Rebecca Lim On Baby No. 2: “There’s A Lot More Light”

Local actress Rebecca Lim has welcomed her second child, a girl weighing 3.6kg, adding to her growing family with Singaporean husband Matthew Webster.

The 39-year-old star gave birth last week at Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital after a 12-hour labour. The baby’s estimated date of delivery was around two weeks earlier, and she arrived just past the 40-week mark.

Mr Webster, 39, was overseas for work when Lim went into labour, but managed to return to Singapore three hours before the birth, after arranging an earlier flight from Indonesia.

The couple’s new addition, referred to by Lim as “Baby M”, required a slightly longer stay in hospital for medical checks, though her condition has since stabilised. She was cleared to go home only the day before The Straits Times spoke with Lim over the phone on May 15.

Lim and Webster, who married in 2022, also have a two-year-old son.

With her due date approaching and her husband out of Singapore, Lim admitted the final stretch of her pregnancy brought both logistical and emotional strain.

“There’s a higher risk of stillbirth as you approach 40 weeks, and all these things start to worry you,” she told ST. “I was closely monitoring the movements of the baby, and going for regular check-ups with my gynaecologist just to get peace of mind.”

“When my husband managed to get on an earlier flight back, it was double the assurance that he would be able to see the birth of his daughter,” she added.

“To me, it meant something that the three generations of females were in the same room,” she said, referring to herself, her mother and newborn daughter. “It kind of gave me some peace. It was a full-circle moment.”

The natural birth stood in sharp contrast to her first delivery, which Lim described as traumatic.

“I don’t remember much about it because I think my mind is trying to forget it,” she said. “But the second one was very peaceful.”

While the delivery was smooth, Lim described her second pregnancy as twice as difficult compared with her first.

“The first time, I was really having a holiday. I had no morning sickness. I could go for facials whenever I wanted. I enrolled in prenatal pilates,” she recalled. “But this time, because of a toddler (at home), it’s impossible for you to put yourself first any more.”

This also meant even the practical preparations were delayed. “I was quite a last-minute buyer for all my baby stuff,” she said. “Not like the first time, when you’re very excited and start to prep the baby room months before.”

Because Baby M was discharged only recently, Lim said the family has yet to settle into a new rhythm. But emotionally, the shift has been largely positive.

“The first time, I was a lot more anxious, more emotionally up and down, crying a lot more, feeling so helpless,” she recounted. “But this time, there’s a lot more light. Being a mother already has given me the extra strength for this second child, and the whole mentality has been very positive. Even I am surprised by how positive I am.”

She credits much of that stability to her support system, which includes her mother, a confinement nanny and a trusted domestic helper. “There’s a lot of help at home, but I think reality will hit when the help slowly diminishes.”

Lim admitted she carried the guilt of whether she could love a second child as much as her son. “I really have so much love for him that I was worried I wouldn’t be able to give the same amount to my daughter,” she said. “There was always this worry hanging on my shoulders.”

But those doubts lifted the moment Baby M arrived. “Now that we are a family of four, that guilt has somehow disappeared. I’ve been told by a lot of mummies that your heart just expands, and I never quite understood that until now. Your heart can truly expand and have so much more love than it did before.”

Still, she makes it a point to put her son to bed each night. “I haven’t been in a situation where they both need me at the same time yet,” she said, adding with a laugh, “But that’s a big ‘yet’.”

This article was originally published on The Straits Times.