The year 2020 was quite the year for Jenna Etheridge, who gave birth to her son while President Cyril Ramaphosa announced that the country was going into a hard lockdown because of Covid-19.
Do you remember our first "family meeting"? I do.
23 March 2020.
President Cyril Ramaphosa was delivering the news that the country would go into a hard lockdown. And I was delivering our son. A surreal moment when my husband and doula were listening to the announcement in hospital and talking about the ramifications while I tried to ride the waves of pain, focused only on the seconds ahead of me.
What a spectacular scene-setter it would be for the months to come. A preview for Pandemic Parent 2020. Coming to a (home) cinema near you. Thanks to Covid-19, the last nine months as a first-time mom turned out entirely different to what I had imagined and hoped for.
It was supposed to involve a whole lot of support.
We had planned for my mom to spend some time with us so I could recover and have helping hands around the house. Our family would meet our baby boy slowly but surely. I would get together with a new mom or two for coffee so we could swap tales of surviving the sleepless nights and feel less alone. When the house felt claustrophobic, I was to pop baby into a pram and walk around the common for fresh air and exercise.
Treading water
It is laughable now. But how was I to know we would be treading water in a time of widespread sickness, anxiety and global uncertainty? That we would end up alone and without a manual on how to keep a small human alive in the presence of a largely unknown virus. With each "family meeting" bringing little hope that our son would meet HIS family.
As it turned out, I had to stay in hospital for a few days due to an emergency C-section and was not allowed any visitors, except for my husband. Even he got kicked out towards the end due to lockdown. I was still one of the "lucky ones". Later, some women had to give birth without their husbands at their side.
Emotional from the hormones, and still in pain, I paced up and down the ward corridor trying to soothe a baby that wouldn't latch. The nurses did their best to help but all every woman wants in that moment, is the comforting presence of their mom. Just as I had settled in, I was moved to another room so they could section off a part of the ward for labouring moms with Covid-19.
On the day I was discharged, the hospital corridors echoed. They had blocked off all but the main entrance and there were strict rules for pick-ups. We eventually ticked all the boxes and loaded our little bundle into the car. All my worries about driving this tiny baby home in traffic were for nought. It was the first day of lockdown and the roads were deserted.
We stopped to get baby bottles and medication at a nearby store, popped in at our lactation consultant for a lifesaving pump (after obtaining a permission letter in case we got stopped on the road) and then hunkered down. Little did we know that would be for months on end.
That time feels blurry now. The high of becoming a mom and the strong pain medication took the edge off the first week but at some point it started sinking in that Covid-19 and the lockdown weren't going away. And that as much as I had wanted us to be cocooned in a bubble for a little while so baby could build his immune system, I had never wanted to lose connection, community and meaning.
Ultimate paradox
It was the ultimate paradox. I was anxious about keeping our boy safe and away from danger, but I also wanted to be out in the world with him. I wanted to expose his precious little face to the beauty of the forest near our home and let others delight in him.
I remember staring at the intense blue of the sky in the early days of the Level 5 lockdown. I sat on the dead log outside our door and wept. If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If you become a parent in a pandemic but no one is around…
The pain of my parents not meeting him weighed heavily on my heart but we tried to make do with video calls every day. It was important for me to remain hopeful and show our son we could connect in other ways.
When Ramaphosa did eventually "let us out", it took some to navigate our new world.
Probably the most anxiety-provoking experience was taking him for his first vaccines. My husband and I agreed that the benefit of going out and getting it done outweighed the risks. But it still felt like mission impossible. For one, we received some judgment about taking our newborn baby to a clinic during a pandemic. Which was really crap because we were already scared. We weren't doing this lightly.
After making a booking, checking vaccine availability, waiting in the queue to a shopping centre with the covered pram, keeping our distance, dodging crowds, touching nothing and eventually being greeted by a sister at the clinic - deep breath - we were told that actually we had been given the wrong advice over the phone and that branch didn't have stock of what we needed. I burst into tears in that tiny clinic room. The nurse was an angel and phoned around until she had secured the shots at another clinic. We sat in a collective heap of exhaustion and fear, sharing little bits of our lives. She too was scared, being on the front line and with kids at home. The mantra she kept repeating to herself was "fear the virus, not people", something I held onto.
We eventually found our way to the other clinic and all was well. Nothing bad happened. It was a tiny victory upon which many other wins were eventually built.
The wait may have been long but our boy now knows his family. My hands may be raw from sanitiser but he has explored the parks near our home and interacted with other babies. I have tried not to let my fear hold him back.
2020 turned out to be the year that birthed the mother in me.
- Jenna Etheridge is a deputy news editor at News24.
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