On Feb. 1, I woke up a bit excited. After a difficult January during which parents across the country experienced what was possibly the highest level of anxiety since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic — due to the omicron variant sweeping the nation — the numbers were finally beginning to trend downward. Meanwhile, in my own home, my toddler thankfully had avoided catching COVID when half of his day care classroom got it earlier in the month and was back at school.
Making my morning even better was reading the news that the COVID vaccine from Pfizer may be available for children under 5 by the end of February.
As someone who became a new parent at the start of the pandemic in March 2020, after giving birth at the end of the month, this was long-awaited news. I remember feeling so angry when, at the end of December 2021, it seemed like the vaccine for little ones was still many months away. But this morning’s news brought a welcome relief from the intense worries I’ve had since having my now-22-month-old.
And then… he tested positive.
The same morning of the Pfizer announcement, my husband and I opened the at-home COVID tests we had received the previous week from the U.S. government. We were glad to have avoided testing positive after my son’s last COVID exposure, so we didn’t think anything of it when he was extra fussy the night before and had a slightly elevated body temperature. Yet out of an abundance of caution, we decided to test him.
The second line on the at-home test became visible within a few minutes. Like, really, really visible. My son — who I’ve done my best to protect from a coronavirus that has caused the deaths of 5.7 million people worldwide — was now yet another confirmed case of COVID.
After these last two years of fear and avoiding friends and family to keep him safe, I thought my heart would sink and I would have a panic attack like I had in the last few weeks of pregnancy when news of partners not being allowed in birthing hospital rooms spread.
Instead, seeing my son’s positive COVID test gave me an eerie sense of calm.
I’ve been worrying about this for two years. Like pretty much every other parent I knew, hearing from well-meaning family and friends who wanted to meet the new baby that “most kids don’t get very sick” was not even remotely comforting. As I frequently said to my husband, “Even if the chances are one in a million, if my son is the one in a million that dies, it won’t matter that other kids are fine.”
The decision to put our son in day care — which was necessary as two working parents with demanding jobs — worried me. I even considered keeping him home during the omicron surge, but I knew this would be a disaster for my already flailing mental health. So instead, we did our best to isolate and avoid everyone.
How could I possibly be feeling relieved when the thing I was terrified of for almost two years had come to pass? And yet, I was.
The truth is that, at the end of last year, getting COVID began to feel inevitable.
Friends from New York told me that everyone they knew had it at the end of December. Friends across the country with young and older kids were exposed every few days. Someone told me they didn’t know a single parent who had survived the month of January 2022 without a COVID exposure.
A friend who got COVID along with her baby during the week of his first birthday said, “I feel like I did everything right and still got it.” I understood her. We were constantly doing the best we could, following the advice of our doctors and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and taking what felt like all of the precautions even when others around us didn’t.
“I am just so exhausted,” my husband said at the beginning of this year. Everywhere I looked, parents — especially those of us who had children under 5 that did not yet qualify for the COVID vaccine — were wholly burnt out as January began.
Tired of not being able to leave the house, tired of not getting enough sleep, tired of paying extra for grocery delivery, tired of cooking every single damn day, tired of not being able to see friends and family much, tired of (let’s say it) wearing masks even though we know it’s the right thing to do, tired of worrying and worrying and worrying some more. When will it ever stop?
For me, the worries stopped on Tuesday morning as soon as that second test line appeared.
Years ago, when my husband and I helped with a neighbor’s dog who had just gotten into a fight and ultimately lost an eye, he commented on how calm I was in a crisis — the opposite of my usual self. And I guess that same calmness washed over me once we knew what the situation was.
My son seemed to be in a good mood that morning, if I’m honest, and has only had a slight fever for a few days at this point. We still have some time to go before he’s fully cleared. Still, my sense of relief didn’t come from his mild symptoms (though I am happy for those) but rather from the fact that my brain went from constantly ruminating on the “what ifs?” of getting COVID to instead dealing with the situation at hand.
For the first time in two years, I am focused on the present: his symptoms, how to manage to work with a toddler in isolation (yet again), and alerting our day care so it can protect the other kids.
Ultimately, I am a bit annoyed that we couldn’t make it another few weeks to when my son might be able to get the vaccine but, at the same time, now that it has finally happened for my family, I feel OK.
In a few weeks, once the COVID vaccine is hopefully available for children under 5, we will get my son vaccinated. Although we don’t know if or when the next variant is coming, knowing that my baby both survived COVID and is now fully protected against further infections, well, that is truly when I’ll feel relieved.
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