Parenting in 2020 is wild
By: Nick Bazley
Tags: Fatherhood, Parenting, Dads

I was always told becoming a parent would change my life; it did for the better. I was also told it would be a hard adjustment, but nothing could have prepared us for what 2020 threw our way!

COVID, family & friends

Mason hasn’t known a life outside of COVID; he was born the week before everything went completely crazy. The 5 months he has been alive has been the best, but the most challenging months of mine and Jen’s life so far. Not only have we had a huge life change, but this has been compounded by a global health pandemic, meaning we have been on our own learning how to parent! Our vision of seeing friends and family often, and having everyone hold and get to know our new son was thrown out of the window. It’s been the three of us vs. the world!

Don’t get me wrong, we have had some help. Jen’s parents have been wonderful so far helping to look after Mason and seeing him as often as they can. Sometimes with a mask, sometimes without, sometimes indoors, sometimes only outdoors. But being able to spend quality time with everyone has been extremely tough, and we have had to be very strict with who we see and what we do. To this day, we can count on 1 hand the number of people who have held Mason outside of Jen and me.

We, and especially Mason, are very lucky to have family all around the world (England, New York, LA, San Diego) who love him dearly. It breaks our hearts that they still haven’t had a chance to meet him and give him the snuggle they have been craving.

For me, this has been one of the toughest aspects of 2020 so far, and it’s really hard to get your head around. All I want is to either take Mason back home to see everyone or have people visit us here in California. The fact that he is 5 months old now and my family hasn’t met him in person is difficult to deal with.

Wildfire smoke

If COVID wasn’t enough, the Bay Area (and the rest of California) has been hit hard in the last month by many major fires all in close proximity to each other. They have devastated areas and we are lucky that we were not in the direct path of any of these fires.

However, the smoke from them has engulfed the town that we live in for the last 3 weeks. We found ourselves constantly refreshing AirNow.gov and Purpleair.com to see how bad the air quality was and see if there was even a small opportunity to go outside. But sadly the air quality has been above 100 (unhealthy air) for the majority of the last three weeks, and we haven’t felt comfortable taking Mason outside — cue another period of lockdown!

Cabin fever has definitely been an issue and not being able to leave our small 2-bed apartment definitely took its toll on our moods. There were days that were extremely tough to get through. There is only so much you can do to keep a kid entertained, and we definitely felt that Mason was affected by boredom as much as we were!

As I am writing this post, we have just had one of the most surreal weather days I can remember. The whole sky was smoky and painted a gloomy shade of orange for the entire day — it’s like the sun never rose and time was irrelevant. Have a look at the picture below, as you have to see it to believe it!

Photo credit: ABC7 News (Eric Risberg)

COVID scare

If all of that wasn’t enough, we also had to deal with a COVID scare for Mason! As you could have guessed, we have hardly left the house for three weeks, but we took Mason into the doctor’s as he was throwing up a little more than normal for a good 4–5 days. We presumed it was just a little stomach bug that he’d picked up, as he’s been putting everything in his mouth recently. The doctor mentioned the dreaded COVID word and told us we needed to get him tested asap, as she thought he was showing a few symptoms and it was better to be safe than sorry.

As you can imagine, this got us extremely worried. We had to take our guy, in the middle of the orange sky mentioned above, to a COVID testing center and watch him have a swab shoved up his nose for 10 seconds! Not the most fun day I’ve had in my life, but it felt like 2020 summed up in a nutshell.

Note: Mason’s test results thankfully came back negative!

2020 is reminding us to cherish the little things

I think the world needed a quick pause and a period of reflection. 2020 has done just that — the whole world paused and reminded people what makes life meaningful. I for one will not take for granted the next time I get to hug my family, talk to the barista making me a coffee, taking a step outside into the countryside and taking a deep breath of fresh air, seeing friends without worry, jumping on a plane to visit another part of the world and so on!

The only thing that we can do is stay positive, give people slack, check in on everyone to make sure they are ok, love our little guy, and make sure he is completely oblivious to this crazy start to his life. Oh and vote, please vote!