Summer 2022
To my third child, on your second birthday,
In March 2020, when our corner of the world joined the increasing number of places shutting down due to the rapid community spread of Covid-19, I was six months pregnant with you.
Not being a terribly happy pregnant person in general (with the first half of all of my pregnancies dominated by all-day morning sickness) this pregnancy I was also plagued throughout by allergies, asthma, and fatigue. I had just decided to cut myself some slack for the remainder of the pregnancy by increasing your 3-year-old sister’s pre-school hours, and for the first time in my life had conceded to having a house cleaner, something as a stay at home mom I had never felt I could justify before. I had also resolved to get some date nights in with your Dad before you arrived; it had taken a while for us to find babysitters in a city that was still mostly new to us, but we had finally managed one night out.
Then, suddenly, all those things, and so much more were abruptly gone.
It was not gradual, there was no period of adjustment.
One week life was normal, and the next it was not.
The pre-school closed along with your five-year-old sister’s school. We had to ask the cleaner to stop coming. Your Dad was suddenly camping out on the top floor working from home. We didn’t know it, but the only date night we had managed at the start of the year was not to be the first night out of a series before you came, but our last for two years and counting.
At first, it was talked about like it was all temporary. No big deal- the schools were bringing forward their spring break. But where was the virus going to go?
Sure enough, the stay-at-home orders were extended, and schools switched to distance learning, a term previously unheard of and now synonymous with Zoom call schedules and homework on a scale never seen before. This was indefinite.
Worst of all there was still so little known about the virus. How easily did it spread and could it be transferred on clothing, packages, letters even??? Early indications suggested it was most dangerous for the elderly and those with underlying conditions, but were pregnant people more at risk? Babies in the womb? Newborns?
Your Dad started going to the grocery store as early as possible before there had been lots of other people there. He stood in a queue as they limited the number of people inside, and he religiously wiped down the products with bleach as he unpacked them at home.
I threw myself into helping your eldest sister finish her Kindergarten year remotely. It was a welcome- if exhausting- distraction in the final trimester of pregnancy with another kiddo at home as well.
And then came the hardest decision of all.
At one of the last social occasions I had attended before this all began I had jokingly commented that if things got really bad with this mysterious virus that had broken out in China, I could always have a home birth. Suddenly this thing that I had never ever considered doing in my wildest imagination became a plausible and maybe even necessary alternative to hospital birth.
All of the comfort measures I had planned to use during your delivery were disappearing anyway. Covid—19 meant that the birthing tub at the hospital was off limits, and so was the nitrous oxide I had used in labor previously. I was starting to wonder what the point was of traveling 30 minutes to a hospital. Unless I had an epidural, there were really no more options for comfort and relief than if I stayed in my own house. There were rumors too of hospitals not allowing partners or other support people in, or not letting them stay after delivery.
Even more startling was the realization that I had no easy options for who would stay with your sisters while your Dad and I went to the hospital for your delivery. Our family lives overseas and were banned from travel. My own mother, your grandmother, who was around to help during the birth of your sisters was not going to be able to be here for yours, and sending your sisters to a friend’s house risked them bringing the virus home in that first fragile postpartum period.
Your Dad and I wrestled for weeks with the decision, consulting doulas, midwives, people we knew who had had homebirths (we could count that on one hand), doctors, and just about anyone and anything we could think of. Our biggest fear of course was that there would be complications when intensive care and operating theatres were not close at hand. In the end, we satisfied ourselves that the risk was low, that any early warning signs would see the midwives transferring me immediately, and that outcomes for babies born at home and their mothers were in almost all cases, good.
It turned out to be a good decision. The day your sister finished her Kindergarten year remotely, a week before your due date, I went to bed for not a particularly early night and woke an hour later with things progressing fast. So fast, it looked like the midwife might not even make it in time. When I look back on it, I think perhaps I had been so distracted and focused on getting your sister through the school year, I may have missed the early signs of labor, my body just holding on until we had finished.
In total shock at the speed at which things were going, my body reacted and started to slow things down. Nine hours later you were born, to the sounds of your sisters singing along at the tops of their lungs to their favorite music in the living room downstairs. It had not been an easy labor but it was relatively short, and you were born strong and healthy. Within two hours I was able to be in my own bed with you snuggled up skin to skin, three amazing ladies, midwives, and doula, peering around the door with their masks on, watching as your sisters met you for the first time.
It felt wild, but under the circumstances, it was more than I could have hoped for.
Those first few days with you were precious; cocooned at home with your Dad doing the cooking, the occasional visit from a midwife and family greeting you over the Internet. In some ways, it felt simpler bringing a baby into the world with no other expectations on us to go anywhere or see anyone.
But soon the melancholy hit me. There was not a soul to coo over my new baby, few gifts arrived and there were no deliveries of prepared meals from well-wishers. Now I had three kids, including a newborn, and your Dad and I were on our own, and once your Dad had to go back to working (albeit upstairs), it was just me.
But worst of all was the knowledge that this virus wasn’t going anywhere.
Two weeks after the birth, I broke down and cried to the midwife as I held you. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be. You were so small. I was so fearful for you. I was so alone. I delivered you safely, but what next?
What followed was the longest, strangest, and yet somehow also sweetest summer of my life. Having decided summer camp was too risky to send your sisters to with a newborn at home, we embarked on ‘camp at home. I cradled you on my lap while I helped the girls glue and stick things. I held you on my shoulder while I supervised experiments in the backyard. I nursed you while I also read books on a variety of topics and themes.
It was intensive time with my kids, with no outside help to break the endless weeks, but it was also joyful and memory-building. As time passes, I expect not even your eldest sister will remember it, but the smiling faces, the little hands, the warmth of you against my body, my constant companion in that strange time, will not fade easily from mine.
More difficult decisions ensued – should I send your sisters back to school? What if they brought the virus home from a place where I couldn’t oversee their mask-wearing and their hand-washing? My biggest fear was that someone would end up in the hospital and with my history of asthma, I felt perhaps the most likely person was me. The thought of being separated from my nursing baby was distressing. Crushing.
I started to research homeschooling but in the end, decided against it; how could I go on juggling, alone, the vastly different needs of you and your siblings with no family support? How easy would it be to reintegrate your sisters back into school later on? The girls needed normality and socialization after months at home.
Reluctantly, fearfully- we sent them back. I wrote a letter addressed to all three of you, in case I should end up in the hospital.
Throughout it all there was a constant pang of guilt; I was not an essential worker, our family had no one with an autoimmune disease, your Dad’s job was secure and he could work from home. We lived in a country that was at the forefront of the race to find a vaccine and roll it out. That was so, so much more than so many others could hold onto during this pandemic.
My fear for myself, for my family, for you- it felt largely selfish. My mama bear instinct to protect my own, acute with the fresh hormones of childbirth and nurturing an infant, needed to be held in constant check against the reality of so many people less fortunate than us, and those at greater risk.
It wasn’t until the Spring of this year that the virus finally caught up with us, a fact that probably reflected how much we sacrificed. The tight rope we walked for two years of who we saw, where we went, and what we did. The balancing act of calculated risks masks wearing and hand sanitizer. Decisions were made according to imperfect data; rates of community transmission, the number of people in the hospital, and the vaccination uptake once it was available.
We checked the case count Every. Single. Day.
Like a daily search for hope that things were improving, but more often an emotional rollercoaster ride borne out by the waves of virus and new variants as they came and went.
When it finally caught up with us, coming home from your sisters’ school just as I had feared from the beginning, four out of five of us were vaccinated and protected. You were not.
Slowly, painstakingly, we had watched the vaccine become available for the over 70’s, the over 60’s, the over 50’s, the over 18’s, the over 12’s, and finally, finally the over 5’s which meant one sister and then the second after her fifth birthday had finally received there’s.
But not you.
The pain and frustration I felt that two years after this began, there was still no vaccine available to you, that you and your peers under 5 were almost as good as forgotten, was searing. After doing literally everything within my power to spare you from exposure to a still largely unknown and mutating virus, that seemed to affect lungs and hearts and brains in unpredictable ways, I felt entirely let down. Seemingly no one else with the power to make a difference had prioritized your protection. No one had recognized the struggle of parents and families with members ineligible for vaccination. Once adults were protected, it was as if children just didn’t matter.
While the virus wasn’t considered much of a threat to your age range it still felt unfair that this thing was being allowed to run its course among those who were the least able to protest against being left out.
That first day I watched you succumb. You were so tired that you could not stay awake for more than an hour here or there, mostly long enough to eat something. You looked so unwell and wiped, but the scariest thing was what might be happening in your body that I couldn’t see. I felt again that all too familiar grip of fear, helplessness, and despair.
I was, and am, sorry that I couldn’t do more to help you, to protect you from the virus itself, and all its indirect consequences. The stress you might have experienced in the womb from my struggle in those early days of the pandemic, the very delayed meetings with your grandparents and wider family, the lack of socialization and activities that your siblings enjoyed as babies, and, most of all, this new jaded and changing world that you will have to navigate life in.
I’ve spent so much of the last two years willing you to get bigger and more robust, to not only survive but thrive. At the same time, I’ve wanted so much to hold on to your babyhood, to treasure these early days that go so fast, and not wish it away merely in exchange for your growing independence and strength.
But if there is anything you have gained, it is a mother that is more aware that each day counts, for tomorrow is not guaranteed and even if we get it, it may not look like how we pictured it. I am learning to pause to treasure the good and the beautiful in spite of anxiety and unknowns. In the midst of so many hard choices, gut-wrenching news headlines, and sad stories, you and your sisters were a ray of light. Your birth was a moment of joy and hope in a time of darkness, and holding you in my arms was a gift of peace in the turmoil of my thoughts.
I do not know what the future holds, and I suppose that even in the best of times, no mother really does. We do our best and trust that it will be enough and that where it is not our children will find the resilience to make up for our shortcomings.
But know this- as we continue our journey into an unknown future, you and I, whatever may come, my love for you has been and will always remain, fierce and strong.
