“It’s always darkest before the dawn”…

As Florence sang/ Thomas Fuller wrote (depending on how high brow you are). It turns out things needed to get worse, before they got even worse, before *touches wood* they started to get better. Tom is still resting, resting, resting (and dusting off his FIFA skills) as we continue to wait for his lungs to recover from the virus, almost two weeks after he first showed symptoms. This week he upgraded to sitting back in the living room after three days in bed (something to do with the lure of the PlayStation perhaps?!)

Meanwhile I’ve been manic, in the slightly crazed sense. I’ve laughed, cried and deployed all kinds of bizarre behaviour with, ironically, the sole aim of keeping our daughter calm. I’ve taken her in the downstairs loo with me for a ‘team wee’ – the punchy monochrome wallpaper we inherited when we bought the house momentarily distracting her from her ongoing demand of ‘FEED ME WOMAN’.

I’ve significantly relaxed the ‘boundaries’. The time at which Ruby is getting into bed with me on a morning is creeping earlier every day. Back in the day when Tom was commuting to work (was that really only two weeks ago?!) it was just after 7am before he left, now she’s putting in the call around 2, 3, 4am and, trust me, I am in no state to argue. Tom is in for a nasty surprise when we revert to sleeping in the same room as him. He’s going to need to step in to establish some kind of system like the ones they talk about in those parenting books, because there wasn’t one before all this kicked off and there sure as hell isn’t one now.

In a bid to get her to nap I’ve paced the garden with her in the carrier wearing my pyjama bottoms and black ankle boots with the towel from my shower five hours earlier still wrapped around my head. During this fool’s errand, I had the misfortune of needing to hold a socially distant conversation with our neighbour out back, though sadly not distant enough to impair his ability to take in the full spectacle of my appearance.

And I tried to put Ruby to bed at 6pm when she wouldn’t nap all day. Naturally, she had absolutely none of it and whinged her way into getting back up for several bonus feeds until we reached her usual 9 -10pm slot. She’s no mug this kid, or ‘she’s spirited’ as Tom more generously put it.

But you know what? Despite rarely having a full set of hands to take care of Tom and to even attempt any housework, I’ve been glad of her neediness because I’ve been needy too. I’ve needed her as much as she’s needed me. Maybe even more. She’s been helping me through the worry, giving me plenty to do when I would have otherwise felt helpless, always had her smile ready, babbled the days away and been very open to a cuddle. She hasn’t allowed me to sink into the isolation induced despair I would have done were she not here. So thank you Ruby June – in your nine weeks on this crazy planet you’ve gotten me through two of the toughest weeks of my three decades.

And while it has been an intense time, I’m aware that this pandemic is having significant repercussions for others everywhere. We’ve been hearing of hospitals that are not currently allowing partners to attend births and have been thinking of all the women who will be giving birth alone and all the other halves who won’t witness their baby coming into the world. Having to go through the most important moment of your life without the person you love by your side must be beyond tough. I am (clearly) far from an expert, but I wonder if it really has to be this way. What I do know is that, with the support of the amazing midwives, these parents will get through it – and they’ll be even more bad ass as a result.

And one day, this will just be part of the narrative of someone’s life, how they entered the world at the strangest time, or how they spent the first x weeks or months of their lives without seeing anyone except their parents, or how they were home schooled by working parents and did PE lessons from this thing called YouTube (bloody loving Joe Wicks by the way – exercise as good for post natal mums as hyper kids!) In years to come, hard as it may be to imagine right now, all of this utter madness might somehow make us nostalgic.