Triggered by lockdown

[user64827723]

It can't just be me.

I just replied to a thread about small age gaps and was triggered. During Covid I had a 1yr old and a 2yr old. We lived in a flat with nothing to do and no where to do.

I cried most days and I still get so upset and mad about it now, those precious first years completely lost. 2 years of nothing to do, no swimming, no baby classes, wearing a face mask at soft play and even then the cafe was closed and numbers were limited.

Life with babies and toddlers is bloody hard but nothing will compare to trying to parent in lockdown.

I felt at the time, and still do feel, that parents of very young children were completely forgotten in the madness of covid lockdowns.

Anyone else feel like this?

You don't know that.

I saw patients die day after day alone and terrified and we didn’t know what we could do to help them.

Why were they dying alone?

Why didn't you allow their loved ones to be with them?

No-one should die without their loved ones with them.

@user64827723

I had a 2 year old and a family member who would have died had she not received timely cancer treatment during Covid. Because of the family member I did support lockdown because I could see how much her local hospital was struggling, the pressures they were facing and I have the utmost respect for them now for saving her life.

However, my 2 year old - I feel was neglected. I was homeschooling his older sibling and very distracted by family member’s predicament. He has additional needs now and I’m wondering how far this was down to his lack of socialisation.

Older sibling coped fine with homeschooling and now quite often tells me she ‘enjoyed’ lockdown.
I don’t think I’m triggered, but I’m very concerned about how we’d cope if another pandemic hit our shores. If hospitals can’t cope and provide basic services to their patients, I think restrictions would be needed again. Therefore the NHS should be better funded, schools should be better funded - and we should have better strategies in place to cope.

I don’t think people would stand for another lockdown or further restrictions. The NHS is really struggling now because they are trying to catch up with the effects of their poor or non-existant care during the pandemic.

Mine were a little older but I also still feel really traumatized and am still recovering my mental health really, and surprised everyone never talks about it.

we live in Spain so were not allowed out of the flat (no garden) at all for six weeks. Not once. after the six weeks we then were allowed to do the one hour a day thing. I still cannot believe I spent six weeks with two tiny DC not seeing the sky even for 5 minutes.

It fucked up family relationships too, as everyone is in the uk except us and were doing that circle thing you were allowed to.

Are you serious?

They weren’t alone in that we were there of course and did our very best but you are honestly asking why I didn’t personally break the rules of the hospital and allow uninfected family members onto a covid ward at the height of the first lockdown?

Please don’t. The moral distress amongst myself and my colleagues is enough without your added criticism thank you.

She would have ended up in the front page of the Daily Mail for doing that. Don’t you remember the lockdown zeal of the authorities and some sections of the population? My friend got told off for sitting on a bench.

@MariaVT65

From my direct experience, the NHS staff who treated my family member during the pandemic are not ‘poor’ they worked bloody hard to save lives under unbelievably difficult circumstances. Poorly funded and under resourced - yes. Poor in what they were trying to do - no.
If a pandemic hit us and it has a higher fatality rate, or was causing a high fatality rate in children - there needs to be a strategy. This is what concerns me.

I don’t think anyone is saying it’s the fault of NHS staff but it doesn’t change the fact that during the pandemic the standard of care that some people received at times was poor and far below the standard of being acceptable. If indeed they received care at all. We don’t need to blame individual staff or collective staff - though also I’m sure staff pushed to the brink of their capacity couldn’t deliver at times and may have run low on compassion. But we can blame coronavirus itself, and decision makers at various levels. However you cannot expect people to rewrite their experiences to pretend that it was fine. Furthermore it’s an ongoing situation with people not being able to access services and services falling short of acceptable standards. I’m sorry but that is real and it’s happening. The care in some cases is very poor. I think it’s better to be honest than spare feelings. Of course sometimes the care is also good.

Some of it was barbaric. I can’t believe more didn’t object at the time.

I went back to work from maternity leave 2 days before lockdown. Baby was 11 months.

Our nursery closed, every childcare plan we had fell through.

I was forced to change my hours, working evenings whilst husband continued to work during the day. We were like passing ships. He would come in from work at 5pm and I’d sit down to start work - they modified my work and contracted hours.

Our little boy was a totally different kid by the time we could see family again.

At the beginning of lockdown he couldn’t crawl, walk etc and by the time we could mix he was running around.

I am so angry at how we toed the line.

Handing DS over at nursery with everyone masked up and him screaming because he hadn’t had any decent settling in time with me was fucking awful. Eventually we adjusted but he was there 2 years before we were allowed back in the building!

No, nor me. Every group suffered in one way or another from Covid..

My Dad had to die alone in a nursing home. Covid had been bought in there by discharged hospital patients. He died alone the day Johnson held his wine fuelled garden party..😡

My husband died of Covid last April. I could, at least, be with him.🙁

I do sympathise with parents of children, especially where children had no gardens to at least burn off some energy. Also the older children, who didn't, generally, get adequate online teaching, and who missed their schoolmates..

But, parents of children didn't suffer any more than anyone else.

I was talking about this with some friends only last week. I know of 3 lockdown babies. 2 sets of parents loved the lockdown because they could bond as a family as the fathers were working from home. The other had a father working in the NHS and his wife found it as hard as OP.

I was glad of it, as it turns out. I was still working part time and well beyond retirement age. I enjoyed the work but found it increasingly difficult as my health was on a downward spiral. Lockdown meant work stopped and I never went back.

DH and I enjoyed the country walks and watching movies on TV. Our sons still called in as we are both in our 70s and needed extra help with some things. So we didn't feel as isolated as many did. We reassessed some priorities and are in a good place now, despite health problems. So for us it was a good thing in many ways. I'd probably still be flogging myself to death because I hate letting people down.

I do hope those who found it so stressful are able to come to terms with it.

OP I'm sorry

It took me ages to be able to even say the word. It's been fucking horrendous.

We had one of those - possibly Chat GPT, who knows - posting about what an awful death it is just a couple of days ago - and I had to sit on my hands. Have these people never seen other deaths?!

I do think even rule followers - IRL - understand that they were conned.

I was also in a small flat, my now-boyfriend was telling me he only coped because video games. I only coped because drinking, and living on a high floor, jumping out of the window was an excellent option. I will always wonder if I should have taken it.

I was jeered at here for telling people about police in the park - then it appeared in the media.

I have so much rage still. I'm quite open about lockdown lovers now, IRL. I have nothing but contempt for them and I wish them ill.

“parents of children didn't suffer any more than anyone else”

no one has said that. Some people didn’t suffer at all, I’m glad for them

one thing that made it harder at the time was people not being able to talk about their own experiences without some twat saying “you’re only being asked to sit on your arse and watch Netflix!”

no, many people were being asked to do something very different to that

In my direct experience, having a baby during the pademic, the nhs care was both poor and neglectful. My hospital had to later admit that if their staff had done their jobs properly, I could have avoided an EMCS.

I also acknowledge that a lot of the issue was decision makers at the top, who I will never ever forgive for making the rule that partners cannot stay to help mums after major surgery, when they don’t have enough staff to help. GP surgery care was also disgusting IME.

I had a young school age child and a newborn baby when the first lockdown started. He wasn’t even 1 when the second lockdowns kicked in. I feel like I lost his whole first year to lockdown and trying to home school my eldest. It wasn’t supposed to be like that and I grieve the time we should have had together, going to baby groups etc.

Cwmyoy
"I do hope those who found it so stressful are able to come to terms with it."

we won't, and it wasn't stressful, it was traumatic. I don't use that word lightly. I use it for an accident I was in when my injuries meant we had to watch for signs of paralysis for weeks.

Same here. My DC was 8 months and I didn't do NCT so was really relying on getting out to groups to try and connect with other mums.

I had even factored the day of the local toddler group into my flexible working request, to be home on that day, as I felt like making the effort to meet other local mums was important. The toddler group was closed for the full 2 years! When I finally took her she was 3 and I'd missed the boat - you don't get many 3 year olds at these things as that's the age funded hours for childcare are available to all.

The things that opened up earlier - pubs and restaurants, were no use to people with young children.

I had my first baby in lockdown. It was a very difficult first year and I also found it traumatic OP. Having just had my second, I found lots of pregnancy and the early weeks very triggering and I realise now just how awful I felt at the time. I found it hard to imagine life with a baby without thinking it would be in lockdown. My mind also boggles to think how parents of kids of all ages coped, imagining keeping my now 3 year old home all day blows my mind. Imagining maintaining emotional stability for older kids, or managing home school alongside working myself... god it must have been so stressful. It's important to talk about I think, and talking about one groups distress related to lockdown life doesn't minimise any other.

Also, my DH seems to have agoraphobia now. I was just wondering this week how many other people developed a kind of post lockdown agoraphobia and are still struggling on.

Yup. I feel it's fading a bit now, thankfully - I do look back on some photos and memories with fondness rather than horror. But lockdown with a 14 month old (and then almost 2 in the winter lockdown) while both of us were trying to work full time at home was utterly hideous. I knew I was doing everything badly, and to be honest I think it actually broke my brain - I can't seem to focus or take in new information so well anymore. It affected my health too, I gained two stone and can't seem to find the willpower to do anything about it.

I lost a family member who was under 40 to Covid, so we were super careful and really didn't go back to 'normal' until after we had Covid ourselves in spring 2022 (although I did start doing more normal activities after our second vaccinations, we weren't complete recluses).

I am very grateful I didn't have a tiny baby, and I'm very grateful I didn't have a three year old because I think that would have been even harder. But yeah... lockdown with a toddler while working was one of the hardest things I've ever done, I cried most days by the end of it, and I still feel a bit crazed if we don't get out somewhere every day. My son is now 4.5 and when I'm looking after him he always asks 'Where are we going today', because he knows we do not stay in.

Yes. During the first worst lockdown I had a 2.5 year old in a flat with no outside space, I was pregnant with complications and could barely leave the house due to being very high risk. DH and were both working too, or trying to. Absolute chaos!

But think of all those MNers who were spared their MILs constantly turning up. So many threads just this week alone . . .

Also, my DH seems to have agoraphobia now. I was just wondering this week how many other people developed a kind of post lockdown agoraphobia and are still struggling on.

My mother has ended up like this. It seems not uncommon amongst older people.

My kids were just turned 3 and 10 months old at the start. Eldest had been diagnosed with ASD and GDD 3 weeks prior. All the support and intervention he should be have been having at that critical time stopped overnight.
I had to navigate that whilst fighting for a place for him in a specialist school and dealing with chronic illness/pain.
One of the worst times of my life. Ended up on antidepressants after a spurt of panic attacks.

We are on the other side of it now but definitely still affected.