My big fear during pregnancy was being too seen.
For months I'd been anticipating people touching my stomach without asking, and I wondered how I would climb four flights of stairs to work at nearly nine-months-pregnant. I worried about feeling overwhelmed by the number of visitors in the hospital, the amount of food and gifts people would bring that would overflow our freezer, that so many people would flood our home to witness new life and our becoming that I would act less as Mother and more as Host. While I stroked my pregnant belly, I thought about how to hold that much love and presence and touch.
In March 2020, when the world shut down, it was strange to experience the last few months of my pregnancy alone. Kade could no longer attend doctor's appointments, baby showers were cancelled, my stomach grew and grew and nobody saw.
At the same time that distance between everyone around me expanded, I was physically the closest to my baby that I would ever be. He was inside my belly, and my existence gave him life. Every bite my baby and I shared together, yet we picnicked with family on opposite ends of the driveway. The gap I felt between myself and the rest of the world made me think a lot about the literal severing that would happen when the umbilical cord was cut.
Koen was born in May. My mother stood in the hospital parking lot during part of my labor, because she wished so badly to be there. Kade texted her brief updates while she paced around her house ten-minutes from us at two-o'clock in the morning.
Those closest to us met Koen via FaceTime, first held him masked. Many didn't meet him at all.
And, though I feel guilty even admitting this to a blog, I resented how conversations always circled back to how good life would be when the pandemic was over, how much people were going to love to cuddle Koen in the future. But what about now? Koen's first year exists in a pandemic, and when people talk about wishing time forward, it feels like he isn't worthy of being loved creatively, that his infancy is no longer sacred because it exists in a time that requires new compromise.
And, while Mommy Judgment exists in basically every department, Covid opened a new cave for unsolicited commentary.
"You're living in fear."
"He's not going to develop socially if everyone wears masks around him."
"Covid isn't even dangerous for babies."
"I hate how we have to wear a mask to hold him."
"He's not going to build his immune system if you keep him inside."
"You'd be less worried if this wasn't your first kid."
Everyone makes different parenting and pandemic decisions, but having both emerge at the same time led to a weirdly intertwined set of passive-aggressive accusations, all from behind a mask or a screen, of me being an overprotective and coddling mother. I think the distance makes it harder for the love others give to seep in and the judgment easier.
Before Covid, I worried about how to hold everyone's expectations, but after months of isolation, I wanted so badly to be held.
Motherhood changed me in fundamental ways. The change hasn't happened overnight, but I've evolved through the highs and lows of new parenting. In some ways I feel unrecognizable to people I was close to pre-pandemic, because we haven't shared those daily moments that have led to so much personal change and growth. I don't know what will happen after the fabric masks come off.
Becoming a mother during a time when everyone stays home means that I've had almost a year of nearly uninterrupted time with Koen. Kade and I both work from home, so we've shared more time together this past year than we ever have. We've both been present for all of Ko's development, experienced each moment of parenting and the pandemic and the isolation together. We may never have another year to revel in every moment with our child and with each other. This year together has deepened mine and Kade's communication in ways we didn't know we needed, and I suspect that that will benefit our parenting for the long run. We also haven't had to share Koen. People not being able to visit means we get all of the baby snuggles and giggles to ourselves.
Like everyone, we were blindsided by Covid and the changes that it brought to our new stage of life. I wonder if things would have been different if we'd gotten pregnant during Covid rather than before--if from the beginning we knew that bringing a baby into the world would look different than usual.
I will always have complicated feelings about 2020. My baby's first year will always be looked at through a pandemic lens--in a year of so much death and sickness, he will always be the new birth and light.
Love this part especially: "when people talk about wishing time forward, it feels like he isn't worthy of being loved creatively, that his infancy is no longer sacred because it exists in a time that requires new compromise."
It's almost as if people are inferring his infancy doesn't "count" because they didn't get to be there for it, or because his infancy was not traditional. I dont know why but it seems like people have such a tendency to center themselves with other people's children and their development and very existence. Its like saying "I cant wait tol Koen gets to exist on my terms finally." Very jarring and disillusioning.