To be jealous of people having babies outside of a COVID world

[Shaveacave]

My daughter was born literally the day we went into lockdown, 23rd March 2020. Not one person held her other than DH or me until she was nearly 10 weeks old. DH was a key worker so worked throughout so from 2 weeks on DD and I sat at home all day, every day. I had a very difficult birth resulting in an emergency cesarean which seemed to take forever to heal and I wasn't well enough to even get out for our allocated one hour walk a day until DD was 6 weeks old. There was only one 'group' I could eventually attend which was an outside only walk together in a park but everything I had hoped to do; baby massage, baby sign, stay and play, not one of them existed.
We had 3 lockdowns that year, when the third one was announced I sobbed and arranged to go back to work 2 months ahead of schedule because I couldn't cope anymore.

We're obviously fine now. DD is a wonderful, funny, bright 4 year old and I love her more than anything. But I was the first of my friends to have a baby and a few have started their families now and most recently my sister-in-law just had her first baby. And I feel like I'm seething with jealousy at the experience they all get to have that I didn't. My in-laws are going to stay with sister-in-law as her husband is going back to work tomorrow so she won't have to be alone. I couldn't leave my bed the first day on my own and I just sobbed all day. I remember the next day my husband planting food all over the house for me to make sure wherever I found myself I ate something because I literally didn't eat that first day until he got home; the idea of having my Mum there with me to help those first few days on my own would have meant the world to me. And I just feel so sad about it. I work full time, I was always going to go back to work full time, we can't afford for me not to. And now it's just 4 months until DD is in school anyway so that's it, these early years are pretty much behind me and I'm suddenly feeling very sad about it.

I don't really have an AIBU, just ranting I suppose!
I'm so happy for all my friends, I'm beyond thrilled to be an Auntie for the first time!! Truly I am and I don't wish any of them anything but wonderful things. But I just feel a bit sad for me and DD tonight.

@Welovecrumpets nope! At the time I was living in a 2 bedroom flat in London.

I wasn’t in London but it was in a flat and I found it absolute hell! Especially when she started walking. All day trapped inside 😵‍💫😵‍💫😵‍💫

@Welovecrumpets its a bit of a blur to me but I remember we were allowed to go out for walks if socially distancing? I had a dog, granted, that helped too. I'm not invalidating anyone's experience btw, just saying that it's not universal to have found it horrendous. The hardest for me was not to see my family or being able to introduce them with the baby (i think my DD hates photos now because of that time as I sent videos/photos of her all the time!). But also I was lucky to have DH at home as forced to WFH (he might not say the same :D) and I didn't have to worry about family politics eg frequency of MIL seeing baby or else. I'm far from a positive polly so it's not me boasting, I genuinely think there were some positives.
I am having a DD in a month, so will see how different the experience is this time!

YANBU to feel this way. I always think about people who had lockdown babies. I had postpartum psychosis when I had mine at the end of 2017. I'm not sure I would have coped without classes and meeting up with friends.

I can imagine you feel cheated of 'normal' newborn days. The only upside , for me, would be not having to go out and see people all the time or have unexpected visitors. My SIL had a baby in April 2020 and they didn't leave the house for months, it seemed like more like 1/2years!

I'm not taking anything away from what you are saying, but people with kids of all ages found it hard.
DD had just turned 2, was up for the day at 4am for weeks after being awake in the night. I remember trying to be on zoom calls and she'd be in the background climbing on cupboards, up shelves, pulling things out of drawers. It was manic!
When people say that they loved lockdown and got to sunbathe, nap and watch loads of box sets I felt angry! I also feel sorry for people who had to homeschool older children or help teenagers through GCSEs.
So whilst I definitely agree with you I don't think it's just people with newborns who had it tough.

My daughter was born on 30th March 2020 so I can relate to a lot of what you are describing. Unfortunately I ended up being a single parent a few days after bringing her home so I had to spend the first few weeks entirely alone with a new born whilst dealing with episiotomy stitches and the hurt of my partner leaving, it absolutely sucked. But also I feel this huge sense of gratitude for those days where it was just me and her in the house on our own getting to know each other and me finding my feet as a new mother. Now I look back and think how on earth did I get through that and sometimes feel sad that I missed out on so much of what I thought having a baby would be like, my family at the hospital with me, visitors, coffee dates, typical maternity days that I’d seen my sister and friends have so I understand how you feel. I do think though that every experience has positive and negatives and we need to just accept that it was our experience and as much as we missed out on we also gained something so precious, for me it was amazing that I had no mother in law interfering and trying to take over as I know she would have done, they were just our little babies to nurture and there’s something quite lovely about that I think.
Your feelings are valid but I’d try not to let them fester, most people suffered due to Covid in one way or another and this was our version of it. I’d rather have had our experience than have been losing a loved one and not be able to see them so I try to think like this if I feel a bit down about what we missed out on. I also sometimes think I’d rather have had a newborn baby at the start of lockdown than a toddler!! That must’ve been torture staying in all day with no visitors and a toddler to entertain. Give me the little cute baby any day!!

I think having a newborn in lockdown would have been really hard, so I feel for you OP. Mine were pre teen / teens which was hard in different ways.

Yep! Just had my second and it’s a completely different experience. Are you one and done?

The only thing I would say, was that lockdown was really, really awful for everyone. I remember being thankful that at least I was at home with a wanted baby being a bit of a hermit, which I may have been anyway. Also my friends who were having fertility issues had treatments stopped, people who didn’t have kids yet couldn’t travel or live their lives. So in that respect, I’d still have rather had a newborn then as oppose to it happening two years earlier when I was living in a much smaller place and travelling the world. Swings and roundabouts.

Just wanted to add my sympathies OP. I had a June 2020 baby. My husband was working from home, and my 2 year old was able to continue at nursery for 4 days a week. We’re in London, but have a big house and garden, so plenty of space and parks nearby. Objectively, I should have been absolutely fine… but actually I was bored out of my mind, felt like I was going round the twist and was DESPERATE for some structure to my day, ways to get out of the house and opportunities to talk to grown ups. I am absolutely not one of the snuggle-at-home-in-pyjamas types, it makes me feel grotty, cross and bored. I feel like I spent most of my mat leave doing resentful circuits of the park with the pram, talking to no one and going slowly round the bend.

I had been super anxious with my first baby, so for the second had planned for the first 6 months of Mat leave to be as much about me recovering (plenty of yoga with the baby, exercise classes, some socialising with other mums). Obviously I didn’t get any of that, and still feel resentful! I think it has had a longer term impact on my mental health than I can really explain. I think that’s totally legit - , obviously people had it way worse than me, but I think it’s reasonable to be upset if your own plans and expectations weren’t met.

just becuase it has felt weirdly cathartic to me to type this out, I’d suggest talking more about your experiences (perhaps with a counsellor?) to help lay it to rest a bit? I might do that myself, in fact.

Hi OP
i totally feel for you, it must have been hideous for you and I applaud all lockdown newborn parents - I’m endlessly grateful for just a couple of people who I could turn to at that stage. It must have been so lonely.

But your dc will start school with peers and you with other parents who had the same experience and I’m sure this will help in the long term.

and it’s totally normal to be jealous of what advantages others have or don’t. The grass always seems greener and I suspect they will have a better earlier years experience than you did, but keep your eyes on the prize and look at your dd. You would have enhanced your experience, of course, but don’t take away that experience from yourself 🥰

And if it helps - my lockdown made me realised how privileged I had been, what I had now lost and how little my teen/pre-teen really needed me any more. We lost a lot (financially) BUT it opened my eyes to a new way of thinking and ensuring that I concentrated on my career and me. Not totally out of it yet but I have to take the positives :)

I would have been upset about this too but even outside of lockdown, not all mums get support from family. I was on my own 7am-7pm in the week and my mum didn’t visit very often despite not working and living 15 minutes away.

Covid was hard for parents in lots of different ways at different stages. I feel like I was lucky with one of mine and less lucky with the other.my oldest was 3 and was miserable- really struggled with nursery closing and then had a very disrupted first year of school. Her year is challenging socially and anecdotally lots of schools seem to say their year 3/4s still have some Covid lag.

My youngest was a year older than yours so had a pretty normal mat leave but it was tough going back to work with no nursery provision. Working with a 1yo was pretty horrible but I think her age was not too affected by the pandemic and she wasn’t really that bothered- if anything an extra 6 months at home was probably good for her . I think your cohort has a tough time with newborns and social isolation and has a worse time of it than I did with a child a year above.

Jeez some people really really need to learn how to read a fucking room.

I was talking about it with a (male) colleague a while ago - they had their first child in the lockdowns, second one just recently and he commented on how he now realised just how brutally hard the lockdown baby period was (as a full-time working, so not taking the brunt of it, father).

Society is meant to be... well social - lockdowns were absolutely shit on everyone (unless you had a lovely house, in the countryside, a curtain twitching obsession, competitive judgement as your main hobby and liked baking fucking banana bread).

children murdered by their own parents or killed in accidents which were caused directly through lockdown: it was government approved child neglect and appalling.
This. The legacy of the government who knew the virus was not the mortal danger they were telling the public it was, as proven by their shameless partying, while they stuck two fingers up at the public, condemned many people to loneliness, destroyed their businesses, and caused very lasting harm to children's development and education.

Mumsnet is such a strange place at times.
I genuinely feel like if you didn't have a lock down baby you can't even begin to imagine.

I had a baby pre lock down, a baby towards the end of lockdown and a baby post lock down.

My middle had complications during the pregnancy (all fetal med appts were alone) and was in neonatal unit for a week. I was also on the shielding list and it was the worst experience.

We weren't sure how many babies we were going to have and my husband and I made the decision right then we were having a 3rd because I couldn't let that be my lasting memory of pregnancy/childbirth.

As it turns out... more complications with baby #3 and a worse childbirth but it felt 100% better this time.

Absolutely you aren't unreasonable!

Absolutely. I worked with one of those children who was killed by their parent. And there was so much condemnation of her. And very little of the absent father who moved abroad and left her alone to care for a very complex child. Of course there was no world in what she did was ok, but knowing how challenging the child's behaviour was, and how bring trapped in a flat would have been unbearable for both of them, I think the government should have done much more to support the most vunerable during this time. Not only those vunerable to covid, but those vunerable to struggling immensely with a lockdown. Everyone found it challenging in their own way of course, but there are those for whom it was so traumatic that they couldn't go on.
My baby born in lockdown hasn't suffered any negative effects from it, but my oldest definitely has in terms of disruption to her education and social skills at a critical age.

Just horrific. And some people like to claim we only knew this in hindsight.

I get your being upset.

Remember that you need not have been affected as much as needs have been if the Prime Minister had been doing his job in early March 2020, and that the current one made things worse by the 'eat out to help out' scheme.

Remember this when the general election comes.

YANBU but:

1. People's experience of Covid lockdown varied a lot. I didn't have a baby in Covid but there were other reasons why the lockdown was absolute hell for us and I was SO incredibly jealous of all those people with gorgeous houses and gardens, who didn't get sick or lose any loved ones. Or my BIL who spent a year on his arse doing fuck all while getting paid 100% of his salary. So you are not alone in how you feel. We were not all in the same boat at all.

1. Women's experience of first time motherhood also varies a lot. I have a small baby now and my life is nothing how I imagined it would be at this stage, for other reasons. Am I disappointed and a bit jealous of other women who seem to have what I don't? Yes. But all I can do is focus on my little family and all the good stuff we do have going on.

Don’t listen to ‘I just got on with itpre-pandemic, me’ wankers.

So no-one is allowed to have a contrary experience, they have to fit the MN mould? Maybe some people think that those who can't seem to cope with anything are also 'wankers', I don't include myself in that but the MN attitude that certain groups deserve to be sneered at and insulted regularly is very tiresome.

Of course they are, I’m just telling people like OP to take no notice.

It’s fine to cope but what isn’t fine is the ‘I coped and enjoyed it so why didn’t you love this scary global pandemic?’

I don't think you're unreasonable but is it really about lockdown?
My baby was not born during a lockdown, but I have some regrets about pregnancy and early motherhood that could quite easily consume me if I allowed them to. I find it hard sometimes to hear others talking about their pregnancies, especially knowing I don't have another child. I just have to swallow my feelings and move on as I can't change anything.

I hear you, DD was born February 2020. We had just moved city and I was looking forward to doing baby groups and making mom friends. I still have very few friends here due to missing that.

I am lucky that I did get to do it first time around with DS.