How Baby

Hey, remember last week when I talked about how I dropped the ball on getting Momo outside to play? Well, right after that I vowed to get her some more play time, and… almost immediately everything down the coast lit on fire and the air’s been chunky with smoke. Look. I tried.

I really feel for people who are new parents this year. Personally, I struggled a lot with intrusive thoughts as one of my main postpartum mental health troubles, and a lot of them were basically paranoia about something bad happening – strangers stealing the stroller, being in a natural disaster or a shooting, falling and hurting her, stuff like that. But, at LEAST, in 2013 I had the relative peace of knowing that everything I was fixated on was an irrational fear that had very little basis in reality.

In 2020? Uh, well, aside from the mass communal mourning, the thing is, some of those irrational fears are actually… kind of… being supported. Strangers are sources of danger? Yep. Old granny touching your baby will get them sick? Yup. Something might happen to you and orphan your kid? Maybe! You brought a child into the worst crisis of our time? Yeah, feels like it!

So it’s like, how much harder is it right now to be able to objectively look at all your other fears and not think, well, if some of them are rational…

And to add insult to injury, new parents aren’t getting the absolutely necessary support from their community: fewer visits from family, fewer opportunities to go simply be with other parents, fewer recreational outlets, no place to go to be away from their child for an hour, fewer outlets for self-care… my heart goes out to you, new parents. All the coping mechanisms for the uniquely shitty parts of new parenthood aren’t available to you right now, and that sucks. Stay strong. D: