"I Think A Lot of Us Have Trauma That We Still Haven't Had Time to Work Through"

On being the mom of a pandemic baby, in your own words.

Photo by Derick McKinney on Unsplash

A couple of weeks ago, I was reflecting on the experience of having a pandemic baby, and I asked for your thoughts and experiences. There were… a lot of them. The unifying theme, I would say, seems to be that many of you are only now starting to reckon with the feelings of loss and grief that you had about having a baby during the pandemic. And these are complicated feelings, right? Because we’re alive, and we have our babies, and certainly those are things to be grateful for. And yet. There are many different kinds of grief, and many ways to grieve, and the grief people feel over the loss of things they took for granted — a baby shower, say, or having a partner come with you to a doctor’s appointment — is no less legitimate.

I’ve decided to give this entire issue of the newsletter over to your voices — there were many more that I just didn’t have room for, but I hope that those of you who had pandemic babies can find some comfort that you really are not alone.

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One theme that came up a few times was that the pandemic has made people reconsider their desire to have another child, as Nicole wrote:

After years of infertility, our pandemic baby was born early April 2020. In the weeks leading up to my due date, we were terrified to leave the house, yet needed essential supplies for life with a newborn. When my daughter was born, we were too scared to touch anything in our hospital room without washing our hands. We left the hospital at 10 pm the next day, 24 hours after delivery. The night nurses didn't even know how to discharge people because no one ever left that late...but all we wanted to do was get back home to "safety."

Having suffered from infertility for years made it feel even more like COVID was stealing our joy of a "normal" newborn experience. Our only visitors met us through our glass door in our backyard. It was still too cold to sit outside with a newborn, so her grandparents sat outside on our back deck, and we sat inside, talking to them through our door. Not only did we have no help, we felt extremely isolated. When we finally did start having visitors, I would cry when they left. I still don't think either of us have recovered. We still question whether or not we want another child. Before this, we wanted 2. But now even logically knowing what we went through wasn't normal...we can't shake that feeling of loneliness and isolation that came with having a newborn at the beginning of a pandemic. I still remember nursing my baby in the middle of the night, refreshing our local supermarket shop-from-home app to find a grocery delivery time slot, hoping we'd score some toilet paper in the order. THIS WAS NOT NORMAL. 

I have so many complicated feelings about my daughter being born when she was. I guess I should feel like I can handle anything that's thrown my way now, and that a second child would be so much "easier", but I just don't and I don't know if I ever will. I'm so grateful for my daughter and the life we have with her, but I'm still so angry that COVID robbed us of even a little bit of our happiness.

- Nicole

For Claudia, the isolation of being a first-time parent was compounded by feeling like it was hard to define herself as a mom without other people:

I had a c-section in February of 2020 so I barely left the house that first month and by the time I did, the world had shut down. I don't think I've fully processed the experience, but what sticks with me most is how long it took me to feel like a mom. So much of how we define ourselves in the world comes from how other people see us, and no one saw me become a parent and I had no one besides my husband witness the transition. I remember when my kid was four months old and we went to a local bakery to pick up groceries and two older ladies cooed at him from across the street. I went home and burst into tears because it was the first time a stranger acknowledged his existence. I have mourned all the ways in which our families lost time with him but I am still grappling with the fact that I didn't have a community to reflect back my parenting experience to me, for so long. 

I did get very lucky and went to two in-person new mom meet-ups at the beginning of March 2020 and that saved my life, probably. We stayed in touch over Zoom and Whatsapp and some of those folks have become dear friends. Having other people going through the experience at the same time kept me sane and helped me feel less alone. 

- Claudia

Many pandemic parents — especially those who do not want or might not be able to have another child — are wrestling with feelings of jealousy towards friends who are giving birth when things have, somewhat, returned to normal (or at least, we’re having baby showers again), as Leah wrote:

Currently, I'm having trouble dealing with jealousy towards friends holding baby showers, because it's something I don't believe I will ever get to experience. We had a "drive-by" shower, which was mostly just attended by my immediate family since much of my close friends and extended family live out of state. If we are blessed with another child. I'd feel weird holding a normal baby shower, worried that people would think I was just jonesing for handouts or being greedy. I was recently invited to one of my close friend's showers and surprisingly felt so much sadness in the days leading up to it, that I ended up making up an excuse as to why I couldn't go last minute. I'm ashamed that I did that, but I just couldn't get past my own feeling of loss to put on a smile and go. 

As my now 18-month-old becomes more kid-like every day, I've been reflecting a lot on how you're only a first-time parent once. I cherish memories from that special time, but it is becoming more apparent to me as normalcy has somewhat resumed that we missed out on a lot of moments of celebration with friends and family. That being said, I do want to end on a positive note. We were not allowed to have visitors in the hospital and to be honest, that was a dream! We didn't have to worry about visitors overstaying their welcome, and we were still cared for by hospital staff, so those two days in the hospital were blissful. So much so that next time, I would once again opt for no visitors!

-Leah

Along similar lines, it’s also hard to see moms — strangers! — who are having a completely different experience of early motherhood, writes Amanda:

People often say they feel sorry for those of us who had babies during this time, but this is the only version of parenthood I've known. Now that things are more open than they were when I was on leave, I marvel at the women who take their babies to coffee shops and sit and eat a meal while the baby happily naps in the stroller. I wonder what my leave would have been like if that were an option, or if I could have visitors, or go to a class, etc. I was always pretty firmly sure I would be one and done, and I don't want to ever repeat the maternity leave I had, but I also can't imagine anything different. I think a lot of us have trauma that we still haven't had time to work through, because we are so focused on just getting through every single day. 

Amanda

For Meghan, a mom of twins, giving birth during the pandemic was just one thing after another that she had not been picturing — but in some ways she’s grateful:

Pandemic parenting has been...weird and hard but also wonderful in some ways but most of all nothing was how I pictured it.

We found out we were pregnant with our twins, but lockdown happened before we could tell anyone in person. We kept thinking it would all end and we would get to tell people in person, so we waited. It clearly wasn't ending, and it just started to feel funny to tell people over zoom, and we had already made a choice not to post about the pregnancy on social media, so 95% of the people in our lives didn't know we were pregnant until the boys were born.

Honestly, it made the worst of the pandemic even stranger and super isolating bc we were going through something so big - alone. The good news is that I made it 38+5 with 7 lb twins which I attribute to not commuting or running around like I would have normally. It also took away the massages, prenatal yoga, acupuncture and chiropractors I desperately needed to keep my body functioning through something my MFM said our bodies were not meant to do, until I was about 7 months in and nearly couldn't walk. I was weirdly sad that I didn't get to wear any of the maternity clothes I bought. I really mourned that. I don't know why that specifically was something that got to me, but it really made me sad. Not how I pictured it.

I delivered two babies after 20 hours of labor and 3 hours of pushing in a mask. We weren't allowed to leave the tiny room we were in for 4 days. It was both a beautiful cocoon and extremely claustrophobic. We had no visitors. Not how I pictured it. 

I can say so much about those first few weeks and months. We couldn't have family or friends come over to meet the babies, hold them while we showered, and be a part of the special time we were in. That was replaced with fear and anxiety. My parents came over for the first time after a week, fully masked, but it made me a nervous wreck. We had a bris over Zoom. In many ways that was wonderful bc we had 200 people from all over the world who wouldn't have been able to attend, but it was also not the celebration I had envisioned after waiting to become a mom for so long. Not how I pictured it. 

I REALLY struggled with breastfeeding. The fact that I made it 21 months is a testament to grit and actual blood, sweat and tears. I didn't have access to in person support in the hospital or the first few weeks. I finally found someone to come to our house and by that time I was a bit of a mess. We were able to have her come twice and it really helped, but it cost over a thousand dollars bc no one who took our insurance was doing in-home appointments. 

My prenatal yoga class I did over Zoom based in Philly morphed into a weekly mom group where we spent Wednesday mornings on a Zoom talking, feeding our babies, and just being together while we were apart. That became a Whatsapp when we all started to go back to work, and it's still my closest circle of people that I share everything with - even though many of us haven't met in person. It's wild to be so close to people in another city. 

I will say this though, I have never missed a bed time. I have seen every milestone. I have been here for things I would never have imagined and I am SO grateful. Pre pandemic that would never have been an option. This too is not how I pictured it, but it's been really really good.

-Meghan

Lily writes that her pandemic baby was her second baby, so she had a basis of comparison — and is now contemplating having another child, in large part because of her pandemic baby experience:

My daughter was a true covid baby, born in March 2020 in New York City. The city was an apocalyptic ghost town at this time. My husband and I didn’t even have masks yet and when my mask fell in the delivery room and I asked for another one, the nurse told me sorry but they barely had enough PPE for the hospital staff. 

Luckily, this was my second child (my first was born in March 2018) so I got to have the comparison of what it feels like to have a kid during the before/normal times vs. covid times. The two biggest things I was robbed of are the JOY surrounding bringing new life into the world and having a support system. 

Having a baby (especially after fertility struggles) was supposed to be a joyful momentous occasion, but March 2020 was such a scary time for the world, that it didn’t feel joyful; it felt anxious and stressful, we didn’t know if we’d all be OK. 

When my first daughter was born, we had family and friends visit, help out, bring us meals, hold the baby, do laundry, etc. but with my covid baby, we were completely on our own with a toddler and a newborn. It was true survival mode and I barely had time to recover from childbirth. 

Sometimes, I feel myself wanting to have another kid, not because I want 3 children but because I want to make up for the lost postpartum experience and care that I was robbed of, an experience that I know I and everyone else deserves after bringing a human into the world. 

-Lily

Thank you to everyone who wrote in. If you’d like to read more, you can also check out the comments left by subscribers on the original post.

Next week, we’ll be back to our original programming, but just a reminder: my live, virtual chat with Angela Garbes for the first Now We’re Talking Book Club is happening Tuesday, June 14, at 5 pm PT/8 pm ET. Paid subscribers will be getting an email later today about the open discussion thread about the book, as well as a link to sign up for the live, virtual discussion and submit questions ahead of time. (We’ll still be taking live questions day-of.) All subscribers will have access to the recorded discussion hopefully by the next day.