I have decided to write a weekly diary of our time through the Coronavirus pandemic. To keep for the future. It’s such an unprecedented time and full of so many mixed feelings and events we have never encountered before it is hard to process it all.
15th September
It’s been great to be back to the school routine this week, back to normalish life, my cleaner back to clean my house. Children back at school and swimming lessons. Life is clearly not the same and the news seems to be getting bleaker if I’m honest. But getting into some sort of semblance of normality is nice.
17th September
Bo had his settling in session at pre-school today. I knew he really needed to go for activities and socialisation. He’s also terribly missed his siblings since they have been back at school. I was right. We did and hour and a half session, I stayed for the whole time. He was a bit overwhelmed by all the children at first and kept checking back with me to ask if he could play with all the different toys, or to show them to me. He wasn’t keen on sitting on the mat, but I could see how much fun he was going to have there. We agreed two more settling sessions next week, with the aim of him going for a full session at the end of the week.
Aria has been invited to a playdate with a friend after school. She is so excited about this as this is something she has wanted to do all through lockdown. The friend is in her class and her class bubble and will be within the rule of 6, so I have decided it will be ok and it’s so lovely to see her so excited about something so normal.
19th September
I had a bit of a cough last night, I took my inhaler and just thought that something had triggered my asthma. But this morning I woke and it was definitely a new and persistent cough. I was coughing on and off several times an hour. It was also a dry cough. It did feel like whatever it was my asthma has exacerbated it, but after discussions with my husband – was it asthma, was it not? But after deliberation, given that it was a new, dry and persistent cough the only write thing to do honestly was self isolate.
I was filled dread with the thought of home schooling and being stuck back indoors again. I felt awful that I had to cancel the children’s first yoga class since lockdown, and also postpone the rest of Bo’s settling sessions. But it’s the social responsible thing to do is it not? I guess with 3 children there is always going to be a volume of illness coming into the house. I wonder if every couple of weeks this is going to be the way it goes? I desperately hope not, but what can we do?
21st September
The news is depressing today. A press conference with the government’s chief medical officers have told us things are getting bad again with positive cases doubling every 8 days. We’re now at around 4000 new cases per day. There is a press conference tomorrow morning and we are pretty much bracing ourselves for new lockdown restrictions. I don’t think we’ll go back into full lockdown, but I think there will be quite tight restrictions in place. I suspect socialising will be banned, which I think is the thing that is making me most sad. I can cope with no pubs or restaurants, but not seeing family and friends feels hideous after having done it for months and months already.
Stockpiling has already begun. Did people not learn last time that if we all just purchase things like normal we would all be ok? It looks like toilet roll and pasta are what is being targeting again. Along with online food shop slots. It feels very bleak out there and I am trying to overcome it and look to the positive, but it feels like a very difficult winter looming ahead of us. At least we have our health, jobs (at the moment) and a happy home. I will focus on the good and tried to back away from the negative media and crazy conspiracy theorists.
I have just posted of my postal test, so hopefully it will come back negative and the children can get back to school. I can definitely see how much they need it. I suspect it’s going to be an interesting week.