I almost cannot believe I am still writing about the pandemic, as it is a reminder of how long it has truly been going on. It has been about 2.5 years since the pandemic was declared, but the virus first arrived (or was reported about) back in December 2019. When I think back to that time in my life, it was very exciting.
That is because I was weeks away from having my third child. Shortly after I gave birth to him, the virus was taking over and the world was completely shut down. This was a much different experience from how I lived when I had my first two.
With my first two, I had a family who could come over whenever. I could go out and interact with others and mom groups and provide some socialization for my infant. This was not the case for my pandemic baby, who has lived his entire life in a pandemic. That is really absurd to even think about.
The fact that he has lived his whole life in a pandemic. This, of course, has made me worried about his development.
We have heard the experts speak on child development during the pandemic, and how they do expect children to be a bit behind. This could be in academic performance for younger children, or motor / language skills in the babies and toddlers. While we still may not know the extent to his “delay,” it has me nervous.
My third child is also medically complex, and he has had a lot of appointments throughout these last 2.5 years. When he was a young infant, this meant that anytime we went out, every doctor we saw, was behind a face mask.
While I am incredibly pro-science, and understand why these measures were needed, and I am grateful for them. I worried about him as an infant. Would he be afraid of people? Would he not know simple facial expressions, like smiling and laughing? These were the things I worried about.
I also worried about his language development. He had two older siblings, so I knew he was better than nothing, but he didn’t seem to talk as quickly as my older children. However, he has seemed to catch up, and his language development is fine now.
I guess there is some comfort there, that even though he was a bit behind in his language development, he seems to have made up time, and he now talks like everyone is listening. He also seems to be developing fine in other ways, but there is still one area that concerns me, and that is his social development.
This is my concern now that he has not had enough chances to interact with other children. His doctor assures me that he will be fine, and the fact that he does have siblings is reassuring, but sibling interaction is not always the same as peer interaction.
Being a stay-at-home mom, he is not exposed to daycare, and while that was suggested as an idea by his doctor, we just don’t have the money to be completely honest (daycare is expensive.)
Being a mom always comes with things to be worried and concerned about, and while I know that is normal, these worries are just different from what they were when my older two were the same age. I wasn’t worried about their development in these ways, but they weren’t in a pandemic.
At some point, I have to realize that I have to just give up control, and realize that I can only do my best, and I have to have faith that the world will help him. He will start school with teachers who know that this age group of children have grown up behind closed doors and a worrying world, and that they will be equipped to help them grow and thrive the way they need to.
While I am glad that the pandemic seems to be almost over, I can’t help but still grieve for the moments that were lost, and how that may have harmed my child. I also have to tell myself that this was all beyond my control, that I need to drop some of the mom guilt I have been feeling about it and really realize that I have done my best.
I guess my whole point for any mom who is in the same boat as me is that we did it and despite how bad we may feel we did, we likely didn’t do half as bad.