It has been too long since I last posted.

My plan to write through my pregnancy did not work out (clearly) and the main reason for that was…Covid.

Bloody Covid. Is there anybody who hasn’t had it affect their lives in a bad way over the past 18 months? Can you believe it has already been 18 months that we have been dealing with this crap? Ugh.

Well, here we are. We are now shortly before my son’s first birthday (for yes, I had a little boy, a surprise for us right up until he was here) and the first year of parenthood is almost over. Wow.

I know I am not the only one when I say that this has been a year like no other. So many people have had plans put on hold or cancelled altogether and we are not by any means unique. But our experience of this pandemic has been perhaps even more intense because of the arrival of our little boy. In the next few posts, I am going to write about our experiences of the pandemic through the lens of a couple of different topics.

Today I want to talk about support.

None of my family lives in Switzerland which means that most of them are still to meet my son. I was lucky in that my Mum was able to come when he was four weeks old and my Dad visited when he was seven weeks old and again when he was five months (in between the UK lockdowns). But since then? Nothing. Nix. Nada.

It’s true that my partner’s family live in Switzerland, but his parents are a lot older (in their 70s and 80s) so they can’t really look after a rambunctious 11-month-old boy. Owing to restrictions, friends haven’t been able to visit us from either the UK or nearby and even if they did, with rules of four applying to meet up for the longest time, how would that work if two families wanted to meet up?

All of this has meant that we have been alone. Very alone.

I can count on one hand the number of times my partner and I have done something, anything, just the two of us in the last year. Four. And one of those was a hospital appointment so I can hardly call it a pleasant day out.

They say that it takes a village to raise a child and we have been marooned on a desert island for the past year.

My son, who has met the majority of his UK family online, first used to look for the rest of their bodies when he saw the heads on the little screen in front of him, but he doesn’t do that any longer. I think it’s normal for him that some people are just little faces that talk to him. He has met members of his Swiss family but so infrequently that I’m not sure he knows who they are.

With so many baby activities closed for so long, how are you to make friends with other new parents? Who can you talk to about cluster feeding, weaning, changes in nappy contents and the vagaries of breastfeeding? You are basically in your own sounding chamber. And when those activities do start? You’re two metres apart from each other which is hardly conducive to making new connections.

Friends without babies? Not happening. They don’t want to infect you, you don’t want to infect them and on the odd occasion that you are able to meet each other, it’s outside in the freezing cold, you can’t sit down for a coffee inside because all the restaurants are closed and everybody is wearing a mask. It saddens me that my son is growing up in a world when either everyone wears a mask covering 50% of their face or they are tiny heads on a 12cm high phone screen.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the measures and I support them. They’re necessary. But that doesn’t stop me from being sad about the fact that I haven’t been able to share my son with my friends and family both here and abroad. He’s almost one, he is out of the cute ‘I want to be cuddled and sleep in your arms’ phase and is fully in the ‘ooh, that cable looks interesting, let’s eat it’ phase. My family has missed out on so much.

And so have we. We haven’t had family to turn to who can watch our son, we haven’t been able to have a few hours together to ourselves, we haven’t been able to go to the cinema for a film together, we haven’t been able to vent our frustrations at somebody outside of our four walls. It’s been tough.

And yet. I am aware of and grateful for the fact that my partner has been working from home. Swiss paternity leave is crap. It was only at the end of last year that they finally voted to extend paternity leave to two weeks (and not by a landslide margin, make no mistake). Previously it was one day. A whole day. More than enough time to bond with your child.

Working from home has meant that my partner has been able to spend a good hour per day with us. He sees us at lunchtime, he sees us during his coffee breaks, I am able to take my son to him when he wakes up from his nap so that he can say ‘Hoi, Papi!’ and none of these things would have happened without the pandemic. He’s home at 5pm when work finishes and he can enjoy some quality time with us without navigating the rush hour commuter train home.

I can’t in good conscience talk about support without mentioning the excellent ladies who run our local Mütter- und Väterberatung (baby clinic). Quite simply, they have been awesome. I have gone every week near enough since he was three months old and their advice has been so valuable. No, it’s not the same as having your Mum on hand, but a ten minute conversation once per week has, at times, been a lifeline. I owe them more thanks than they will ever know and I have appreciated their calm and approachable manner.

So whilst external support has been very much lacking this year, our internal support network has necessarily had to develop and is perhaps stronger than it would have been in a regular year. We have both been able to share in his smiles and milestones and that has been lovely.

I am saddened by the things we have missed out on, but I am remembering to be grateful for what we have and continue to have – a healthy, happy son with parents who love him.