I had my first baby in February and went into lockdown two weeks later. We had my dad with us at the time as he’d come to visit baby from abroad, he’s high risk so we ended up shielding together with my partner, dad & baby until July. Very stressful and I was obviously terrified for him AND our newborn.
I am totally consumed by Covid. I’ve just realised that I can’t remember the last time I felt relaxed. I feel like I’ve got the weight of the world on my shoulders. I suffer from health anxiety anyway so this is exasperation by Covid. Convinced I MUST have an underlying condition I don’t know about and will therefore kick the bucket when I get it. Both my brothers are diabetics.
Then there’s the flu jab. I made sure baby had all of his immunisations and was planning on flu jab too given yesterday’s news, but someone decided to link me to an article stating flu jab can increase likelihood of respiratory distress syndrome and now I’m paranoid about getting it. I’m not anti vax at all but this particular issue is an unusual one and documented. Should I? Should a 7 month old? It’s not routine in the UK but the nurse as good as told me that’s down to budget and if there wasn’t one then all over 6 months would get it. Scared I’ll damage him. Scared of him catching the flu! Rational side tells me as we are being so careful it’s unlikely we’ll catch anything at all. But if something happened to my baby and I could have prevented it, well, you know how that goes.
Sad we won’t be with my family for babys first Xmas (they’re abroad), sad this is how the beginning of motherhood is for me.
I just think about these things all day long. Sometimes it’s worse than others. When cases were lower a few weeks back I felt a lot more optimistic but now I’m just back to square one.