Soon enough it was the 2nd trimester and the girls and I spent the days down at the creek playing and relaxing. I wore overalls almost every single day. I taught myself how to mow the lawn after we fired the lawn guys for cutting it too short and making it die. I loved having a new activity to focus on. Work was crazy. I have no idea how I worked almost 30 hours a week and dealt with the girls being here with me. Virtual school was finally out but overall, it was way too much.
Did I mention we were knee-deep in remodeling the girl's bathroom? Like we had ripped it down to the studs in February, and were slowly putting it back together. This makes me laugh now but it was just one more crazy thing.
I went to the dentist and left the girls in the car with activities since they weren't allowed to come in with me. They also sat in the car or on the porch swing at all of my midwife appointments. We were too nervous to see anyone or have a babysitter because of my high risk category. The only thing we felt safe doing was being outside. No play dates because you can't keep kids away from each other. I only felt comfortable with outside hangouts with my friends because we are all adults and got nowhere near each other, and even those were infrequent. Bean was still working every day- nothing changed for him but everything had changed for me.
The girls and I were so nervous to even go to the grocery store so we wore our masks, tried not to touch anything, and immediately put on hand sanitizer when we got back in the car. Bean was the only one going out every day- most days we only left the house to go to the creek. That was the bright spot in our whole year- sitting and listening to the water and looking at the trees.
Then Bean called early one morning and said he was coming home because he had a fever. With Covid they had been doing temp checks every morning as soon as you came into the office. His was only 99 degrees but he came home and went straight into the game room to quarantine for 14 days.
He had a virtual visit with our family doctor who sent him for a Covid test. At that time, testing was not widely available and you had to wait a full 3 days for results. He had a mild headache but no other symptoms. He worked up in the game room, but couldn't watch TV because it was broken, and he slept on the couch.
We brought him breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and set them outside the door and he would bring the food inside. Usually we would come eat dessert with him after dinner- sitting on opposite sides of the door that thankfully has glass panes.
Everything else was up to me and while I would have normally thought it was too much and I couldn't handle it, I did handle it. The highlight of that time was the girls and I found the book Eloise, about a naughty girl living at the Plaza hotel. I got really into reading it in her voice and we read it every night. Did I mention it's long and takes about 30 minutes if you read it with flair?!
After 10 days in quarantine, about a week after he took the test but still hadn't found out the results, he told me he was coming out. I was terrified. The CDC had recently changed the rules, saying you could be out of quarantine 10 days after the last symptom leaves, but we still didn't have confirmation on whether he had actually had Covid or not. He got out, went to work, and then texted me later in the day:
Turns out the place where he took the test had the results posted under his middle name, not his first name, which is what he kept looking it up under. All medical stuff is under his first name, but everything else is under his middle name and that's what he goes by. As soon as he told me that little tidbit, we laughed hysterically for at least 10 minutes and that sealed the deal- if this baby was a boy, there was NO WAY he would go by his middle name!
We had discussed that if we had a boy, maybe he could go by his middle name since he does and so does my brother- even though it annoys me with paperwork and stuff- we thought it would be a cute connection. It didn't matter anyway, since we already had a girl name picked out- Josephine Collins- and didn't that mean that the baby could be a girl? We have always had trouble with boy names but it never mattered since we always had girls.The whole time I never had any specific indications that this baby would be a boy vs a girl. No real gut feeling, other than the Baby B connection and the fact that we had the girl name super easily. So it could have gone either way.
During this quarantine period, we had a major plumbing issue when the toilet in the powder bath overflowed and an inch of poop water covered the floor. We figured out it happened when Bean finally took a bath in the dirty tub in the game room bathroom.
I put towels down to clean it up- as big and nauseous as I was- but I couldn't finish cleaning up because the reason it overflowed was already known to us- the cast iron pipes are old and rusted and we needed a plumber to come out and clear the line before I could use the washing machine or toilet. We had this problem before. So the poop water and all of our mess towels sat on the floor in there for a week before the plumbers could come. Around the time Bean got out, they came and we got it fixed temporarily.
As if we didn't need any more things to stress about, interest rates were extremely low and we decided to refinance our house and get some cash out to use on a kitchen remodel when the baby I was carrying was a year and half old. So I was dealing with paperwork on that and getting a quote on replacing our cast iron pipes with new ones, and working a ton, and having the girls around constantly with no breaks. Did I mention that I had to quit the gym?
I wanted to continue my routine of yoga on Tuesdays and Zumba on Thursdays throughout the pregnancy but it soon became clear that those weren't safe activities since they are in enclosed spaces with heavy breathing. My midwives told me not to go to the classes early on, and with my history of miscarriage, I didn't want to take any risks. That took away my opportunities for a break from my kids for my mental sanity.
The only friends I hadn't officially told the news to was our college friends. Normally we meet up once a month for dinner, but since no restaurants are open and we all live at least a half an hour away from each other, we hadn't done anything except that Zoom call early on. Mel and I fantasized about getting together with them and just walking up with our huge bellies and surprising everyone!
Our friends planned a pool party since they had just put in a pool and it seemed pretty safe since we would be outside. I fantasized about walking up in bikinis with it all hanging out and couldn't wait to see everyone's reactions!
But then we started counting how many people would be there and with all of our kids, it turned out to be 21 people. We wrestled with it, since it was more than the 10 people the CDC recommended and we were in a high risk category with these pregnancies. Again, our miscarriage history won out over what we would have preferred to do.
We ended up just telling them via text that we were both pregnant. I think it caused a little rift in our group because it seemed like we were keeping a secret from them but really we wanted to shock them- that would have been a highlight in a horrible year. Something so surprising and fun! And then we couldn't justify the risk. I was really sad about that, and felt really down for several days.
Meanwhile, the girls and I got into a little routine of going to a park nearby where we would play as long as it wasn't crowded. Early on in the pandemic we would only go down to the creek across the field from our home and splash around, or listen to the water, or look at the trees, and the girls would make up games. That was one of my highlights of the year, just spending that time outside in nature. Even though the whole year felt like a struggle, we found bright spots and connection.
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