Month: December 2023

In February of 2020 we found out that we were pregnant with our fourth child. I had some mixed emotions over this, I had been thinking about what my future would look like since my third baby would be starting school that September and this news meant that my future was going to be pushed back at least another three years while I stayed home with a new baby and went back to diapers. I also had concerns that it may push me back into a depression, or worse, it might make the tumour regrow. Luckily, those worries were both unfounded. As my pregnancy progressed so did my excitement for a new baby.

A month after finding out about the pregnancy the world shut down. I all of a sudden had so much more to worry about. I was already considered “geriatric” for pregnancy, so the pregnancy came with enough worries on its own, but now I had to worry about this unknown. Would my baby be okay if I became ill with Covid? What would giving birth during Covid look like? I also had to get a new doctor as my family doctor who had delivered all my other children had since retired and my new family doctor does not deliver babies. So, I was trying to navigate a whole new medical process in the middle of a medical crisis, it was a bit scary. My doctor was great, he did an ultrasound during one of my first visits to tell me the gender of my baby even though it was a bit early. I was so happy to find out we would be having another girl.

Luckily, I did not get Covid while I was pregnant so there was no need to worry about how that might affect the baby or if there might be any long term complications to her health because of it. She was born in October, so restrictions were not as strict but still more than I would have liked. In the hospital I was able to have my husband with me, which was a relief, I was not looking forward to the possibility of having to go through the whole thing alone. She was an uncooperative baby as far as the birth was concerned. After the 40 week mark, she was still not consistently head down during ultrasounds. My second to last ultrasound they had measured her at 9lbs4oz, which is coincidentally what she weighed when she was born, and she was head down. This was promising for being induced the following week. When we went back in, there was another ultrasound which showed she had returned to a sideways lying position. Cue some serious disappointment! I voiced my disappointment, and my doctor had voiced his concern about me potentially having my water break while baby was sideways and having an arm in the way by the time I made it to hospital. So, I was admitted to hospital and not long after the doctor attempted to turn the baby to allow for a safe induction. It worked and the induction process began. Around 1am I was in a birthing unit and shortly after that they proceeded to break my water. I laboured for some time, then the contractions slowed and another ultrasound was done to ensure the baby was still head down. She was not, she had retreated and returned to her favourite sideways lying position. This was the end of my labour. At this time it was decided that I would deliver this baby via c-section. This was not what I was hoping for, but I was prepared for it because of how much she had been moving. I was done being pregnant and very much just wanted to get this baby out one way or another. I was a bit worried about how this would go after the first time. I did not want an epidural and was prepared to be told I would have to be put under for the procedure. I was happy to find out that I did not need either of those things and instead would be given an anesthetic similar to the freezing a dentist will give for a filling, just a much larger dose into my back. I was also told that the anesthesiologist would not require me to tell them that I wanted this. Relief. This operation was much easier for me. Apparently, it was not as good for my husband as there seemed to be an excessive amount of bleeding and he became very worried during the procedure. Once it was done and I was taken out of the OR everything was pretty smooth. I got sick which seems to be what I do after anesthetic – I was sick during my first c-section and was apparently quite sick after my tumour removal, but I don’t remember that. Once feeling began to return to my legs we were taken to a room where we would be monitored for a few days.

After the baby was born we were allowed to have one visitor per 24 hours, we had the same visitor, my mom, the whole time as most people were working during that time. My parents had my older children at their home and my mother would come to visit me and the baby after dropping them off at school in the morning. She would leave in the afternoon to pick up the kids from school, then my husband would come back for a short time after work. But, he was working during this time, so he went home at night to sleep. The baby slept all day. This is not an exaggeration, she would fall asleep around 7 or 8am and sleep until about supper time, then she would be awake all night. She wasn’t feeding well, I don’t know if it is because I wasn’t producing enough milk or if it was just because she didn’t care to do it. By the time we left the hospital she had lost more weight than she should have. We were referred to feeding specialists and were advised to ensure she was eating every two hours and to top up all feeds with a bottle. She started gaining weight again with this, but she still was not eating very much. Now, three years later, I’m still not sure how she is gaining weight as she would prefer to not eat the majority of the time.

It’s been a very different experience raising a baby during a pandemic. For the first two years of her life most of the people she met were just eyes. I noticed that she was able to tell when people smiled at her even though she couldn’t see their mouths she was still able to read their expression through their eyes. She is much more shy than any of my other children since she was never really in any social situations as a baby. She is now starting to get used to meeting new people even though she is still very shy. She is also a big Mommy’s girl and will hide behind me or hide her face in my shoulder in new situations. But, she is growing up and learning to be part of this world that has changed so much since she was born.

From March 2020 until May 2023 the world experienced something that hadn’t really happened in over 100 years. It caused a lot of panic and stress and hate. It created a whole new way of life for many people. And, having four young children to enjoy this experience with made it so much more … everything.

The media was beginning to spark some public panic at the beginning of March. We were preparing for an annual winter vacation – a getaway from the winter. The last few days leading up to our vacation were met with many questions about whether or not we would go and how worried we were about this new flu virus that everyone had been talking about. Well, since I had spent more than 20 years avoiding the News at this point after a suggestion from a counsellor in my youth, I had no idea what everyone was talking about. So, I asked my good friend Google to enlighten me about Coronavirus. Apparently, Google was not yet alerted to the dangers of this new virus and only had information about the milder more common Coronavirus. My friend, Google, informed me that if I had ever had a flu virus in the past that I likely had Coronavirus. So, not being a scientist or someone who watches the news, I decided that whatever this new mutation of Coronavirus was, it was a mutation of a virus my body had already dealt with and my body would be prepared, at least in part, for this one should I ever be exposed to it. So, my level of panic at this time would have been non-existent and I couldn’t really understand all the people who were getting so worried about something that hadn’t even come into our province yet and was also something that had been around for some time.

So, we took our vacation. We went to the sun. We had about two or three days before the world seemed to end. We ended up spending much of our vacation watching news broadcasts of what was happening around the world. We watched, with a bit more anxiety now, as things started shutting down. We spent a lot of time trying to come up with fun activities for the kids to do while we were on vacation and all the places we had planned to visit were now closed and we couldn’t even use the pool. The last few days of our vacation were spent trying to figure out how we would get home as airports closed and flights were cancelled. But, we made it home, hours before new restrictions would be put in place that would have meant isolating in the area we entered the country – which was no longer able to be our province. So, after our vacation in the sun we returned home to schools being closed and were told we had to isolate for two weeks. Luckily, my wonderful parents were able to bring us groceries since we had no food in our home and were now not able to go to the store. They did a few deliveries of groceries for us over our two weeks of isolation and even brought some things to help keep the kids entertained in that time.

The kids wouldn’t get to go back to school or preschool that year. The government tried to set up at-home learning for the children in school but it only lasted for about a month after which they decided that the school year would be over and all students would pass regardless of what they were capable of at the end of the year. That was good because the at home learning was essentially non-existent, for my children anyway. However, with my children being immersed in a second language at school, one of my children had just started school that year and another would start the following year also learning in a second language. The only way an immersion class works is if the children are actually being immersed in the language all day at school. Even when we returned to school in September of 2020, there was no way to continue with the immersion through school closures. So, my two children were being asked to work and learn in a second language that they would get to hear for about an hour or less each day. When concerns were brought to the teachers, the principals, the school board, the education minister, it was always met the same way – “all of the children in this grade are having the same struggles.” Of course they were! I didn’t want to know that everyone was struggling, I wanted to know how we were going to get past it – how was my child going to go into the second grade after two years of interrupted schooling and be able to learn what they were going to teach him? And, if they were just going to shrug and say this is where everyone in that grade is because of all the school closures what would that mean in the future, at what point were they going to see that a lot of these kids just were not going to be able to catch up because no one was going back to teach them what they missed? All the while, I was watching the education minister in news broadcasts assure the voting population that the children were, in fact, not falling behind at all and that anyone who suggested they might be was simply wrong. I was infuriated. I was sending emails to anyone who should be doing something about it and getting responses from no one. There was no extra supports being put into schools for these children and the supports that were in place from before the pandemic were stretched so thin and then were being used to cover teacher absences so any child who was falling behind would just be left behind to feel as though they were drowning, while watching the lifeguards on the shore, who were smiling and telling them to just stop drowning.

The 2022-2023 school year was both the last school year of the pandemic as well as the first uninterrupted school year for our children during the pandemic. In theory, this should have been a much better experience for everyone because routines would not be constantly changing. However, in reality, what happened was that the children didn’t really know how to cope with going to school without the extended closures. They were very tired and had a hard time keeping focused. Everyone could feel the strain this was putting on them. No one really seemed too concerned about how that change would affect the children after three years. There were three grades of children who had never gone to school without any interruptions or attempts at at-home learning. Those children didn’t know how to cope with the new normal and two of my children were in that group. It was a struggle. They spent everyday looking ahead to the next break that they had come to expect more frequently. I took it upon myself to give my children mental health days during the school year to let them recharge a bit, one at a time, which was really nice because they don’t often get a lot of time with me.

Now, we focus on helping our boys achieve their academic goals in school. For one of them that meant switching from learning a second language. He was not sure he wanted to change classes but now that he is learning in English and is able to understand what is going on we are seeing a lot of progress. For the other that means watching his progress to see how he improves over time. He was fortunate enough to be given extra support from school that hadn’t been available for his brother and is now getting closer to the academic goals for his grade level. I will forever look back on this time as the time I realized that the government truly does not care about our children – I always had an inkling but it was confirmed as I watched them deny the negative effects of the pandemic on children’s learning and consistently insist that there was no need for any additional supports in our schools.