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When you’re as well-loved a star as Rebecca Lim, there are certain milestones in your life people really care about.

The first would be when you’re getting married. The second, when are you having baby. Becks, 36, crossed the first one off her list when she married Matthew Webster, also 36, last year. Now, well, she’s going to be a mum.

8days.sg is on a call with the Mediacorp actress bright and early in the morning. She sounds, well, bright and chirpy despite having woken up at just 15minutes earlier.

She’s four-and-a-half months pregnant already, though this is the first time most of Singapore is finding out.

There were signs she was expecting. The last time we saw Rebecca was at a Lancôme event two weeks back. She was a) dressed in a loose-fitting black gown and b) her minders were especially fussy over her that night.

We espied how they almost freaked out when she hiked her dress up to cross over a barrier and wondered if there's something we should know.

Finding out about her pregnancy was bittersweet for Rebecca. It was right after her dad’s funeral in May. She was recovering from Covid and was isolating at home with her mum, who was also sick. Her period was late which she thought was “natural” because she had been travelling a lot — she was in the UK for her honeymoon and had flown to Korea for work — and didn’t have enough rest

Her sis, who is also trying for a kid, had bought pregnancy test kits. “Just in case,” Becks laughs.

She says she couldn’t believe she was pregnant. “I didn’t believe it actually. I had just lost my dad and this happened. You know that I’ve always wanted a family and we wanted it to be sooner rather than later since we are both in our late thirties. I just didn’t expect it to happen at that point in time. It was just a flood of emotions ’cos I was still recovering from the grief. I couldn’t tell my mum. I didn’t want her to be happy only for something bad to happen to the pregnancy,” she says, adding that she only got confirmation from her doctor two weeks later when she fully recovered from Covid.

Rebecca was already pregnant when her dad passed. While she didn't know it then, does she think her dad, who was in coma, did on a certain level?

“I think he was the first person in the world who knew about it,” she says. “He was always worried about me… the middle child (laughs). He left us very peacefully. I figured he knew he didn't have to worry about any of us anymore. We all have someone who can take care of us. My mum has us by her side. I think that’s also why he left. It’s also a comfort, I guess, that he saw it before he left. I believe he is up there watching over this pregnancy.”

Rebecca’s voice quivers as she says this. It’s clear she’s crying. We apologise.

Her husband Matthew was of course the first one to find out.

“I called him on the pretense that I wanted something from his parents’ house. He came over with a mask on and I told him then. We were initially keeping a safe distance but after a while he said ‘I don’t care’ and gave me a hug,” she laughs.

There was a reason she kept it secret. “The early part of my pregnancy was very unstable. It did not help that I’m not in my twenties. Those were my doctor’s words (laughs). There was a lot of pain and some bleeding. There were a lot of scares that something might have happened. I don’t want to make people happy and then…” she says, her voice trailing off. That’s Rebecca, ever so considerate.

“It was very hard to keep it from everyone,” she sighs. “I was like, I think I better tell people in case they really think I put on weight (laughs).  My make-up artist and hairdresser, who didn’t know then, were like, ‘Hmm, your figure looks a little bit better in the chest area nowadays (laughs)”

When she got asked if she’s pregnant, her reaction was “What do you mean?”. “People would just naturally stop asking after that (laughs),” she says.

Has Matthew been very protective of her? “No, you know… I sometimes joke with him that he forgets that I’m pregnant, like it’s life as usual” she laughs. “But he’s always telling me to give him more things to do because I’m always trying to do everything myself. Like carrying my clothes for shoots, and now that we’re getting ready to move house, packing. He’s like 'Can you stop doing that?'

Rebecca and Matthew don’t know the gender of their baby yet. They already have the results but have not looked at it. They are planning to do so at a gender reveal party with just their family at their new place, which they will be moving in to at the “end of this month or the early part of October”.

Does she know where the baby was conceived though? She could name their kid after that place, we say.

“If that’s the case, we would have to name the baby ‘Honeymoon’ (laughs). We went to different parts of the UK. London, and Yorkshire, Thirsk and Whitby.”

Whitby Webster? Now that’s an idea.