Story #68 - Postpartum Pandemic Stories - Anna, Spokane WA (USA) - On Isolation, Postpartum Depression & Anxiety, Grief, and Missing Family
I had my first baby, a son, on the 16th of February. The day we left the hospital was the day they started to bring in cases of COVID 19 to be treated. Since then, we have become more and more isolated as this thing gets bigger.
But mostly, this is not what we had planned.
It's hard not to be able to see family. Almost all of them are here in Spokane. We live in Eastern WA, so at first, we felt far away from the epicenter of the pandemic in Seattle. But it came down pretty quickly, and I became super anxious about germs. I'm cleaning up the doorknobs constantly because there's so little information on infants getting it. I don't want him to be patient zero.
I'm having a hard time defining what's normal anxiety from having a newborn and what's not. We don't have anything to do, so we watch movies. I'm in contact with my mother almost every day via video, so now I'm also worried about screen time for his development. We don't know when it's going to end, and my anxiety spikes when I think about it. I don't sleep well because I wonder if I left my deliveries outside long enough to kill the potential virus. I'm nervous every time I receive something from the mail lady.
My family is Finnish, and we are traditionally super tight-knit. You learn from your mother and your grandma. But I'm not learning from anybody right now. Like, SIDS is scary enough, and I have nobody to ask about it. Do babies usually make these noises? I told my mother that if she hasn't gone anywhere for five days, then she can come to visit. But she can't be here every week because she also has to shop for her parents.
The hardest part is definitely the isolation. I expected to have a lot of people around to help. I am the first of my family to have children, and my mother, grandma, and aunt were all looking forward to this time because he's the first of the next generation. It's a big deal. I was hoping to be able to go to their place, sit on their porch, and hang out in the sun. My husband and I would have gone on walks while they babysat. All the dreams I had were about building these new relationships.
It's all gone now.
When I was younger, I was diagnosed with PTSD and anxiety, so postpartum depression and anxiety are something I'm hyper-aware of. I have to watch myself, and so does my husband. But the thing is, the frame of reference is out of the window right now. I constantly have to redefine what to look for. I’m losing sleep because my grandma went to Lowe's the other day, and now I'm worried she'll get sick. Yesterday, my husband spiked a fever so he's confined in the basement. I didn't sleep well last night, and now I'm wondering, “Is it circumstantial or is it something else?”
If this pandemic wasn't happening, would I still experience that much anxiety?
I also can't ask for assistance or go in to see my doctor because of the situation. At the same time, leaving the house causes me so much more anxiety so I'd rather stay home. We'll do telecom if necessary, but it's not the same.
The other day, I was talking to my mom and she was saying how hard it was for her to watch him five to six feet away. We were about to hug and had to stop ourselves mid-way because we realized we couldn't touch. So I gave her an air-hug...
I know she cries in her car when she needs to leave or go to the store for her parents and all the people in our family who are at risk because she knows it means she won't be able to see us for another five days. Sometimes we'll walk outside, but even that feels like a risk. Our plan right now is that she'll come and we’ll have dinner on Sunday from a distance. We'll take precautions. She already missed his whole newborn phase. It's the only way we're going to be able to stay sane.
I have an aunt who's an ER nurse and she came over and cried before the whole lockdown. She knew she wouldn’t be able to come back until it's over. She has a teenager and a husband who has cancer. It's heartbreaking. The other day, she drove by in her car and we cried from afar.
I've always said that I wanted to live in my hometown to have a village. I want my children to be raised around my family and friends. But right now, I'm raising my son alone.
I know we'll have a relationship with them when COVID ends. But it won't be the same. A lot will have been missed.
And he'll probably be crawling.