Ordinarily, being a new parent is weird…

Particularly being the one that stays home when your partner goes back to work. Your entire world has shifted on its axis, you have someone you care about more than life itself and whom you almost want to shield from life itself, despite giving them life. Very strange indeed. Meanwhile the little midgets – affectionate term – begin expressing their gratitude for the gift of life – optimistic term – by wanting to embed themselves back in the womb, but will take the next best thing which is forcibly attaching themselves to their parents and often screaming the house down when it’s any other way. 

This level of dependency and responsibility is unlike anything else most people have experienced before parenthood, and accommodating it can render us almost useless in every other capacity. On top of these exceptionally high demands is the awareness that we have been unceremoniously and, let’s not forget, voluntarily thrown out of life as we knew it and are unable to dip even the smallest of toes back in. Isolation is already inherent in new parenting, mainly because the simple task of leaving the house is generally comparable to trying to scale Everest during your lunch break. In fact my friend Annie hilariously asked if the social distancing and prospect of isolation stemming from Covid-19 might be business as usual for me. If anything this has levelled the playing field by getting everyone else involved. 

Before our daughter turned up I expressed some low level (read: heightened) concerns about the whole birthing bit. My husband Tom, offering up the words of solidarity that could come only from someone who will never themselves be required to birth another human, reminded me that many women deliver babies in war torn countries. My dad, in a similar vein, has also pointed out that women in parts of the world give birth, strap their baby to their back, and crack on with their other manual labour at hand. And, as unwelcome as this perspective can be when experiencing your own personal meltdown, it did indeed (eventually) give me some perspective.

And so, as we’re facing this unknown, I’m mindful that for all including new parents these are unique times – where loo roll, hand sanitiser and tinned tomatoes are basically gold dust. They’re challenging times, literally isolating times, which will be for many desperately lonely. They’re worrying times, for those at high risk and anyone (almost everyone) who is close to someone high risk. But we do have amazing health professionals, running water, heating, food and enough essentials to go round (if will only people will retain their sanity and selflessness), and we have technology. A former tech resister, I have done a complete 360 in the space of four days and intend to exploit it for all its worth, kicking off with this little blog in an attempt to keep me entertained. And anyone else who is frankly bored enough to read. 

Current status: daughter, seven weeks old; Tom, still commuting to and from work in zone 1, Tom’s colleague – displaying corona symptoms, Tom – reporting symptoms of the common man flu; nappies, less than a week’s worth; loo rolls, probably even less than that.

On Thursday, before things reached peak unprecedented with the closure of pretty much all social spaces, one of my brothers and I talked our Middlesbrough based mum down from having ‘one last haircut while I still can’. She clearly wants to look her best for all this FaceTiming. I’m selfishly relieved she’s avoided the hairdresser and not just to minimise her risk of catching or spreading the virus – with my eye bags, pasty face and wild barnet I was already presenting as her parent on our latest FaceTime, despite being 37 years her junior. 

Our baby, along with all the others whose age is still counted in days, weeks or months, is blissfully unaware of this whole Corona thing and the concept of social distancing or isolation. More than that, she doesn’t know any different and seems quite content with the whole scenario. Between the crying and the feeds and the nappies, she’s been serving up smiles and sounds that make us genuinely forget for a moment that we have indeed entered the strangest of times. For her, this is just life as she knows it. And for that reason alone, I am determined to make it the best it can be.