We have a green by our house which we go to sometimes to spot trains. We stand on the hill and watch them whizz past on the track that lines one side of the green.
“A white one!”
“That’s the stopper.”
“The blue one! Look at it go!”
“Freight trains!”
The joy on my boys’ faces is immeasurable and watching the road is just as pleasurable. We love going there and have been spotting trains, cars and buses since before the eldest could even talk. In those early days we would sit under the tree in the middle of the green, he would lay in a crawling pose, turning his head and shouting incoherently as a vehicle went past, “Buh. Car, van.” It was often the highlight of our day.
This was because the year was 2020 and when we weren’t at the green we would be in our living room for hours on end.
My eldest was born in the eve of the pandemic, the world shutting down from when he was just four months old. With our lives forced into the four walls of our small terraced house, the green was regular respite for us, especially in the summer. In fact it was one of the very few things we saw outside of our own home. The rhythm of the cars passing, and the trains click-clacking on the tracks, although much less frequently then, was soothing. Evidence that the world was still going round even though it felt like for us it had ground to a halt.
It was a time of worry, not least because there was no way of knowing how long it would go on for, when or even if it would end or where the next pack of formula milk was coming from. I worried about how the pandemic would affect him, how he would grow up differently to other children - that all this time alone would be detrimental somehow. It bothered me that seeing people wearing masks was normal for him, that he would never speak to passers by in the same way we did when we were young, everyone kept their distance. It was a strange time and one I wasn’t wholly comfortable bringing up a brand new baby in, if I’m honest.
We were at the same green at the weekend. My partner and I stood watching the boys play with two other young boys who we didn’t know before but had happened to bump into. They were running about, riding each other’s toys, chasing one another. At one point my eldest son, who is three, huddled with the other two boys, who we later found out were 3 and 5, by a tree excited by the ladybird that was crawling up the bark. They screeched with wonder: seeing him play so easily with other children, made sitting under that tree isolated in the middle of the green feel like a lifetime ago.
I don’t think the pandemic affected him, not really. I think he was too young and he certainly won’t remember anything about it. He had everything he needed at home when it was just us and in the following year, when he spent most of his time at nursery when I went back to work, he was well looked after there too. He was with other children, he would never have known anything different. Other than a summer where he ended up in hospital as a result of lifted lock down viruses on an effectively new immune system, it had no physical effect. I feel like my worries never came true, yet I have seen them reflected in others.
Playing with kids in the following years, in play cafés or public soft plays, other mums would excuse their children’s behaviours - biting or pushing all completely developmentally normal as due to their being “pandemic babies”. They were isolated - a little strange - “Sorry about them,” they’d say. But I never subscribed to that idea. I think as long as children had the love they needed at home, they had a foundation to build on once the world went back to normal.
Now I am half a year post my second maternity leave, where I spent the year looking after the two of them mostly in the same pattern I do now, with a couple of days when there is childcare in the nursery, and I am starting to see the real affect it had.
I saw that tree on Sunday and I thought about how angry I still was. Talking to friends with young babies now, I feel the resentment in the stark difference in our experiences of our children’s first few months. My son may not have known the difference and maybe in a way I didn’t either (it was my first maternity leave) but now I have had a year being able to meet other people, visit my family or even leave the house, I can see what we missed out on. The loneliness I felt then was extreme, I can see that now.
Once my second son was born, we found family support, which we readily accepted that time round. We knew it was vital to our survival with two children. I know without it we would have been exhausted - we were lucky this time round.
I have spoken before about how I felt robbed by the pandemic of my support network. How I never got a chance to gel with my NCT group and never had other adults to talk to and how our families couldn’t visit. We had just moved to a new town the month before our son was born, and we suddenly found ourselves alone, miles away from anyone we knew. It was a tough time. I wasn’t sure I was still bothered by it but when I hear of others seeking help from family or doing something as minor as even attending a baby class these days and how that is completely normal, I am jealous.
In my second maternity leave everything had reopened and all restrictions had lifted, we could go to cafés and join toddler groups but my normal had changed. Going to things with two children is different than one, it is harder and less enjoyable in some ways. It can be impossible to make conversation with anyone. I felt I had missed my chance to make any mum friends.
On Wednesdays, when I have the youngest alone while the eldest is in nursery, I am living the life I missed out on, the life we missed out on. I sometimes meet friends, or attend a toddler group, afterwards we enjoy sharing cakes in COSTA together. It is our special one on one time, which I miss having with my eldest.
One thing I am a little sad about is not being able to take my eldest swimming. He has been robbed of an early introduction to swimming because now I can take him and everything is open again, I don’t have the strength to take the two of them, and opportunities to go as a family are few. It is one of the things I had hoped to do and still hope to do. It is important to me because I didn’t learn to swim until I was a teenager, despite growing up by the seaside.
It hasn’t knowingly affected my eldest in that he isn’t this hermit child who lacked any interaction with anyone other than his mother and father in his first few year, he is a socially developed child, who actually despite being called shy1 at nursery, I actually think he is very outgoing. He starts conversations with strangers more often than he ignores them or turns his head with that mischievous face of fake embarrassment that children have. He’s doing absolutely fine, it hasn’t affected how he is, but I do think he missed out.
Along with the anger, I realise I am still grieving it all.
I am grieving the lost experiences, the isolation and the lack of support during those months of lockdowns. Where it felt like we were abandoned by our family and friends and lived in our own bubble.
Of course, there were nice things to come out of it. Working from home, for example, meant my first son saw a great deal of his father in the first year, and this wouldn’t have been the case if he was commuting into the office everyday.
But COVID also meant that we lost our childcare for when I was due to give birth to my second son and I gave birth alone, without my partner there. Our families rarely saw the children when they were young, which I feel like we are still trying to make up for now.
It seems silly because the world has bigger problems now and when everything did all shut down, it was for the greater good: it wasn’t about me but it’s sad because we don’t get that time back.
I remember a campaign going around at the time for some reimbursement of maternity leave and it did feel a little frivolous and unimportant in relation to COVID in general. But I’d be lying if I said that maternity leave wasn’t something I looked forward to, I did, and it was taken from me. It’s okay to be disappointed. We were robbed of experiences that we are only really making up for now. It’s okay to be a little sad.
And I realised that it’s okay to be angry about it. To be angry that our journey into parenthood was derailed slightly by the pandemic, but really what we lost and the complications we experienced were small in the grand scheme of things. It may not have been hugely terrible, but it affected me - it still affects me. I recognise my jealousy in others as a response to this loss, this kind of grieving and I acknowledge its no one’s fault, not really. I just feel that way and that’s okay, I think.
A Call to Action
In light of this, if you have a story to share, the COVID 19 Public Inquiry wants to hear it. They are collecting stories of how the pandemic affected people in order to create an honest picture and to enable better decisions to be made in the future and it is important that the experience of mothers is known for any future planning. (Thanks to Pregnant Then Screwed for sharing.)
If you had a child in the pandemic, do you feel like the restrictions have had any lasting effects?
I would love to hear your stories, please join me in the comments.
I hate this comment. I will write about this and all its implications another day.
Lovely read, thank you. I genuinely believe our 'pandemic babies' aren't just developmentally 'on track', but have a much stronger sense of who they are. My daughter was 18 months when it all kicked off. We took her out of nursery and she started to thrive and get the colour back in her cheeks that had been absent for months since starting childcare. The mental price we paid for that as parents trying to work from home while looking after two children was huge, but I do try and focus on what that time together gave her, rather than what it took away. My eldest child had a very difficult experience, however 😭
Luna was born in the pandemic! I also gave birth to her alone. I had postpartum therapy to process my feelings and she’s my second so I found it all slightly easier. When the world opened up I found I didn’t want to be in toddler group environments or with others because my husband has long covid and I was terrified of one of us getting sick and essentially I was a solo parent because he was in bed so much. It was brutal. Luna took longer to read facial expressions because of the masks but were flying now at nearly 3! I’ll have a look at the enquiry. Thanks for sharing your story! I’ve never connected with anyone else who gave birth alone!