Having a Baby During Lockdown Gave Me Parenting Peace I Didn’t Know I Needed
By: Nicci Kadilak
Tags: Birth, Children, Motherhood, Parenting

Having a Baby During Lockdown Gave Me Parenting Peace I Didn’t Know I Needed

Photo by Jordan Whitt on Unsplash

My son was born on Easter Sunday in a year when everything was broken.

We hadn’t left the house in over a month. Schools were closed and we didn’t know when they’d reopen. Sports and play dates were canceled indefinitely. We’d lost my dear father-in-law unexpectedly only weeks before. Times seemed darker than I ever remember them being — for my nuclear family, my American family, my human family.

For nine months, as the baby rolled and kicked inside me, I’d had visions of what it would be like to parent my third and final child. We’d wake up early and drive his sisters to school, then nurse and play when we got home. Maybe I’d get some writing done while he took his morning nap. At the gym, I’d drop him in the baby room so I could go to my workout classes.

He’d quickly get used to being in the infant seat because we had places to go after school and on the weekends. He’d be my buddy at gymnastics for four hours a week, happily playing in his stroller until he was ready for a snooze. We’d have hats and sun shades and blankets and stroller toys so he could be comfortable in all kinds of weather. All that normal third kid stuff.

Except, when you’re smack in the middle of a global pandemic, there is no such thing as normal.

He was two weeks late, and I can’t say I blame him. I wouldn’t have wanted to come out into this mess, either. If I could, I would have kept him in even longer. I only needed a few extra months. A year, tops. Just until life settled down again.

He finally did arrive, in an epic display of synergy between mother and baby. The midwives, and even my husband, stayed in the background while the baby and I took center stage. I was in tune with my baby, and my body, as I went about the day’s routine. Opening Easter baskets with the girls and baking banana bread as I timed my contractions turned to rocking and breathing on the staircase and bouncing on the exercise ball until my water broke. I was free to change position when I needed to, get in the water when I was ready, and push when my body told me to. After two hospital births, it was an experience I didn’t realize was possible.

Life didn’t settle down after he was born. Rather than subsiding within a few months, the pandemic stretched on, shrinking and swelling and morphing with each passing day.

We had nowhere to go and nothing to do. The infant seat got a mere dozen uses before he outgrew it, mostly for trips to the doctor for checkups. There was no school, no gymnastics, not even trips to the grocery store. All the constraints and outside expectations I’d expected to have to implement suddenly dissolved into thin air.

And it was beautiful.

We’d wake in the morning as the sun’s rays peeked in through the blinds. He’d be fussing in bed, not yet awake, and just hearing our voices would send his lips curling up into a smile. Once he’d been changed and fed, his excitement to greet the day radiated through the house, the warmth of his squeals touching even the sleepiest among us. As I tended to breakfast and cleaned the kitchen, he would transmit his glee to the rest of the family. Between playing peek-a-boo on Daddy’s lap, sticking out his tongue and giggling at his sisters, and chatting with his favorite stuffed frog, his mornings were full.

Not having to prescribe a schedule meant I could work in sync with his signals. I was able to take it slow and really watch him and learn that, for example, when he rubbed his face on my chest it meant he was ready for a nap. Or that if he woke up crying, a pacifier and a pat on the back would help him go back to sleep until he was ready to be awake. After he was well-rested he’d pop up his head, look for us, and smile, and we would start the whole routine again.

The girls, nearly seven and nine years older, adored their baby brother. On their breaks from remote school, they took turns baby-sitting, giving me the luxury of time to myself that I never expected to have. I could take a shower, do my hair, or work out with only a little interruption. The girls’ coos and the baby’s squeals would drift in under the closed door, and a smile would tickle my lips.

Having little contact with anyone outside my house, I no longer felt subject to other people’s expectations about how the baby should be sleeping or eating. I felt freer than ever to just do what worked for us. I fed him throughout the day without checking the clock. When he woke in the night, I nursed him without obsessing over his sleeping habits. Without a set alarm, it just didn’t matter that I lost a little sleep feeding him. And, most nights, I enjoyed the quiet closeness I felt with him as we rocked and dozed together.

One day flowed into the next, a time lapse of breakfasts and naps, giggles and nighttime snuggles. Soon he’ll be a year old and the only thing that’s changed in our world is him. He’s taken his first steps and gotten his first teeth but never been inside a store or a coffee shop.

Nothing about my son’s first year has gone according to the rigid plan I concocted while I was pregnant. But being forced to dismantle my idea of normal has been good for me — for all of us. The world around us is still reeling and restless, but one look at this little boy’s impish grin and clear blue eyes is enough to anchor us, if only for a few moments.

My son was born at a moment when everything seemed wrong with the world. And while his arrival couldn’t fix the brokenness, getting to know him has helped us remember to find enjoyment and peace in the day to day, in a way that wouldn’t have been possible in “normal” times.

And that’s the one thing about this awful year I wouldn’t change for the world.