Babies, Quarantine and Unexpected Blessings

I wake up at six to a baby crying and remember, not for the first time, that I have another little one who needs me. I pull him into bed with me because I don’t have to get up yet. I have no where to be.

It’s another thirty minutes before my other two come into the room, usually asking to “watch something” before seven in the morning to which the answer is no. Well, maybe just one episode so I can once again roll over to sleep just another twenty minutes.

And then when I can no longer keep my littlest one in dreamland with me, I change his diaper and shuffle out into the kitchen to make coffee and breakfast where I find my husband already working. It’s hard to miss. He is either typing away or basically screaming because for some reason my husband is incapable of just talking while on a call.

I hand him coffee once it’s made, the aroma filling the kitchen. There is no better smell than freshly made coffee. Well, except maybe that new baby smell. Which is smell that I’m privileged to experience once again.

And then I serve breakfast to my girls. They get dressed and then off to school, which is now conveniently located in my dinning room. Everything that used to take 30 minutes during a rushed morning is now spread out over three hours.

From there, it is a flurry of Zoom classes and homework until well into the afternoon, sprinkled every few hours with breastfeeding sessions and my youngest napping on my chest.

This is not how I imagined my maternity leave. Not just the global pandemic raging across the world. Everything about it.

I imagined rushing to get everyone out the door in the morning. I imagined juggling schedules to get in time with my two girls so neither would feel left out or replaced by my newest little’s presence. I imagined being so overwhelmed with everything that was asked of me, that the postpartum depression that plagued me after my first daughters birth would crop back up. I imagined jealousy and crying fits. I imagined fights with my husband about not enough time and not enough sleep.

But that hasn’t been the case. Instead I have things I never would have imagined before. My husband home all the time, taking a few minutes between responding to clients and Zoom meetings to chat with Daniel or a quick play session with the girls. My girls seemingly never going through that jealous phase of a new sibling because not only does Daniel get to stay home with mom for the whole day, they do too. I’m around twenty four seven and never rushing them to get out the door and on to the bus.

We are lucky to have a “hacienda” to wait this virus out. A place we used to only be able to come to about once a month and now we are living here rather than in our apartment. They now have the ability to walk outside and run around without being worried about the cars in the street. Instead they greet their horses in the morning with carrots or apples. They do cartwheels on the grass, rather than asking me to move the couch to have enough room to do it in the house. They play tag and race and go outside without asking.

We take morning walks and go on mountain hikes instead of watching TV. We “research” interesting facts about plants and animals and natural disasters rather than rushing through the evening routine the second we get home.

There are some things I feel like I’m missing out on of course, especially since this is my last baby. Long breastfeeding sessions in my rocking chair at home, bonding just me and baby while my husband worked and my girls went to school. Writing sessions while the baby napped and pumping in the morning to have an awesome supply once I returned to work or even for an occasional bottle which, to be fair, never worked for my first two anyway.

Not to mention the constant stress and worry of getting infected with the new virus with a newborn in the house. Not having visitors or anyone to celebrate his arrival into this world.

And not to mention the world itself. The economy and the worry if any of us will have a job after all of it? And what the new normal will look like once things open up.

But all of that is out of my control. I can’t stop whats happening anymore than the rest of the world. What I can do is shape the way my family goes through it, what they will think about when this is all said and done. So that’s what I’ll do, one princess picnic at a time.