The most disorienting thing about becoming a parent right at the outset of a global pandemic is that I'll never know what it's like to be a first-time mom not during a global pandemic.
How many visitors would we have gotten -- or wanted -- during those first few weeks, when the baby was at his squishiest and fragilest and we felt the most at sea?
How often would we have left the house? Would we have taken the baby to a restaurant by now? Would we have asked family members to babysit him for an evening? Or overnight? Would I have sought out a local mom group?
How worried would I be about his safety? The same? Less?
How would I have felt dropping him off for his first day of daycare? Would I still have felt -- justly or not -- guilty? Or as guilty? (Would it have felt merely like I was choosing work over my baby, as opposed to feeling like I was choosing work over my baby and gambling with his health?)
How would we have bonded as a family? How many fewer hours (days?) would we have spent together? Would it have been more difficult for GR and I to share the day-to-day tasks of parenthood? How much more resentment or FOMO would we have felt, watching our child-free friends continue to live less tethered, more flexible lives (rather than watching, with a sense of black comedy, as everyone else was forced into quarantine, too, just as our baby was born)?
I'll also never know what it's like to live during the Age of Coronavirus while not being a brand-new mom. How strictly would we have isolated ourselves in March? June? September? When it comes to what I regard as safe or reasonable or "worth the risk," how differently would my internal barometer have been calibrated?
Everyone has a version of this story. Other people will never know what it's like to get married (or lose a parent, or get divorced, or graduate high school, or...) not during a global pandemic. In nearly all ways, as usual, I count myself lucky.
