Hi friends, how time flies. I am sitting here teary-eyed, thinking about how my littlest one will soon be off to kindergarten. The most sweetest, nicest, and smartest dinosaur loving, puzzle enthusiast little boy ever. How is this little guy starting kindergarten already? My baby. The baby who I carried in my womb and delivered during the most unsettling, isolating, and uncertain time of our history. What a time to reminisce back on and to remember the fear of the unknown back then. We’ve come a long way from us being stuck together like glue to him growing into this little independent human being.
Times were so out of our norm 6 years ago. Being our third baby, things were done in such a non-traditional way for us compared to my other two births. I attended my doctor’s visits alone, I was not allowed to bring anyone to any milestone appointments. From having to record the first time I heard his strong little heartbeat on my phone to show my husband, to having to wear masks at all times even during my birth, and having to have a drive up baby shower.It was a time of touching nothing and absolutely sanitizing and showering if you did dare. A time to be alive.
I spent many moments worried, as did my husband. Worries about him getting sick at work and bringing this unknown virus home to us kept us quiet at times. Worried about our unborn baby and our girls getting sick were never too far away. While we are a very united family , we are also a very large family, and when one gets sick, it could quickly make its way around. Thankfully, during that time, no one had tested positive for COVID yet. I had no in person meet-ups with friends, and I didn’t see my parents or siblings or anyone out of us 4 on the daily.
While COVID stole many precious, peaceful moments from us, it did bring some good to our family. I was blessed to go from working full time in the office to full-time from home while pregnant and for the first year of his life. It was truly such a blessing. I was able to spend my full days with my babies at home, and I was able to give them time that I wouldn’t have been able to otherwise. We did arts and crafts together, we did yoga from youtube videos,we cooked, and I enjoyed closing my laptop and going straight to my bed at 7 months pregnant. We spent a lot of time together as a family of 5, making memories and really cherishing that family time of just us. I was able to return to work while caring and bonding with my baby. It made me a homebody, which I still am today because of it.
Us pandemic moms have healed. We have seen that our newborns don’t remember that time, and they have adjusted to our once again newly found normal life. Those same babies that were born in silent hospitals with strict protocals. A time when the mother, who was about to start pushing, had to first test negative for COVID, as did the father before being let into the delivery room. A time when we had to wear a mask during the full labor and during our stay. A time when our village wasn’t allowed to immediately meet the family’s new member at the hospital. We were pregnant during a time of endless news watching, consuming media we shouldn’t have been but worried for our people, a time of counting COVID deaths, watching fights over mask mandates, and a time of tiktok dances while the world fell apart.
Yet somehow, the sun came up again. No more instant COVID tests in our medicine cabinets, no more masks, no more isolating, and no more waiting in the car and filling out COVID questionnaires before baby checkups. God is good friends. Whether you made it through T-K crying at every back to school night, crying the first and last day of school,or if your little one is going to school for the first time, just know that this is not just a milestone for them but also a big one for us.
–Thank you for reading my blog post
-Csy
Csy-Lux 
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