After the lockdown of Wuhan, there were almost no people on the street, only the hospital had the most fever patients. I remember one night at ten o'clock, my husband took us to find a bed, we went to Wuchang Hospital and Tianyou Hospital, at that time, the two hospitals were full of people on the chairs and corridors of the fever clinic, and some people were standing and taking hanging needles. People are lining up wearing masks just to wait for doctors to prescribe them medicine. When I arrived at the People's Hospital, I saw that there were no rescued people in the emergency room, and I was so scared.
We heard online that there were beds wherever we went. But going is often empty, and even waiting in the hospital for an entire night. It was cold, and we were all sick again, so desperate. Finally, we called for help on the Internet, and every day there were many people who helped us find a way, help contact the hospital, contact the doctor. I don't know if it was the volunteers or the community that played a role, I was finally admitted to Zhongnan Hospital, I didn't think much about it at that time, my mind was blank, I just wanted to give birth to the baby healthily.
Grace was finally born on January 29, 2020, and I didn't even get a chance to take a good look at her, only to hear a cry from her, and then the nurses took her and washed her above my head, and I saw her, red. Then she was taken away, and I named her "Grace" at that time, hoping that she would grow up and remember the kindness given by people during the epidemic.
My husband was admitted to the hospital on January 30, and my in-laws were admitted to the hospital on February 5, when the central government said that it should be "collected as much as possible".
Later, my parents came from Suizhou and took En'en to Suizhou to take care of them. At that time, my parents were highly nervous throughout the process of receiving grace, and all the things they had prepared for the baby were thrown away. They wrapped En en in a baby bag, covered her face with a square scarf, went out of the elevator and got into the car directly, disinfected their whole bodies, and drove to their hometown in Suizhou without any stop.
I was mildly ill and was soon discharged from the hospital. When I returned home, my sister came from Suizhou to take care of my confinement. Although she took care of me and we lived together, we hadn't seen each other for a month or two, and she left her meals every day at the door of my room. In fact, my whole state at that time was not very good, the psychological pressure was very large, mainly because my husband's side had been high fever, I was very worried about his situation, afraid of what happened to him, I always cried when I was confinement. Then he slowly got better, and I got better.
<h1>For the sake of the baby, everything is worth it</h1>
At the end of March and the beginning of April, the family members were discharged from the hospital one after another. On the day when Wuhan was unsealed in the early morning of April 8, 2020, my sister and I went to the highway intersection in advance to wait, and the car was loaded with various items I prepared for my children, and I was excited. We went home, finally met my grace, at first I did not dare to touch her, when I got home it was late at night, I crept to see her, and found out how she looked different from the video, it seemed to be bigger than in the video.
Slowly accompanying the child to grow up is a very happy process, the child is close to you day by day, you are dependent on her, see her changes, such as the five features open ah, the first time to look up, the first time to turn over, the first time to call the mother, now she is slowly learning to greet people, every small progress will surprise you. She will sometimes come to touch your face and rub her face into your face, and you will sigh how there can be such a cute little thing in this world. No matter how bad life is, it doesn't matter, see the baby, you will know that everything you have given is worth it.
The epidemic is over, and a new life is about to begin. Although we still occasionally feel some discrimination, such as the husband's company in Shenzhen and her husband negotiated to terminate the contract. Fortunately, the job search in Wuhan went smoothly, and there was no problem. My father-in-law's granddaughter used to come to my house every day at noon for dinner, but after the epidemic, she and her mother never came to my house again. They all said that they wanted us to pay attention to protection, or they were worried and afraid. Now my father-in-law delivers his meals to the mall where his granddaughter works every day at noon and asks her to eat there.
The in-laws didn't seem to think there was anything wrong with doing so, but I still felt that it was not good, after all, they were relatives. In front of outsiders, we will not take the initiative to mention that we were once a new crown patient, but if we need to explain our identity, we will not hide it.
Now every month there are community organizations to go to the examination, the in-laws are still insisting on taking Chinese medicine to adjust the body, and overall their physical condition is much better than when they were just discharged from the hospital. I also feel that after experiencing this epidemic, everyone has looked down on many things, and feels that health is the most important, and we don't have too many expectations for Grace, only hope that she can grow up healthy and happy.
During the epidemic, our family is united, my husband and I have experienced such a big storm, and our relationship has become closer. Now on weekends, my husband will also take care of the children, we will take Eun To the downstairs to bask in the sun, and on the weekend we will go to the swimming pool near my home for a swim. We have a house of our own, after which we should move out and start our own small family. My father-in-law and husband are back to work, and I also take time out of my spare time to sell things online, sometimes earning one or two thousand yuan a month.
There are many things I don't want to think about, and when it passes, it passes, and life goes on.
(In order to protect the privacy of the respondents, Zhang Qian is a pseudonym)