I didn’t want this to be a “mommy blog.” I never thought that the only thing I would have to write about would be my kid. I didn’t want to give anyone advice on the best baby gear, the tricks I use to get a baby to sleep, hacks to get your toddler to eat all their dinner, DIY toys you can make out of things around the house. I thought that was boring, overdone, and cliché.
And still, I refuse to define myself this way. I am not “mommy blogger” material. I don’t have any advice. I am not an expert. I don’t make my own toys or do my own crafts. I have no clue how to get my kid to eat dinner most nights. I am fumbling along, just like most other new moms.
But we’re still in the midst of a pandemic. I thought we’d be past this by now. My life is still not what I thought it would be. I stopped writing for awhile because I felt too disheartened and disappointed by the reality that new motherhood in a pandemic was. Is. I felt like the only thing I had to write about was motherhood because that feels like the only thing I’ve been doing.
And I didn’t want this to be a mommy blog.
So I stopped writing blog posts.
Since becoming a mom, almost a year ago, my life has become incredibly small. You could say it’s as small as my 1,600 square foot house. It’s small because we’re taking the pandemic very seriously. It’s small because we’ve limited our outings and travels. We’ve stopped seeing our friends. I don’t go in to the office to work. There are no happy hours or events or date nights out on the town. It has felt even smaller as we’ve progressed into winter, even post-holidays, with the cold weather keeping us indoors, dark evenings pressing us into early bedtimes.
I’ve always wanted to be a working mom. I’ve always wanted to have a life with a baby in it, not a life that revolves around a baby. I’ve always wanted to live on my own terms, have interests and hobbies that excite me, and go places and do things that ignite my creative fire.
But I feel stuck right now. I know that it’s temporary, but it’s frustrating. Covid has changed my plans. I’ve found myself floundering, wondering how to separate my new-mom life from Covid life. I’ve been struggling to figure out what life changes have come about because I’m a new mom and what changes are because we’re in this Covid limbo of isolation. I’ve been trying to figure out who I am as a person, but it feels like the only thing available to me right now is to be a mom.
I am still working, Monday through Thursday. But work doesn’t feel like work used to. I left the office one day in February to have a baby and go on maternity leave and now I’m sitting at a desk in my guest room, logging onto Teams to get the office updates. Now everything feels suspended, hanging in the invisible internet threads of emails and Zoom calls.
I don’t feel like work is part of my identity the way it used to be, but is that because I’ve found more meaning in being a mom, or because I feel temporarily disconnected from my colleagues and the fast-paced office life of working at a marketing agency?
I struggle to find my identity. And I’m sure that every mom has written or said that sentence at some point. But they weren’t trapped behind face masks and plexiglass, drowning in hand sanitizer and Clorox. They could actually see the friendly face smiling kindly at them in grocery store as they struggled to put their baby’s car seat in a shopping cart. I’ve never even taken my baby to the grocery store. Do car seats even fit in carts?
Am I struggling to find my identity as a mom, or am I struggling to find my identity as a person? I’m not even sure anymore. Which parts of my life will go back to normal when “back to normal” finally happens? I don’t actually know what a normal mom-life looks like.
I love being a mom, but I miss the year that I should have had.
My story doesn’t feel like it was any terrible hardship. It doesn’t feel like this year has been particularly significant. I don’t feel like my story deserves more sympathy or prominence than anyone else’s. We have all had a tough, disappointing year, in numerous and vastly differing ways.
My story is mostly boring. Two new parents, taking care of their baby. I am so incredibly grateful that this is all it is. I get to hunker down with my husband, soak up the beautiful smiles from my daughter, and take the dog on walks. It’s not that terrible.
But someday, this period in my life will feel like a distant dream. Someone will look at this time in history, this time in a life of raising a newborn in a pandemic, and they will ask what that possibly could have been like? They will ask for the story. And while it doesn’t feel like much of a story to me now, someday it will be. So I guess I better start writing a bit of it down.