Reply to Anyone else lose their groove during Covid with young kids and still not have it back?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I think people are greatly exaggerating how long Covid impacted our lives. By 2021, we were used to our masked society. By spring 2021, everyone could get vaccinated. Society was up and running.

I understand that not everyone had the same resources but that is the same before and after Covid. If you wanted childcare, you could get it. It isn’t like childcare was unavailable for 3 years. My one friend would hobble together camps for the entire 2020 summer and when school did not open in the fall of 2020, she called every single preschool and daycare to find a spot for her two kids. A lot of places actually expanded their programs opening more kindergarten classes to accommodate those kids who couldn’t start kindergarten at their public schools.

I remember being torn between keeping our spot at our preschool but kept it and was glad that they had outdoor only for the first few months in fall 2020. I kept my kid most of winter.[/quote]

Your anecdotal experiences and observations are not representative of my anecdotal experiences.

Winter 2021: my husband is medical sales and the hospitals in his region preemptively “out of an abundance of caution” postponed elective surgeries throughout the winter. The specific elective surgery he does did not resume until June 2021. But we didn’t know it would resume in June; rather, each month he would learn that “things will probably resume next month”. It was severely stressful and a total mindscrew. Sales has a very low base salary, so we lost our savings trying to keep our head above water during that 6 month period in 2021.

Summer 2021: our state mandated masks for kids in preschool age 5 and above (Massachusetts) in May or June 2021. It had been optional beforehand for private preschools. Our oldest has special needs and struggled with the mask, particularly during the outdoor times when it felt too hot and sweaty for him to keep on while running around. We followed the rules of the school and tried to help him keep it on, and the teacher tried to be understanding, but the new state-wide mandate of masks for all preschoolers-implemented in summer of 2021, after vaccines-was depressing for everyone involved. That mandate would remain in effect statewide until February 2022 and at our preschool until May 2022.

Late Summer 2021: I was induced with our third child. The induction was a two day process. I was instructed, unprompted during the initial briefing, by the intake nurse that I could not take the mask off at any time in the hospital. Thus I did the the induction process and gave birth with a mask. I know women who say that it did not bother them to give birth with a mask on, but I know other women who feel it was a traumatic experience. It was the latter for me, and I am deeply saddened even now when I think about our child’s birth. I have had the same doctor and nurses for all of my children’s births, and it was in the room next to where I previously gave birth, so the only difference in experience was wearing the mask to labor and push. I think because I know how special the other births were, and how great my doctor and the nurses are as people, I am even more saddened because I can compare the unpleasant third birth to the previous ones. I can’t pretend that giving birth in a mask was no big deal to me (despite my attempts to accept it in my head at the time). I then, predictably, developed postpartum depression after that third birth and felt a total lack of connection with society.

Fall 2021: I was in grad school for a challenging STEM field full time on the full GI bill before Covid began, and I was only a few classes away from graduating. I had stayed in school throughout Covid, pregnancies, and births. We had to drop down to part time status for childcare due to the financial challenges mentioned previously, but I was going to finish and be the first person in my family to both go to and graduate from graduate school. The classes I needed to graduate were only offered online fall 2021, but I did one that semester with two kids primarily at home and a newborn at home always. I did their crappy online version of the course that semester and kept in contact with my thesis adviser over zoom. Not to belabor the point, but I was resolute in gutting it out until I finished-no matter what. But in December 2021, I learned that my university was mandating the booster. I had a medically documented bad reaction to the second shot, but my exemption was not approved. It was my health versus finishing my degree, so I had to stop school just one semester away from graduating.

I’m probably writing into the void here, but I just wanted to be a counterexample to the assertion that the Covid era ended by 2021. The policies deeply affected my family’s lives, perhaps forever changing the trajectory of our path. We’ll be alright, my husband and I kept our marriage and we didn’t lose our shirts, but 2021 was a deeply miserable year for us specifically because of Covid policies. [/quote]

Why did you CHOOSE to get pregnant during covid?!!!  90% percent of your misery was self inflicted. [/quote]

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