To be feeling very sad

[Groveparkmama]

My (first) baby was born at the end of Feb. He was quite unwell when he was born so we spent a week in hospital before coming home and he was then 3.5 weeks old when we went into the first lockdown. Since then, my grandfather has died (not Covid) and I was unable to go to the funeral (cos pandemic) and my MIL has been hospitalised several times, culminating in a cancer diagnosis last week.

We had a registry office wedding with only immediate family in October 2019, and were then supposed to have been having a church wedding blessing and a wedding reception in September this year. It was obviously cancelled.

I was turned down for promotion for the second year in a row, and I highly suspect I was discriminated against since I was on maternity leave.

I returned to work at the start of this month - the baby is in nursery 3 days a week and we have a nanny for the other 2 days. The nanny has told us she doesn’t want to work whilst we are in Tier 4.

I am devastated that my maternity leave has been ruined by the pandemic and so upset that my family and friends have not been able to spend much time with my baby.

I was really looking forward to Christmas. We were supposed to see my parents for a couple of days and my parents in law for a couple of days. Now we are in Tier 4 all our Christmas plans have been cancelled. We have a baby under one, so technically we are allowed to form a support bubble with another household. However, it is not sensible to see my parents in law, since my MIL is so unwell. My parents live in Tier 2 and do not feel comfortable seeing us at the moment - they live in a very rural area and my dad (who is almost 70) is nervous about exposing himself to unnecessary risk.

I know we are lucky in the grand scheme of things - we still have our (well paying) jobs, are healthy, have a nice home and a gorgeous baby. But dear god, I am finding things hard at the moment and feel like I am dragging myself towards the end of 2021. If another bad thing happens, then I feel like I am going to totally crumble!

I think it’s made harder by knowing that lots of people are breaking the rules. I know we are doing the right thing, but I do feel rather jealous!

Yanbu

I know how you feel. It’s crap. I’m sorry.

Yanbu at all. All of the challenges you’ve faced are enough by themselves, without coming all together and with the added pandemic. I am so sorry it’s been a tough year for you. It is ok to feel sad.

YANBU in any way, that sounds like a really hard year, I'm so sorry you've had to deal with all of that. I hope 2021 is better for you, and that your family and friends will get to spend lots of time with your son soon.

YANBU at all. You’ve had a heck of a year even without the pandemic.

I think a lot of us are currently feeling a mixture of knowing that tier 4 for Christmas is the right decision, but feeling extremely upset and disappointed about how it’s come about. One of my friends said to me couldn’t we count our blessings and isn’t it right to protect our “wonderful and exhausted” NHS and this went down quite badly with me; of course I don’t disagree with protecting the NHS but that doesn’t make it any less upsetting to now be in this position, and counting blessings doesn’t magically make the feelings go away (and IMO is often used to invalidate the feelings).

Honour those feelings - it’s ok to grieve for what you’re not getting even if there are ways it could be worse. There is only so much resilience and surge capacity any of us have.

I had a baby (my 3rd) in July and I had visions of this being a lovely mat leave of me merrily taking her here there and everywhere and chilling out on visits to friends and relatives and for once being available for the whole school summer holiday for my older children. I’ll go back next year having done none of that, and most of my family haven’t yet met the baby. This is a collective trauma and it will take us all a while to recover from it, long after the virus itself. I really hope you manage to have a lovely first Christmas with your baby even if it wasn’t the one you had hoped for.