Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?
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Anonymous
Since what? The initial shut down? Ok, what is your point. No one in this thread is sitting around fretting about Covid itself. That's not the point. People are saying that Covid impacted their lives in ways they are struggling to put back in order. It changed family planning, friendships and support systems, school environments, career paths. And people are still adjusting to those changes (which were in many cases, abrupt). They aren't still struggling with Covid itself. Covid was just a catalyst for other things that people are struggling with. It would be like if you got breast cancer but caught it super early and responded well to the treatments and recovered in 20 months with no signs of recurrence. But the treatment required you to take a long leave of absence from work, you had to set aside plans to have another baby, and the experience really brought home your sense of your own mortality. You might still be struggling with how it changed your life. You might still be mourning the kid you didn't have and now don't feel you can. Your kids you do have might have developed anxiety or other issues due to their experience with your illness. You might feel like you can't return to your pre-cancer life but be unsure what your post-cancer life looks like. You might worry a lot about what happens if it comes back. Why is this hard to understand? It's like a willful refusal. |
Anonymous
Yes, thank you, I was coming to post this. All of these things were issues before the pandemic and they are issues after. I'm not sure why everyone blames the pandemic for everything that's wrong with life. |
Anonymous
Is "everyone" blaming the pandemic for "everything" that is wrong with life? Is that something people are doing in this thread? Examples please. |
Anonymous
Btw, this is OP and I'm not really even blaming the pandemic for anything. It's more like, during the height of Covid, I fell into a bit of a funk, and I am currently frustrated because although tine has passed and the pandemic is over, I'm still in the funk. It's frustrating. I could also have written "Anyone else lose their groove when their kid was a toddler and still not have it back by the time they started elementary?" Sounds like people would relate to that as well. But I also think there was something particularly paralyzing about Covid that is still impacting me, so I framed it that way. The incessant criticism on this thread is honestly weird. We get it, you are over Covid. Maybe this thread isn't for you then. |
Anonymous
I'm not sure why so many people are commenting on a thread of people that are struggling. It's sick, really. Leave us alone and go live your best life, which you've apparently been doing this whole time. Posters like you are a great example of why COVID messed up so many people's lived. The total lack of compassion and gaslighting since 2020, really. |
Anonymous
OP & PP - can I ask why you didn't / couldn't have a baby due to Covid, or during that initial pandemic year? Was is stress, anxiety about getting sick, funk / too much on your plate, REs that closed for a period, were you working in-person as HCWs etc.? |
Anonymous
You’re not getting what people are saying. Your complaints, many valid, are about being a parent of young kids. Period. What you are “not over” is being a parent of young kids. You are blaming your problem on COVID when they’re really just about the difficulty of being a parent of young kids. Talk about that, not COVID. Being a mom in America sucks in many ways, regardless of COVID |
Anonymous
YOU aren't getting it. Parenting during COVID makes parenting harder now. There are small ways- my kid didn't have a birthday party until she was 4. The first time we took her to a restaurant at like 2 years old we forgot to ask for a high chair. We are STILL clawing together a village after the isolation. I don't know about normal things like the best toys, getting a bike, etc. Because we were isolated for two years. The sheer number of hours spent entertaining and watching DD at home with NO reprieve other than my job- what a break. No parties, no parks, no playdates, no playgrounds, no visits, no trips, nothing for two years. Part of that was the fact DD was 11 months when it started and couldn't even walk, part of that was closures, part of that was not wanting to risk exposure or getting COVID to miss daycare, part of that was the insane heightened illness policy at daycare (at best she was in 2 weeks a month), part of that was our choice out of a bunch of awful choices. Above all, the fact I only have one because of the pandemic. I'm sure you will dismiss all of that. But that says more about you then it does me. We will always be COVID parents. Can't unring that bell fully. We've tried. |
Anonymous
Some of it's practical. Like I couldn't even schedule an appointment with my OB to have my IUD removed for almost 6 months because of initial shut downs and then my doctor had a backlog. But then during those 6 months, our childcare collapsed. Our daycare shut down temporarily and then altogether. We limped by with some part time care from one of the teachers at our old daycare (would have loved to just hire her full-time but couldn't afford it). We thought DD would start PK at the public school in the fall but then the school didn't open. By the time this was announced, there were no spots available at private preschools. They kept making it sound like schools would open soon but then they didn't. We finally got a spot in a PT preschool in January, but this meant we had care from 9am to 1pm. I tried to find a sitter for at least some afternoons but couldn't; I wound up scaling back my hours to make it work. We were able to get her into full time camp in the summer and she started PK fall of 2021. Huge relief, but not without its bumps. She hated the part time PK and camp. I think it was all that time with us at home combined with a TON of rules related to social distancing, masking, and outdoor time due to Covid. Things got better once she was in full-time PK. Our feeling was, if we're going to have a baby, we should do it right now. We were so tired. I still didn't know what normal looked like for our family. I actually kept a reduced schedule at work because we couldn't get an aftercare spot, and also, I was just burned out. I started to think about what a pregnancy meant for my already exhausted 40+ body. We held off. And then I had another birthday, and decided the window was closed for me. I do still mourn it (typing this made me cry) but I know it's the right choice at this point. But yes, what if I'd gotten my IUD out in February? What if schools had opened in fall of 2020? What if we could afford a FT nanny or a SAHP? What if we'd moved somewhere with more available childcare? And so on. I still have all my DD's baby things packed in boxes in my closet and I can't hear the idea of getting rid of them yet. I feel like I just lost a year and a half, and when it was over, I felt like I'd aged 5 years. What seemed possible before so didnt seem possible anymore. |
Anonymous
| Op, you are exhausted and overwhelmed by being a parent to one child. Having a second child would make your exhaustion worse. I don’t understand why you seem to think your life would be better with two kids when you are overwhelmed with one. Stop blaming all of your problems on Covid shut downs |
Anonymous
I feel like your post just entirely minimizes people’s hardships with childcare. I was part of a group whose preschool closed and didn’t reopen. We didn’t “just switch” to a different preschool. We had to get on multiple waitlists and wait months (until Jan. 2021 until we could find a spot, so nearly a year). At which point my SN toddler (since diagnosed with ASD) had a lot of difficulties with the transition to a new place. And when we sent him back my older DD lost her 1st grade pod spot because the other families weren’t comfortable with us using outside childcare. Which I understood because we were almost at the finish line to get vaccinated and one of the parents of a pod-mate had a high risk condition, but I think you’ve entirely glossed over the actual effect that people’s fears of exposure had on childcare arrangements. Also, it’s easy to look back years later and say people could have gotten childcare if they wanted it. But a lot of people felt like they were making really difficult choices between their livelihood and their children’s safety. This is back when the extreme stories of kids getting very sick/dying were in the news and we were in a societally fraught time with the election. Everything felt high stakes and even when we did send our youngest back to a group setting we did so with a lot of mixed emotions. If we had elderly or high risk family members at home, this probably wouldn’t have even been an option for us. But sure, yeah let’s re-write history and say childcare was readily available for anyone who needed it. |
Anonymous
PP (and/or OP) I just want to extend you my profoundest sympathy for your experience. Mine was very different and not really relevant to this thread but the combined importance and total randomness of fertility can leave deep scars and when external factors play a role that can add to it, I think. Its so hard and I hope you get your groove back soon. |
Anonymous
This is a very insightful post. OP I agree this could be some of what is going on with you. Your life was forced into a path you feel you didn’t have much control over. You’re depleted from COVID, but also grieving your fertility. I hope you and the PP can get to a place of healing with where your life is now and that things get better for you. |
Anonymous
| I think isolating for 2 years did this OP. That’s a really long time and most people didn’t actually do that. It’s not a judgment, it’s just maybe a partial explanation why it did so much damage to your psyche. We were still careful-ish (masking and not going to crowded indoor events) but by summer of 2020 we were seeing friends and so were our kids. The mental healthy effects started to scare me more than Covid. We didn’t end up catching Covid until Oct 2022. |
Anonymous
I have 3 kids with a big gap and can tell you parenting young kids during COVID was an entirely new form of stress and lack of support. Like we were all juggling a lot of balls before but then with COVID we were juggling during a hurricane. So stop telling other moms it’s always been this way when it hasn’t. In the long term COVID has made some things easier (more workplace flexibility/remote options for instance), and there’s been expanded parental leave in recent years. But no, raising young kids circa the early 2010s vs. early 2020s was a different experience. |