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By Jessica Bartolome
Digital Media Producer: Shai Lagarde | Social Media Producer: Chendee Nacilla and Christine Joy Brenio | Production Assistant: Pauline Castillo
May 7, 2021
There is nothing quite as life-changing as the moment a pregnancy test comes out positive.
For these celebrity moms, it is not enough to say that your life changes when you give birth to a baby; rather, your whole self changes when you become a mother.
As we mark this year’s Mother’s Day 2021, we celebrate these strong women who, ready or not, bravely rose to the challenge of motherhood and proved that a mom is a mom no matter the journey to get there.
Andie Eigenmann describes herself as an island mom of three. IG: Andi Eigenmann
“I’m an island mom of three,” is how Andi Eigenmann introduces herself on a hot April afternoon.
Not that she needs an introduction. With roots in showbiz and a big platform in the vlogging world, Andi Eigenmann is practically a household name.
She’s known for achieving the ultimate dream of many: a chill and breezy island life, in the country’s surfing capital, too, no less. Andi now lives in beautiful Siargao with her three children and surfer partner Philmar Alipayo after leaving the “artista life.”
But the journey to this dream was one that was fraught with many personal struggles.
“I was young and I was a different person back then,” Andi says, smiling as she cradles her youngest child, Koa.
Andi was 21 when she had her first child, Ellie, with her then on-again, off-again boyfriend Jake Ejercito.
Given that she was a young, unmarried lady living in a traditional Catholic country, news of her childbirth leaking to the public was nothing short of a nightmare.
“[I had just started, I had just given birth to Ellie] and I was already facing judgement and all that, all the criticism,” she says. “It was really tough because as a young girl, as a young lady, I would hear these things that people have to say about me that were not really so nice, and that would be damaging to my mental health.”
In fact, the public got a good look at Ellie before she even did. When Andi gave birth via C-section in 2011, there had been a high profile person in the same hospital, so there was press outside.
However, they managed to catch Andi’s brother, actor Gabby Eigenmann, who let slip that his sister had just given birth.
Gabby even showed a photo of Baby Ellie to the reporter from his phone. Someone managed to take a photo of this moment, and it made it to the internet where curious netizens were waiting to feast on it.
“I had not really gotten a good look, a great look at Ellie, and I woke up and she was already news, her face. Everybody already saw her,” she says. “So without me, parang mas nauna pang makilala ng world si Ellie kaysa sa akin (the world knew Ellie before I did).”
Andi Eigenmann opens up about motherhood.
Andi’s pregnancy was unexpected. She was not a teenager anymore, but she was still young.
Still, she recognized the responsibility she’d have to take on.
“When I found out I was pregnant with Ellie, I knew that it was a commitment that I had to make like full on. I had to make sure that I'm going to do my best and really be the best I can be to this person because it's a human being that you're raising. It's no joke. And I wouldn't want to let her down,” she says.
The problem was that her life as an actress was not compatible with the kind of mother she wanted to become. She wanted to become a hands-on mom. She wanted to become an awesome mom. She wanted to give Ellie a great life.
But her other responsibilities because of her demanding career was making it hard for her to achieve that.
“As Ellie was growing, I got even more and more frustrated, because while she was growing, I was also, as a person. And I was realizing that… this is all I know to do. I don't know how to do anything else. While I was a young girl in showbiz, I became a mother immediately,” she says.
And it was difficult, raising Ellie in that kind of environment, and it got tougher when she and Jake started having problems. Eventually, they split, and naturally, everything about that was highly publicized.
They were both young and immature, Andi says now. She admits that she probably put their problems first over their daughter.
“Looking back I was not ready. I was not ready for all of that at all,” she says. “[I always say], ‘It was not showbiz's fault, and it's not that showbiz is toxic. It was who I was while I was in showbiz that was toxic. It was me.’ It's a very personal thing.”
She was then struck with the fear that one day she’d look up and Ellie would be a teenager and it would be too late to fix her mistakes.
“I didn’t want to regret anything,” Andi says. “[So I said, ‘Ellie is growing up] and time is ticking. I want to be able to spend more time with her.’ And in order for me to do that, I have to take time off showbiz.”
Andi Eigenmann and her daughter Ellie. IG: Andi Eigenmann
The decision to leave the showbiz industry did not happen overnight.
Andi knew that she couldn’t just say, “Wait for me, I’ll come back.”
“I'm just an employee, you know. They're not gonna wait for me. They're gonna find someone better, someone who would want this job more,” she says.
“So sabi ko, ‘Okay lang. Okay lang, aalis na lang ako.’ (So I said, ‘It’s okay. It’s okay, I’ll just leave.’)”
It was scary for her, making that decision. She was plagued with doubts: What if it’s the wrong decision? What if things don’t turn out well?
She spent some time thinking about it. Eventually, she began to realize that she didn’t just want to leave showbiz, she also wanted to leave the city.
How did this realization come about? It started in 2015 when she and Ellie began going to the beach together after work and whenever Ellie didn’t have school.
“We'd drive to a nearby beach and go surfing and just take a break, until I would do it regularly,” she says. “And I said, ‘Maybe I'd like to live in the province. I'd like to live outside of Manila, not just leave showbiz or stop doing teleseryes. I really want to leave the city.’”
And then in 2017, she and Ellie went to Siargao and they both fell in love.
“We're like ‘I wish I could live here’...and then Ellie, I saw her really enjoying herself also and telling me that she also wanted to live here just like me.”
The more her dreams solidified, the more upsetting it was for Andi to return to work. She was missing important events in Ellie’s life and it was the last straw for her.
“I was like, ‘You know, I don't want to miss out anymore.’ And I said to myself, ‘I think I can do it. I think we're done. I think we're done here.’”
The question now then was, “How do I start? Where do we begin?”
As if on cue, Andi met Philmar.
“I don't feel bad. Not at all. Because I'm so happy to have this life now no matter how simple it may be.”
— Andi Eigenmann
Andi likes to say that her relationship with Philmar was a “friendship that bloomed.”
“We started out as friends and we were always hanging out together and we knew that it was something special. But we weren't expecting anything because...I was from Manila and he was from here,” she says. “But then, with our relationship growing deeper and deeper, we found that connection. Our connection was that we shared the same dreams and that who you wanted to become and where we saw ourselves was very compatible.”
She told Philmar about her dreams, and he said, “You know, I can help you out.” Philmar had kids himself, so they were able to relate to each other and their goals. Soon enough, they were supporting each other with their goals, too.
That was just the beginning of their lifelong partnership. With Philmar’s support, Andi found that uprooting her life became more tangible.
And now, years later, they are engaged and have a home in Siargao with two kids together, Lilo and Koa.
Everything with Philmar happened very naturally and organic, Andi says. They don’t even have a specific date for their anniversary, they just know they got together towards the end of 2017. When asked why they’re together and how they ended up together, Andi would just shrug and answer, “It worked well. It was meant to be, I guess.”
At 30 years old, Andi is living the perfect life in her perfect island — or at least that’s what it looks like.
“It’s the magic of Instagram,” Andi laughs. “Oh my God! We are struggling.”
“I'm just always happy and smiling. To me, that makes it seem like a breeze, that it's so easy, but it's not. I mean, I struggle also. We struggle, me and Philmar,” she adds.
Even in their pocket of paradise, it’s not always an easy day. They’re just like any other parents, she says.
But the good thing is that even though they struggle, being parents of their blended family is their “number one priority” and their “favorite job to do.”
“Kahit na nag-i-struggle kami, gusto pa rin namin. Masaya pa rin kaming ginagawa ito (Even though we struggle, we want this. We are happy doing this),” she says. “We love being able to spend time with our children.”
This is clear enough in the videos that Andi posts in her YouTube channel, which shows the happy island life her family is living.
She says this way of opening up to the public is more controlled and healthier, because she can choose how much of herself to show. She enjoys showing pieces of her life to the world, but not her entire life.
Andi Eigenmann moved to Siargao to do what is best for her young family. IG: Andi Eigenmann
Of course, the consequences of fame would always follow.
Even now, she’s approached by strangers, sometimes even in her own home. Just recently, she became the talk of the town when tourists posted on social media that she refused to take selfies with them.
That incident in particular made Andi “very sad.”
“It's not my intention to hurt their feelings or make them feel bad. Who wants to do that? But I feel like some people forget that I'm also a person and I also have feelings and you know just like them, I have responsibility and moods,” she says.
“[I hope] people understood more that that's not something personal, that it doesn't mean I'm [arrogant] or I'm not humble anymore just because I'm not ready to take a picture 'cause I haven't even brushed my teeth and I'm still taking care of our kids,” she adds.
But regardless of that, Andi says she’s still happy with how everything has turned out.
She’s presently living her dream life, she’s looking forward to a bright future that has wedding bells in it, and more importantly — she’s made peace with her past.
This is evident in the good co-parenting relationship she has fostered with Jake, who often makes headlines whenever he spends time with Ellie. He even went all the way to Siargao recently just to pick up Ellie for some father-daughter bonding.
“I'm so happy, I'm so grateful that finally, we are seeing eye-to-eye,” Andi says. “I guess it's because we have the same priority and that's Ellie.”
“And he actually made an effort to be the one to come here recently to pick Ellie up instead of me having to fly Ellie to Manila just so that she could be with her dad. That for me was really something because it made me realize that ‘Wow! We are really on the same page. We really both want the best for our child and we're both willing,’” she adds.
It wasn’t always easy, and it took a while for the both of them to get to this point, but Andi is just thankful that they managed it.
“Ayoko nang i-figure out bakit or paano. Masaya at nagpapasalamat na lang ako (I don’t want to figure out why or how. I’m just happy and grateful),” she says.
Motherhood is about sacrifices, and Andi knows this very well.
She had given up her old life for the sake of her children, and even now she continues to postpone her personal dreams.
When she has more time, she wants to create a clothing line for kids. One day, she’d also like to have a restaurant.
However, these are all just distant goals that haven’t yet materialized.
“I'm taking it easy. I'm not rushing myself into any of those,” she says.
And as for showbiz? Andi reveals that she’s never closing her door on it.
“I loved [acting], I loved every single moment I ever had in front of the cameras,” she says. “So [if there’s an] opportunity, right script, whatnot, why not?”
However, she can’t see herself doing it anytime soon because “that would mean leaving my kids and I can't do that.”
She does recall a moment in 2016 when she and her mother, renowned actress Jaclyn Jose, attended the Cannes film festival for their roles in “Ma’ Rosa” by Brillante Mendoza. Jaclyn had bagged the Best Actress award that night.
While there, Andi’s mind couldn’t help but race with the possibilities of where her career could go, and how far she could take it.
She dreamed of joining the Berlinale, and honing her skills in a different country.
“I knew that I could do it but I was just like, ‘How will I do this? How will this be possible when I have a child who I've been struggling to spend time with?’”
Having decided that Ellie was her priority, she didn’t push through with it.
So does she regret it?
“Even if I look back and think what if [I pushed through with it], I'm sure it would've been awesome, but I don't regret anything,” she answers. “I don't feel bad. Not at all. Because I'm so happy to have this life now no matter how simple it may be.”
Divine Lee always wanted to be a mom — she just did not know when it was going to happen. IG: Divine Lee.
It was never a question whether Divine Lee was going to be a mom.
As someone who grew up with lots of siblings and later became the ultimate tita for her nieces and nephews, she had always been so sure that she was going to be a mom.
Now with two kids and another one on the way at the age of 39, Divine has more or less reached her goals — 15 years after she first set them.
Her journey to motherhood started when she was 24 when she began planning to have her eggs frozen. She eventually had it done at 26.
“I knew I was gonna be a mom one day. My problem was when,” Divine tells GMA News Online. “Early on, I was so high on life.”
“At that time when I froze my eggs, I was applying for my masters degree, I had about four jobs...I was doing a 9 to 5 job and then I was doing hosting, I was doing shoots,” she recalls. “Parang ang dami kong sinasabay-sabay tapos siyempre 'yun 'yung time na ma-gimmick din ako, 'di ba? (There were so many things I was juggling, and of course that was the time I liked going out for gimmicks.)”
But even as she was doing all these, Divine was well aware that her biological clock was ticking.
The solution came from broadcast journalist Korina Sanchez, a good friend of hers, who one day suggested, “You know, why don't you freeze your eggs? Since you're so high on life tapos hindi ka pa naman mag-aasawa (Since you’re so high on life and you’re not yet going to get married).”
It wasn’t a one-time conversation, Divine says. It was a long process. But two years later, she finally made the jump.—
Her decision wasn’t met with the usual cheers other women usually get when they reveal that they’re planning on having a child. Being Chinese, the concept of egg freezing, and even in vitro fertilization (IVF) — the method of combining a man’s sperm and a woman's eggs in a laboratory dish — was practically taboo for her family.
“I had a lot of titas telling me, ‘Ano ba 'yan? Aksaya ng pera. Bakit? Wala ka bang balak mag-asawa?’ (‘That is a waste of money. Why? Do you not have plans on marrying?’)”
But Divine was already set on following through. After going through several doctors, she finally settled on Dr. Virgilio Novero, Jr., the head of the Center for Advanced Reproductive Medicine and Infertility (CARMI) at St. Luke’s.
Her journey was kicked off by medication.
For two weeks, Divine pumped herself with injections that helped stimulate production of egg cells.
After that, she went to the hospital for what they call “harvest day,” in which doctors, as the name suggests, harvest whatever eggs that were produced. And then they freeze them.
Divine was able to freeze 26 eggs. She paid an annual rental fee of P10,000 to keep said eggs frozen. She would not use them until years and years later.
Divine married husband Blake Go in 2017, when she was 37.
On August 5, 2017, Divine got married to businessman Blake Go. She was 35. Two weeks later, she was already working on being a mom.
“Right after my church wedding, that's when we took two embryos, a boy and a girl and then put it back. And then, only one took,” she says. “Si Baz lang 'yun. So 'yun, nabuntis ako ng first time (That was Baz. And so I got pregnant for the first time.)”
Baz was born on May 5, 2018, exactly nine months after Divine got married.
She had no problems conceiving because she was healthy and that she had “good quality” embryos.
Her doctor told her, “You know what you did the smartest thing ever by freezing your embryo because [if you didn’t, you would have had a hard time conceiving].”
“So it was a blessing for me,” Divine says.
Her second child, a baby girl named Blanca, was born over a year later on October 1, 2019.
And now, she’s pregnant with her third child, another boy. All three of them were conceived via IVF.
“May goal ako na four by 40 (I have a goal to have four by 40),” she says. Having grown up in a big family, she wants that for her kids as well.
Divine recognizes that she was lucky. She had the luxury of time. She had the luxury of health. On paper, it might look as if her journey to motherhood was smooth-sailing. However, that’s not exactly the case.
“Magkaibang [process] lang pero parehong sakit (They might be different processes, but it’s the same heartache),” she says. “You really want to have a baby.”
Divine Lee talks about how the IVF process helped her become a mother.
When one says IVF, people have the tendency of thinking laboratories and test tubes and clinical, impersonal procedures.
“Dati iba-iba 'yung iniisip nila. ‘Naku, baka may diperensya.’ 'Di ba may ganyan because they don't know the science behind it. Basta iniisip nila parang ginawa sa lab (Before, people would think a bunch of things, like ‘Oh no, it might have a condition.’ Because they don’t know the science behind it. They just think it’s something made in the lab),” Divine says.
But Divine went through the entire process with just as much emotional toll as any hopeful mother, if not more.
“Kasi kami nakikita namin 'yung lahat ng steps. Kita namin bawat egg na hindi nag-fertilize, bawat embryo na hindi pumasa sa testing. Alam mo yun? So mas maraming heartache (We who go through IVF witness all the steps. We see every egg that didn’t get fertilized, every embryo that didn’t pass testing. So there are so much more heartaches).”
In fact, Divine cries every time she loses an embryo.
“I always put two but only one takes,” she says. “Like with Baz, mayroon siyang kapatid na sister na sabay ko nilagay pero si Baz lang 'yung nabuo (Baz had a sister but only he survived).”
“I always asked my doctor, ‘Bakit ganu'n? Bakit hindi kumakapit?’ (‘Why did this happen? Why didn’t she survive?’),” she adds. “He said, ‘It's also nature.’”
Then there’s the fact that IVF is a practice in patience.
You wait until your period comes, Divine says. Then you wait until the meds take effect, and then you wait for the embryos to get transferred. Once that’s done, you wait until your blood tests to find out if you’re pregnant.
“‘Yung two weeks wait mahirap 'yun. It's not like natural conception na you tried, 'di ba then you wait, ganito, ganyan. Hindi ka sigurado (That two-week wait, that’s hard. It’s not like natural conception where you just tried and now you have to wait. Here, you can never be sure).”
Divine, who admits that she’s not a patient person at all, recalls that she’d even cheat by using pregnancy kits. Apparently, this is discouraged.
During her current pregnancy, she had checked if she was pregnant via kit and the results came out negative. It only “got her down more.”
“You're on so much hormones, so the emotional toll [is immense],” she says. “I would say that anyone who wants to have a baby and is having a hard time, it's really going through different stages of emotional stress and I think [that’s the same way with] IVF.”
"I'm not a helicopter mom. I don't go following my kids, I let them do things. I think it's doing them well. They're a bit more independent than most kids.”
— Divine Lee
Divine is on her third pregnancy, and one would think things would get easier for her. But like everyone else, her life was disrupted by the coronavirus pandemic.
She was directly impacted, because she caught the infectious COVID-19 disease, alongside her husband.
Her first thought were the kids.
When Blake developed a sore throat, Divine went full on protective mom and locked the both of them in their rooms, separate from their children.
“He thought I was crazy because parang ‘Hindi na nga tayo lumalabas so malamang ano lang 'to, sa ice cream lang 'to.’ (He thought I was crazy, saying that we weren’t even going out, so it must just be because of the ice cream he ate),” she says.
But it turned out that she was right to be worried because they both tested positive for COVID-19.
Divine was asymptomatic, so she was physically fine. However, she was separated from Blake when he was taken to the hospital to treat his symptoms.
“You know it's so hard for a mom thinking na dalawa kayong mag-asawa na may sakit tapos 'yung mga anak mo ganoon kaliit (that both you and your husband are sick and your children are so small). And you know, watching the news you're seeing all these deaths,” she says. “So parang nagpa-panic ako how do I make sure na okay 'yung ulam nila tomorrow (So I was panicking, wondering how do I make sure that they have food tomorrow).”
And it was then that Divine thought, “What if I were gone?”
“Paano kung ako yung na-intubate, paano kaya gagawin ng asawa ko? Iisipin 'yung ulam while nakikipag-coordinate ka sa barangay (What if I were the one intubated, what would my husband have done? He’d have to think about food while coordinating with the barangay),” she adds.
That, more than anything, reflects just how much Divine has changed as a person since becoming a mother.
“Even my priorities changed, everything changed,” she says. “I have a lot of things, I do a lot of things. I have a day job, I'm a host, but for me my most important role and my most defining role is really being a mother.”
Divine Lee with her kids Baz and Blanca. IG: Divine Lee
Divine can’t help but get concerned over the fact that her children are growing up inside four walls as the pandemic continues to threaten the world.
Things are different now; her children won’t have the same childhood she had, where she was free to run around outside.
However, she says she still finds the silver lining during these tough times.
“I try not to worry [because we can’t do anything, right?] I'm just trying to be grateful that we have more time with them because we can work from home,” she says. “Wala akong nami-miss sa milestones ng anak ko (I won’t miss any of their milestones).”
As a self-proclaimed “unicorn mom,” Divine says she just let her kids be kids, and that she’s learned to be more lenient even as she homeschools them amid the lockdown.
“I'm a really more relaxed mom. Sometimes, you know... sa social media maraming internet police, ‘Ay bakit mo pinapaganyan?’ (in social media there are lots of internet police asking, ‘Why are you letting them do that?’)”
And her answer is always, “So that they learn.”
"I'm not a helicopter mom. I don't go following my kids, I let them do things. I think it's doing them well. They're a bit more independent than most kids [that I see],” she says.
She also says that the current situation has made her truly understand that moms “really play a great role.”
One might think that moms who are able to work from home these days would have a lighter load, but Divine believes that’s not the reality.
“Mas dumami 'yung trabaho natin dahil sa bahay tayo, ayusin natin, nakikita natin lahat. (Our workload increases because since we’re at home, we fix everything, we see everything),” she says. “I think it's just a nice reminder to tell everybody that you're doing a great job and you're keeping everything together. Trust me.”
“I think it's just a nice thing to say, ‘You guys are doing a good job.’ We're all doing a good job. It's a nice reminder,” she adds.
When she was in high school, Sophie Albert dreamed of being a young mom. IG: Sophie Albert
Things don’t always go to plan.
This is something that Sophie Albert has learned time and time again over the years, but most recently in the form of a positive pregnancy test kit.
Finding out that she’s unexpectedly pregnant at the age of 30 is actually behind said plan, because she had initially dreamed of having a kid at the age of 25.
“When I was in high school, I always wanted to be a young mom,” she tells GMA News Online. “So I was saying like ‘25 is too old for me to be a mom. By 25 [I should be done with all my kids].”
But again, things don’t always go to plan.
When she reached 25, she thought to herself, “Oh my God! I'm not ready to have kids.”
And she wasn’t ready even when the pregnancy test turned out to be positive.
“I always wanted kids but I just thought that I would be more adult. You know, I don't know if anyone can relate to that but like, I never felt adult enough to have a kid until I had a kid,” she says.
Sophie has been in a relationship with Vin Abrenica for eight years now. They met at a reality talent search in 2012, and then starred in a television series as onscreen partners. Their relationship gradually turned from reel to real, and before they knew it, it’s been eight years.
“Vin and I always had in our minds that we would end up together,” she says. “I think we were so content with what we had already...we weren't really discussing like ‘Oh, when are we gonna get married?’ We were just super going with the flow.”
Things changed when Sophie realized one day that her period was late.
At the time, Vin was in lock-in taping, so Sophie booked a Grab rider to buy her some pregnancy test kits.
“It was so embarrassing kasi parang the Grab driver, ang dami niyang pinuntahan na mga botika para lang mahanap 'yung pregnancy test. I don't know why. Ang dami niyang pinuntahan so nakakahiya (It was so embarrassing because the Grab driver had to go to so many stores just to find pregnancy test kits. I don’t know why. He went to so many, I was embarrassed),” she recalls.
She took the test thrice. They all came out positive. Then she went to a clinic and had a blood test. It was confirmed: she was pregnant.
Finding out that she was going to have a baby didn’t go as she always imagined it would.
She said that she had been frozen in disbelief, wondering, “Ito na ba ‘to (Is this it)?”
“I wasn't really feeling so much...I don't know. I thought I would be emotional, I thought I would be… ang dami kong akala that I would feel when I found out I was pregnant (there were many things that I thought I would feel when I found out I was pregnant),” she says.
“Of course I was scared like... it wasn't something I planned for, it wasn't something I thought I was ready for. But I think it took for a while to really sink in that I'm pregnant and I'm gonna have a kid,” she adds.
And the other problem? She was unable to tell Vin the news immediately, because she was unsure whether she should call him while he’s in lock-in taping, or wait to see him personally.
She lasted a week before she gave in and Facetimed him.
“He told me that the minute I told him ‘I need to tell you something’...he told me that he already knew right away what I was going to tell him. But then I still saw the shock, I still saw the fear in him,” she says. “He looked like he was gonna fall off. He turned white and he looked like he was gonna fall off his chair.”
And just like that, their quiet routine, which became even quieter amid the lockdown, was upended.
Shortly after learning about the pregnancy, Vince proposed to Sophie in Batangas as fireworks lit up the sky, and she said yes. And shortly after that, they uprooted their individual lives and moved in together.
“We ended up getting pregnant and getting engaged and moving in. Our relationship was so steady and then everything just happened all at the same time during a pandemic,” Sophie says.
“If it were up to us, it probably wouldn't happen when it happened. But I guess it was to push us to take our relationship to the next level,” she adds.
Sophie Albert describes her life-changing experience after giving birth to Avianna.
Reality only truly sank in when Sophie gave birth to her daughter, Avianna, on March 15, 2021.
Drugged and numb, Sophie looked at her baby and thought, "Oh, she's here. This is my baby. This is the life I created."
“[I was] scared but at the same time I was excited.”
Delivery was easy, she says, but the healing was hard. She had delivered via C-section because Avianna was a big girl.
But Avianna had water in her lungs so she had to stay at the NICU.
“It was so weird for me to be away from her for a long time. It was a whole night that I didn't see her,” Sophia recalls. “[So I forced myself] to stand up and to be able to go down to the NICU so that I could see her. Because when I saw her, I was still drugged. It was like I didn’t remember what she looked like, what happened to her. So I really [forced myself] to go down.”
“And I wasn't ready to go down, I was in so much pain so what happened was I almost fainted, my [blood pressure] went so low, I almost fainted. They had to carry me with the stretcher back to my bed,” she adds.
The good thing about Sophie’s childbirth was that it happened right before the COVID-19 cases in the country spiked — right before the government reimposed enhanced community quarantine (ECQ), prompting hospitals to tighten protocols yet again.
“Vin was able to be with me when I was giving birth. He was able to see Avianna right away,” she says.
Fiancee Vin Abrenica has been there for Sophie Albert each step of the way. IG: Vin Abrenica
Like everything else about her journey to motherhood, even holding her baby wasn’t like she expected — but in a good way.
“Before Avianna, I was so uncomfortable carrying newborns. I would never carry newborns… parang I felt so uncomfortable with [them],” she reveals.
“But when it was Avianna, parang wala (it was nothing). I just knew how to hold her,” she adds.
Sophie wasn't scared; in fact, she was confident. And while the occasional self-doubt was normal and unavoidable, she simply felt as if she and Avianna “had a thing.”
“We have a connection, we can communicate,” she says. “There's like a magic connection between mom and baby that I didn't think was real.”
Parenting with Vin, like everything about their relationship, was fun.
This is what’s special about them, Sophie says — the fact that they’re “super best friends.”
“We really jive, we're able to laugh about things and we really tried to make this whole parenthood really fun and we really laugh about everything,” she says. “Even when Avianna is crying and sometimes we have difficulties with her, we really just laugh about it.”
These days, they’ve been making each other laugh figuring out how to soothe their daughter when she’s crying. They’ve taken to inventing silly dance steps to amuse her.
“We really look so funny, we really stupid doing all the dance steps [especially since] I don't dance, and then now I sing just so that my daughter would stop crying,” Sophie says. “So 'yun, lagi niya akong pinagtatawanan. (So there, he’s always laughing at me.)”
“I feel more empowered as a mom now. I feel so much love for her that I never thought I would feel for anyone… [I want to cry because] I love her so much.”
— Sophie Albert
There are many things that Sophie still doesn’t know, she admits.
She doesn’t know what type of mom she’ll become in the future. She still doesn’t know if she can be considered an adult now, even at 30 years with a kid.
And she certainly doesn’t know how Avianna will grow up to be, especially since she’s growing up in a completely different world due to the pandemic.
“One of the fears I have with her...how will she be with other people, or how will she be when she sees new people? Will she have fears? You know, how am I gonna expose her? How am I gonna make it normal? What's she gonna do when she's in nursery? How is she going to be like?”
She mourns the fact that Avianna hasn’t even met most of her family. “Every day her face is changing, she's changing. And I would want our whole family to be able to experience her also. So 'yun 'yung mga medyo sad ngayon (So that’s what’s pretty sad these days.)”
But Sophie says that the silver lining is that all her attention is on Avianna. “We can be together 24/7 and that's one of the things that makes up for it.”
Sophie Albert sometimes feels overwhelmed by the love she feels for her daughter Avianna. IG: Vin Abrenica
And despite it all, Sophie thinks she’s “sort of adulting.”
“I'm the bunso (youngest child) so I'm always the one that's being taken care of,” she confesses. “I guess now that I have a baby, [I’m not] the only person that I have to think about. I have to put her needs over mine, she has to eat first before me no matter how hungry I am or you know, not being able to sleep just to be able to provide her needs, to be able to feed her. Even taking a shower, she's on my mind. There's no minute that I'm not thinking about what my baby needs or worried about her.”
And adult or not, Sophie is sure that she’s more confident in her “purpose as a human being.”
“I feel more empowered as a mom now. I feel so much love for her that I never thought I would feel for anyone… [I want to cry because] I love her so much.”
