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“We were the first.
I gave birth on St Patricks day.
St Patricks day 2020.
The week of lockdown.
The peak of virus hysteria.
All fear, no facts.
And no systems.
We were the first.
And no one, no one, had prepared for this.
No blueprint before us. No case studies, advice or guidance anywhere. Just confusion. And fear.
We were the test cases. And it was terrifying.
When every guide tells you to get practical support, every book says socialise, every (sanitised) leaflet from your (socially distanced) health visitor advertises groups that don’t exist and you are only allowed out once a day, your avenues to find sanity all seem to hit a brick, covid splattered, wall.
Nowhere had had any time to update their guidance, or even knew how to. How could they? While support agencies scrabbled to build the vital new boats to weather these wild seas, we new mums slowly sank beneath the waves; every life raft usually deployed, now suddenly punctured and useless. All of them.
We were the first to do this alone.
But.. we were not alone.
The group of women in my phone – strangers in a yoga class months before – became my lifeline. Together we floated, where individually we would have sunk. Banding together to pull each other up as we dropped under another wave.
Feeding issues,
sleep deprivation,
birth trauma,
health concerns,
PND.
We took on each wave physically alone, but mentally together.
We did it. Together.
In a time when we were allowed no one, it was a community of women that saved me and my baby.
And now?
Now we have systems.
Now we have the boats.
New mums have covid related guidance. They have those that have gone before them to help show the path. We have done it together and done it for each other.
No one will have to be the first again.” – @somegreatmischief
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