One Becomes Two in Lockdown

Lockdown was a trying time for most people. Friends and families were kept apart as grandparents lost precious time with their grandchildren and partners not cohabitating were forced away from each other. Society was shut down as a plethora of businesses were forced to close with little indication as to when they'd be able to open again. We weren’t supposed to leave the house for anything more than shopping, exercising with our own household (if we could be bothered!) or to go to work in select industries; as children were taken out of school and parents were forced to home-school (with varying degrees of success). I thank my lucky stars that that my little girl was too young for a proper education, but the period didn’t come without its challenges; particularly when my littlest arrived.

It goes without saying that I wish this pandemic would never have reared its ugly head, but as it had to, I would have made much more of it if it came two or three years earlier; the amount I could have gotten done! As it was, my little girl had her life turned upside down overnight. Nursery, swimming and trips to the playground went by the wayside as family visits were replaced by Facetime calls and over the wall conversations when her nana delivered shopping. We tried our best, but we just couldn’t give her everything we felt she needed. She suffered socially too, but not as much as one might expect. Her relationships continued like she hadn’t been apart from people for months, although sharing had become quite a large issue. She’d gotten so used to our undivided attention that we worried about her spending time away from us, but we needn’t have.

I’d take her for runs, down the street and around the block, and she loved them; the trouble being that she wanted to head out five or more times a day! Getting her to understand that we couldn’t when it was pouring down with rain was a long and trying process, in the same way that it was with her sand table and the chalking of the floor of our yard (which always magically disappeared after a monsoon). All of this I witnessed first-hand as I was placed on furlough from work (where I happily took 80% of my wage to stay at home) before being made redundant. Being home all the time gave me an insight into how tiring being around a toddler full time can be (and I don’t just mean the constant runs!); my mind felt drained at the end of each day. It was the plethora of kids’ games, songs and TV shows; it was the amount of times she almost begged to go outside; and more than anything, it was the way she whined and moaned in the way that only a toddler can.

The worst aspect of lockdown with my little girl, however, had to be bedtime; it became an absolute nightmare! I can’t with any kind of expertise blame our isolation as much as I could blame her constantly developing mind or her creativeness, but it regularly took me (or my wife, have to get that in) two hours to get her to drift off. Then there was the need to keep her entertained throughout the day, and my wife’s incessant desire to give her something different to do. With every week, her collection of toys grew and grew, including a Play Dough set followed by copious tubs of Play Dough, a wooden ice cream set and a plastic sandcastle set to be used with the aforementioned sand table. All delighted her to differing degrees, but none more so than the gift that arrived after two months of quarantine; in the form of my littlest girl. That in itself was sad, as the new arrival was allowed no visitors for the first month or two, but it didn’t stop her big sister doting on her (well, sometimes!).

I was worried about how my little girl would react when we brought the baby home, but we as with her reacquainting her nana and grandad when we went into hospital, we really hadn't needed to. She was so excited to meet her little sister and would introduce her to nana and grandad when they dropped our food off; every… single… time! As restrictions were eased she would do the same with all of our friends and relatives; all the while we’d have to keep an eye on her at all times; so that she didn’t give her something too small or accidentally pull the Moses basket over. She wouldn’t get her undivided attention (no, her toys were too important for that), but she would stop to look into the cot every now and again, mainly to be nosey. Our mental fatigue at this time pretty much doubled, and not just from a lack of sleep (more on that in the next piece). Focussing on the needs of an separate, newer human as well as a demanding child took up all of our time (day and night!), and we had no one to unload them on for a couple of hours when we felt the need. As much as I loved spending that bit of extra time with my girls, there was certainly times when I missed the ease, and the lack of stress, of being at work.

By Calum Dewsbury