I never knew I could feel so betrayed. Betrayed by just about everyone I know.

We got pregnant in 2019 and eagerly awaited for March of 2020. We couldn’t wait for the arrival of our son! As the day drew nearer, we started hearing reports of this covid-19 virus, but mostly brushed it off. What could distract us from the prospect of meeting our son?

People were celebrating his arrival with us. Family and friends had promised to come visit and help us. A week or so before he arrived into this world, our first visitor was on the fence about coming because of Covid-19. I asked her to please come because we could really use the support so she came. I am so grateful she came.

We went into labor in the wee hours of the morning on March 13 and welcomed our son into the world that evening. We stayed the night at the Birth Center and prepped to leave the next morning.

Everything had changed when we got home on March 14th.

Patrick ran to the store to buy some necessary things, like toilet paper and food. Shelves were empty. It was apocalyptic. Covid-19 was officially here.

Almost all the help and visitors we had been expecting had evaporated. There are obviously some exceptions, and to those people, we are eternally grateful for you. Whether you know it or not, you carried us through some very hard times.

Every new mother looks forward to sharing her baby with her friends and family. Not only that, but we look forward to help with meals, or having people come help share the load of keeping the house in order. Many of our friends avoided us so we wouldn’t ‘get sick’. Most people didn’t bother asking if we wanted visitors. They just assumed.

As time went on, I felt more and more unsupported and felt more and more betrayed by the world. Why was everyone letting some virus rule their lives? Why were people forgetting about those of us who needed them in a hard time?

A week after Rufus was born, we had to rush him to the ER.

Not only was that experience traumatizing for the obvious reason of having your baby in the ER but also because of how incompetent and disorganized the hospital was.

The ER refused to call in a nurse who specialized in new born care because “he might have covid-19”. While this obvious neglect was happening, they did a number of things to him, like take x-rays, place monitors all over him, give him oxygen through the nose, and worse of all, they pinned our baby down and repeatedly jabbed him in the elbow with a needle trying to extract his blood for testing.

He screamed harder than I’ve ever heard him scream to this day. Eventually, after a number of failed attempts, they caved and summoned a nurse who works with babies. She entered wearing a full on hazmat suit. Can you imagine seeing that as a newborn baby? I can’t imagine the fear he was experiencing.

This nurse was magic.

She calmly expressed how annoyed she was that she had to wear this costume and shared her frustration with the doctors who didn’t have the sense to call her earlier. She could see our distress and felt so bad for Rufus. And with her gentle touch, she was able to gently take his blood and place an IV. He even fell asleep in the process.

When she heard how much blood they wanted from him she said it was too much blood for a 7 day old baby. She questioned the doctors and they insisted. She took the exact amount of blood that is almost too much for a baby. We thanked her profusely for her kind and gentle ways of handling Rufus. We were sad to see the only competent person in the hospital leave us.

They loaded me and him on a bed, told Patrick to leave because only one person in a room at a time. Because, you know, Covid-19…

Patrick had to say goodbye to his wife and brand new baby without any hint of when he would see us again. They masked me up, covered him with a blanket and wheeled us to a wing of the hospital that held people truly suffering from Covid-19. They kept me and my new baby in a wing of the hospital with people who actually had Covid-19. Let that sink in for a moment.

The whole time I was there, I was scared.

I didn’t know what to expect, when I could g0 home, if my baby was going to be okay or if he had covid-19 and was going to die. My imagination was running wild. He had to be on constant oxygen and monitoring. We ran every test possible on him.

On the third day, they said “we don’t know what’s wrong. You can go home now.” So I hurried as fast as I could to pack everything up. There was one nurse who I could tell felt bad for how things were happening with us and she walked us all the way to the car.

Patrick didn’t have an easier time than me.

He got no sleep, but brought us food every day because hospital food is flavorless and gross. They wouldn’t let him set foot in the hospital to see us. He even said there were armed guards positioned at the doors!

If I thought people were unwilling to visit then, it only grew worse. My hopes and dreams of sharing Rufus with people basically got squashed. Again, I don’t want to discredit those who brought us food and even came to visit. But I’m hurt by all those who didn’t.

At some point, Patrick shared a bit of his traumatic experience about us being in the hospital on social media and was completely shut down. His “friends” were awful to him. From that point on, he felt that he was not allowed to be real with people. He felt that he had to shut down and censor his voice and his lived experience.

I felt this way too. I’ve had people say truly awful things to me because of my lived experience with having a baby during Covid-19.

It is an awful feeling knowing that your friends and family won’t let you speak freely of your experiences. And when you do, they call you names and making rash accusations. Mine and Patrick’s trauma of dealing with Covid-19 and having a newborn is real. We were angry, hurt, and betrayed. Patrick started censoring himself. I got more aggressively outspoken.

No one deserves to have their Covid-19 trauma, diminished like ours was.

I imagine that we aren’t the only new parents who desired their people to celebrate with us and were denied the opportunity. And I know for certain we are not the only people who are told we are wrong because of our trauma.

After/during all this, we made some friends and discovered that not everyone bought into this new Covid-19 dictatorship. This was life saving for us as new parents. Without these people, I think I would’ve gotten stuck with these feelings of betrayal that I still feel rattling around in me. Without these people, last year would have been darn near unbearable.

My hope in writing this is to raise awareness for those who have had traumatic experiences at the hands of covid-19. Not only the type of trauma of contracting this virus, but all the trauma. The trauma of loneliness, neglect, fear, mistreatment, and sadness. Those things are real. They deserve a voice. They deserve to be heard and respected.

Need some tips on emergency preparedness for Covid-19? Check out this article.