Being Pregnant In A Pandemic
I feel like I am in some weird dream I can’t wake up from. A dream where it’s normal to only see two other people, to be afraid of coming into contact with others, to constantly live in a heightened state of anxiety, for it to be normal to wash your hands 25 times a day, wear gloves into every shop and to feel the need to disinfect your bank card every time you use it.
To live on a high street where almost everything is closed and you can’t remember what it feels like to eat in a cafe or restaurant or go to the cinema. Where every day is the same, wake up, exercise, work, walk, eat, sleep, maybe bake, repeat. Where you don’t know what the future holds or when you might be able to hug a friend again. Where online shopping and face time are what keep you going.
I long to see my friends (many of whom I won’t now get to see until after I have given birth), I long to travel, I long to eat in a restaurant with lots of other people, to hear the chatter of strangers’ conversations and the buzz of a full happy room. I miss life. What I wouldn’t give for an every day ‘normal life’ right now, the kind that I used to think was mundane. I will never take that mundanity for granted again.
When I imagined what being pregnant would be like I certainly didn’t envisage this… I saw myself parading around in an array of floaty dresses while friends and family coo’d over my bump and we chatted all things baby.
Maybe there would even be a baby moon somewhere warm (cue more floaty dresses) and a baby shower surrounded by all my loved ones as we ate pink cupcakes and played silly baby games.
Ok I know what I described sounds a little like some romanticised fairy-tale BUT what I did not anticipate was this.
A pandemic.
None of us did. It came out of nowhere — a sudden whirlwind of isolation, fear, financial crisis, antibacterial gel and loo roll hoarding. It has been, as I’m sure most would agree, a shock. There has not been one floaty dress worn (only stretchy pants) or social pink cupcake eaten (except during the incessant isolation baking — banana bread anyone?).
I had my 20 week scan a couple of weeks ago and my husband wasn’t allowed in the room or in the building even. He waited in the car as I went into the clinic, gloves on, armed with antibac gel.
As soon as I walked through the door, my temperature was taken and I sat on my own in the empty waiting room, before being called by the Sonographer (in full PPE) to have my scan.
It was unnerving, surreal and lonely. I longed for my husband to be beside me, to experience what I was seeing, our little girl moving about and waving to us from the screen, to hear all about her growth, her anatomy and her progress.
A small black and white image afterwards doesn’t quite do the experience justice. I am sad for him, this should be as much his experience as it is mine.
I’m not sure what to expect over the next few months, I don’t think any of us know. I feel pretty anxious about the situation much of the time, my biggest pervading thought is try not to catch Corona-virus. I can handle not having a baby shower, I can handle not wearing floaty dresses or going baby shopping or to in-person ante-natal classes, what I can’t handle is endangering the little vulnerable life growing inside me.
So every time I get frustrated at the situation and think I can’t take it anymore and I just want to go out and live normally, I think about the bump. I think what is best for her, she is my priority and I will be guided by that compass for now.
Emotion often sweeps over me like a tidal wave (I think pregnancy hormones are partly to blame here..). The tears come, flooding every cell in my body, and I feel total despair, frustration and anger at the situation, the future and the uncertainty of everything.
When this happens I try to guide myself to gratitude, as cheesy as that sounds. Gratitude is a far more helpful emotion than despair, I have come to realise. I start to think of all the things I have in my life and how grateful I am that they are present. My husband, my partner in crime and constant rock, my ever supportive and generous mother who has kindly let my husband and I live in her house during lockdown, our rowdy sausage dog who constantly keeps us on our toes, clean sea air and access to fresh produce…and baking…ah the endless baking. When I start to focus on these things, the other things dissipate a little and I can get through another (Groundhog) day.
I would like to add something important though. A very wise friend said some inspired words to me the other day (over face time of course) that I think we could all do with hearing once in a while — sometimes life is just shit, it’s really hard and what’s going on right now sucks and it’s ok just to feel that. Sometimes feeling grateful isn’t enough and that’s also ok.
It is really tough at the moment for everyone in their own way, it won’t always be like this and in these dark times it can be incredibly difficult to see a light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes we just need to sit in that tunnel for a little while and say this shit is dark….but have faith though there will be light again. The world is constantly shifting and changing and nothing ever stays the same, what was today won’t be tomorrow.
After a few years of failure, grief, loss and financial strife, my husband and I thought 2020 would be our year to come out the other side and rebuild our life together. It may not be exactly what we anticipated but we have had other incredible miracles and I know we will emerge from this with a renewed sense of what is important (and with very long hair).
Maybe 2021 will be our year or maybe it won’t be. That is where hope comes in and that is what I’m holding on to. That will be my torch during this dark time.
