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How a year of covid has changed motherhood
FROM BIRTH TO DEATH, VIA HOME SCHOOLING AND THE PAIN OF CARE HOME SEPARATION, HOW A YEAR OF COVID CHANGED MOTHERHOOD
THE past year has changed the shape of motherhood and how we have been able to relate to our mothers, in ways we are only just beginning to digest. Things happened during this pandemic that we could never previously have imagined. Elderly mothers found themselves isolated or trapped in care homes, unable to receive visits from their children.
Many women gave birth without their partners present – some were even separated from their babies. Some people lost mothers. Across the country, mothers found themselves caught in a double-shift of home-schooling and home-working.
This article contains snapshots that tell a story of the way the pandemic has impacted on mothers and motherhood. The ways, above all, it has kept us apart, creating isolation and loneliness. This Mother’s Day will feel like no other.
Some have treasured a time of being brought closer together. One mother told me, “Home-schooling has been really hard for me, as it has for everybody, but I think that I’m going to really miss having my kids around. With my 13-year-old, I think when would I have got that kind of time with him? We’ve almost grabbed an extra year of closeness.”
MAY ROUSE, HAIRDRESSER
“The first time Reuben saw his dad he had a mask on. That was very strange. But now I notice that if he sees anyone with a mask on, he smiles because he sees their eyes.
“I had a planned section in July. Reuben’s dad, Alasdair, was allowed in when he was born. We were very lucky. He was allowed to visit between the hours of one and seven. I was worried in the run up, during the first lockdown. I remember going to cut the hair of some of my friends and my sister rang and asked me, ‘Are you aware you’re vulnerable because you’re pregnant and you shouldn’t be working if you’re in a face-toface job?’ I stopped working in the salon. Not long after that we were into lockdown.
“In that time it was horrible. You felt alone and confused. We were going into an unknown. There was a lot of anxiety anyway. I remember describing it to Alasdair that going in to have a baby is actually one of the most isolating times ever.
“That’s a normal feeling to have – but I felt that way before I had Reuben, rather than after. I felt it whilst I was still pregnant. I didn’t know anyone else who was going through it and knew how weird it felt. It felt really quite lonely. Everything I’d anticipated for my maternity, was changed.
“Ali’s mum, who lives in Edinburgh, didn’t see us for ages, but then when Reuben was just a couple of days old she was able to bubble with us because she’s on her own.
“She is the only other person who has held Reuben apart from Ali and my other kids, Ewan and Maggie, and also one of my sisters. But my mum hasn’t held him, my dad hasn’t. They’ve seen him but they haven’t held him.
“We visited my mum outside her house in Yarm in September. We met on the doorstep and she gave Reuben a little present and my older kids some pocket money. There was a nervousness about it. It was strange and surreal, as it was when my dad met him too, in the park, saying hello to Reuben from a distance.
“But I know in the grand scheme of Reuben’s life this is a tiny part he’s
never going to remember. He’s going to be one of those children where people will go, ‘Oh you were born in 2020?’ And he’ll just be like, ‘Will you be quiet. I don’t know a thing about it. Only what my mum and dad tell me and they’re boring.’”
HOLLY HARTLEY, SUPPORT WORKER
“I’ve finally managed to get a visit booked to see my mum in her care home. We went from March to October last year not being able to see her. She is 47 and has severe multiple sclerosis and Crohn’s, and though she understands what’s going on, she doesn’t totally understand it. She’s alert but her memory is going. I think it doesn’t help being trapped in a room 24/7.
“This is going to be the first time we can see her in her bedroom since the pandemic started. Before now, I’ve not been able to sit in the same room as her.
“The last time I saw her was Christmas Day and the visiting space was like an American prison. They had partitioned one of the rooms in half with this giant white wall, and there was a screen, through which you could see each other and a microphone and speaker at either side of it. It was horrendous and I just wanted to be able to sit next to her.
“At Christmas she was getting a bit frustrated with us because she thinks we just don’t want to see her. We have had arguments on the phone. She has said, ‘Well, you just don’t want to see us.’ We’ll say, ‘That’s not the case. We’re literally just not allowed.’
“She’s understanding that there’s this virus about, but she’s not understanding how severe it is, or how difficult it would be if she caught it – or that there’s very little chance she would survive.
“Every single day she says that she misses us and that she doesn’t understand why we can’t go in. Before lockdown we would see her three or four times a week.
“I have worried about losing my mum.
I’ve thought about it most days since March. All it would take, because of my mum’s condition, is for one person who works in the care home to contract covid.”
FIONA BROWNLEE, PUBLISHER
“My mum, Jan, went into a care home for companionship on November 18, 2019. I used to visit twice a day and she came out every Thursday to go to the hairdressers and have a cup of tea with us afterwards.
“On her 91st birthday in February we had a lunch at Porto and Fi by which time she had acclimatised to life in the care home and thought it was rather like a hotel with restaurant dinner and entertainment.
“When she was at our house, following a hair appointment on March 12, we got a call to say they were going into lockdown and we needed to take her back. Lockdown meant that the restaurant was closed and all entertainment stopped so the home swiftly turned from hotel to prison.
“She caught covid at the end of March but astonishingly didn’t seem affected by it. Throughout the first lockdown I rang every morning, waved up at her first floor window and became very conscious of which trees blossomed when as they obstructed my view.
“I didn’t see my mother in person again (bar one disastrous garden visit when she had visibly deteriorated) until I picked her up on July 26 to go to Islay.
“Astonishingly the care home gave me permission to take her home to the island and we had a glorious two weeks with family where she reconnected with the outside world. She improved dramatically but on her return had to go into two weeks’ solitary confinement and we were back at square one.
“I joined Care Home Relatives Scotland in September and went along to the demonstration outside the parliament on September 16.
“It really helped to meet people who shared my conviction that social interaction with family was crucial for older people to avoid the relentless slide into dementia.
“Weekly visits finally started in October, initially downstairs and in November I was allowed back into her room. It was lovely to be surrounded by familiar furniture and photographs and it was clearly doing us both a power of good but on Christmas Day I got a call to say that a staff member had tested positive so all visits were cancelled.
“By the time I got in again it was for ‘essential’ visits because she has gone so downhill so I am now visiting twice a week. We watch the Wardie Church service online, Facetime my brother in Italy. Non-essential visits still haven’t resumed and my heart goes out to all the other families.
“Last week I accompanied her to the dentist which I think was the first time she had been outside the home since we returned from Islay in August. Who would have thought that dental appointments would be the source of so much pleasure?”
MELISA RODRIQUEZ, CHEF
“I’m from Mexico and I’ve been living in Edinburgh with my husband for 10 years. Sadly at the end of December, my mum, who lived in Mexico, had to be hospitalised because she had covid symptoms. She went into the same hospital her sister had a few days before her – and both died.
“When she was in hospital there was mostly no direct communication – my brother would learn everything through a social worker. But we managed to speak with her a day before she died.
“I think the mobile phone was being held with a plastic bag and the four of us, my two brothers, my sister and myself managed to talk to my mum for five minutes, through Whatsapp.
“My mum was very happy to see the four of us. It was a bit blurry and we couldn’t see much of her face. She did sound really scared. But I could see her hair, her curly hair. She said to us that she would be fine and that she loved us and was thinking of us. We started telling her, ‘We are waiting for you. My brother is making the house
ready. I’ll go to Mexico the first chance I get.’
“On January 6, we got the call that she had passed away. We were devastated and couldn’t believe it. She was only 66, and she was a strong woman. She loved to live.
“Even though we all know everyone is going to die at some point, you take your mum for granted.
“We also haven’t been able to celebrate her life the way we would have liked to, because I cannot fly to Mexico. My siblings can’t see each other because there are still some restrictions in Mexico.
“I think if we hadn’t had that last phone call, I would have felt just awful, because when you lose somebody there is always this remorse, this feeling that there was something you could have done.
“We all think of that phone call as our goodbye. It’s very symbolic.
“It’s really hard to think that I’ll go to Mexico and she won’t be there. I also feel there are still conversations I want to have with her.”
ZOE KING
ASSISTANT STAGE MANAGER
“I went into labour as Boris Johnson was announcing the first lockdown. The Sunday evening before, my baby, Maeve stopped moving so I went into hospital. The minute I got there she kicked. They said to me, ‘Can you feel those contractions?’ I went home and had very mild contractions that continued all night and all day. At 4pm my sister, who was my birthing partner, called and said, ‘Do you need me?’ I said, ‘No, I’ll be fine.’ But the contractions got much more frequent and we arrived at the hospital at 7pm, by which point Boris was making this announcement that the world was shutting down. When I was in labour and it got really painful, to distract me, my sister read to me what she called “the boring bits from the new Covid rules”.
“Maeve is an IVF baby but it was definitely harder because of the pandemic. My worry initially was that my parents, who had been going to come up and stay with me for a week, couldn’t. That was the hardest bit. They didn’t meet Maeve till she was nine weeks old.
“Maeve was born at 1.15am in the early hours of the day lockdown started. I had two days in hospital because she couldn’t feed properly and when I came out the world was completely quiet. It was like a zombie town, everything had stopped. At that time you had to queue outside so I was standing in the rain with a new born, outside Tesco for half an hour. It was awful.
“I saw nobody for nine weeks except medical professionals. It felt like I was counting down the days till I could see another adult.
“Back then you couldn’t have a bubble. There was one point when, after the third night of no sleep out of seven, I thought I’m going to fall asleep with this baby in my arms – I don’t know how I can possibly stay awake any longer. Maeve always wanted to be held to begin with. It was really hard not having someone who could hold her.
“Among the things that helped was that I chatted a lot to people online and people sent me stuff which was so kind. I lived for chatting to the parcel delivery man and the post lady.
“When she was nine weeks old, I went to my parents in Herefordshire, which was great, but one of the most difficult things was the journey. It took eight hours and I had to get the train by myself, all the luggage in the buggy and the baby strapped to me, and because the buffet car was closed, I had to take enough hot water to make bottles on the way.
“I think having Maeve is the best thing I’ve ever done. The best thing in my life happened in the worst year for everybody. No matter how hard it is having a baby, it’s probably harder for people who have been alone through the pandemic. Maeve gives me routine, something to get up for in the morning.
“This is also so much easier than infertility. I often think of people who had their treatments cancelled. Not knowing if you’re going to have a baby and it not happening is also really difficult, whereas this is just hard in moments. The sleeplessness is tough, but then in the morning she wakes up and she giggles and it’s wonderful.”
The last time I saw her was Christmas Day and the visiting space was like an American prison. It was horrendous