A year with my pandemic baby
Rosa Doherty thought her first year of motherhood would be spent meeting friends in Brent Cross. The reality was very different
IF SOMEONE had told me my first year of motherhood would fall at the start of a global pandemic, where for the first days and months after my child’s arrival we would live in isolation, I’d have looked at them as though they’d fallen down a social media conspiracy hole. Who told you that — David Icke?
But this was the reality. No visits from family to wrap you in hugs after days and nights of no sleep due to colic that will see your baby cry for hours upon hours, uninterrupted.
When you reach out for support from health professionals, it will be carried out over the phone and largely dismissed. No one other than your husband will be there to prop up pillows for you, check your baby is latching on to the breast properly, make you tea, or run a bath. If I had known I would also combine first time motherhood with helping to support my mum who was unwell, I’d have probably disintegrated.
It is lucky I knew nothing of what that first year would be like because had I anticipated the reality, by the time it got round to doing it I would have been a quivering terrified mess.
But becoming a mum at the start of a pandemic has taught me a lot about myself and the human spirt.
That we (particularly women) are always stronger than we think. Resilience, coupled with an animal instinct to survive, can be buried deep even in the most princessy of princesses.
During those early months, in order to get through each difficult day, I did the very Jewish thing of reminding myself how things could be worse. Perhaps we are strengthened by our history, so full of catastrophes and tragedy.
I thought of women in my life who had been through the harrowing experience of losing babies. I asked myself how they didn’t just dissolve in grief after facing unimaginable trauma and I ached for those going through it in a pandemic knowing they wouldn’t have the comfort of human contact. If they were coping, then surely I could?
The way women in particular have faced challenges brought on by the pandemic has made me even more convinced of our superhuman status.
There has been a lot of talk, rightly so, about the negatives of lockdown on first time mums and now we are starting to think about the impact it has had on babies.
My son has only ever known a world in the grip of a pandemic and occasionally I worry that he has not had the same opportunities to interact with other children as those born in the years before him.
But then I think about the amount of time he has spent with both his parents. The secure attachment he seems to have formed to both of us instead of as we might have expected, one parent over the other.
I think about the bathtimes his dad has been home for, the meals we have had together, the bedtimes taken in turns and the way my son lovingly presses his face against the glass that separates the room we’ve played in and his dad’s home office.
I imagined my maternity leave would be spent in Brent Cross with girlfriends but instead I was mostly with my husband outdoors, in the wind, rain, snow, and sun.
Has that really had a detrimental impact? Perhaps it is too early to tell but I certainly see no signs of it. My husband and I still like each other and my son’s face lights up at the sight of other people as we are slowly getting back to normal.
As far as I can tell he is largely oblivious to the fact he is a ‘pandemic’ baby.
This month we celebrated his first birthday, and with it came another milestone — my return to work.
It seems an obvious thing to say that looking after other people’s children is not like looking after your own. I loved my time spent as a nanny, welcomed into another family charged with keeping their most treasured possessions safe.
But it is only after having my own baby that I appreciate those messages sent by a frazzled mum back to work after maternity leave asking if her angel is OK? How is he sleeping, what is he eating? How are his poos? How many times has he cried? Has he? Why not? Each question fired off like a neurotic
Jewish mother version of those tennis ball machines.
I laughed as I settled back at my desk (aka kitchen table) and found myself sending those messages. After a year in which nothing was as I expected, some things never change.
My son’s face lights up at the sight of other people as we are slowly getting back to normal