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Brigid: You are listening to the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. I'm Brigid Bergin filling in for Brian today. Now we turn to pandemic parenthood. What an appropriate morning to do that as we spring forward, something that comes with all its own complications for parents and children. If becoming a new parent wasn't hard enough, the isolation and uncertainty experienced during this past year certainly hasn't helped. Joining me now to talk about her experience giving birth and transitioning into motherhood during the pandemic is Sophie Gilbert, staff writer at The Atlantic.

Her latest article is titled Becoming a parent during the pandemic was the hardest thing I've ever done. Welcome to WNYC Sophie, and congratulations on your twins.

Sophie: Hi, Brigid thank you so much, and thank you for having me.

Brigid: Listeners we're going to open up the phones right away to those of you who became new parents during this past year. What was the hardest part of transitioning into parenthood during this time? Did anything help? We'll take your stories and maybe your advice for other new parents if you've got it. Tweet @brianlehrer or give us a call now at 646-435-7280. That's 646-435-7280. Again, we want to hear from you new parents, people who became parents during this pandemic. Sophie, to you, welcome. In your article you wrote one of the horrific aspects of viruses is that they punish intimacy. What did you mean there especially in the context of giving birth?

Sophie: I think in the context of giving birth it's that I think when you're pregnant, when you're thinking about having children, you expect it would be a time when you're surrounded by community, when you're surrounded by family and friends and you get to share the baby. These lovely, sweet newborn babies with people, and you in turn get to draw on help and support. Emotional support, physical support, food everything. Giving birth in a pandemic, for me, had none of that. My family are all in England. My husband's family. We live in New York so my husband's family were obviously afraid of COVID.

When I gave birth in the hospital the nurses and doctors had basically told us not to see anyone before the babies had had their two-month shots. We went into the first two months of the babies lives alone. We had no one to help us, basically. I think I mentioned it in the article, but we had our doorman who we saw and the babies' pediatrician who we saw a lot. She was amazing, but no one else. It was just us and the babies in the apartment.

Brigid: It was so powerful to read about the experience of being pregnant at the start of the pandemic in March but then essentially not having anyone really see you pregnant besides your husband. Giving birth in July and having your family abroad and really not having the support system, you described it like a wound. I'm wondering in terms of the mental health experts that you spoke to, many of whom told you that the rates of postpartum depression have gone up a lot since the pandemic began, what are some of those experts seeing on the ground?

Sophie: I think first of all, anecdotally, a lot of them told me that they're seeing increased rates of depression and anxiety. Obviously, anxiety is something that's very common in parents, in mothers after giving birth and it's exacerbated if there's an invisible pandemic. Certainly it was for me. I was afraid to leave the house. I was afraid to go in stores. All these feelings that you have that you're primed to have biologically you have tenfold, because your hormones are running wild. One psychotherapist told me that after you give birth your fight or flight system is amped up to the maximum. You're supposed to be primed to sense danger, obviously. That in a pandemic is not ideal.

It's all of these set of things that happen normally just made worse. The interesting thing for me was, I've received so many emails after this story went up and a lot of women told me, and fathers too I should say, because this does affect fathers too, told me that they had very similar experiences even not in pandemic times. The one I keep thinking about is a woman sent me an email yesterday. I had intrusive thoughts after my pregnancy. I kept having thoughts over and over and over and over again of awful things happening to the baby, specifically of them falling off the balcony.

It's a common phenomenon but I'd never heard of it until my therapist told me what it was. I had no idea, I thought I was losing my mind. A woman wrote me yesterday and said she'd had the same thing and she'd never told anyone because she had such shame. I think this is the thing that we really need to do a better job in talking about these things. Unless you see a therapist you really don't know that what you're feeling and what you're thinking is normal, if that makes sense.

Brigid: Absolutely. In reading your story there was so much about it that felt both universal to the experience of new parenthood and yet so much more exacerbated by the time and the moment and all of the extremes that we are living with. I want to invite one of our callers into this conversation. Becca from Williamsburg. Becca, thank you so much for calling WNYC. What's your experience been like? I hear a baby in the background.

Becca: Yes. Hi, well I've just read your article the other day actually and I do identify with so many of the points like having hyper-anxiety. Thinking these random horrible things will happen to your baby that you just imagine. Also your point about being pregnant and then having a baby and not having anyone to share it with. Especially once the baby's born, it's like you want to show it off. You want people to meet your baby and you can't. I would say one big silver lining for our family, my husband and I are both chefs so we lost our jobs a month before our due date so we spent the first four months of our baby's life at home and it was just so special for us because that really would have never happened otherwise.

Brigid: Absolutely, the silver lining on pandemic parenthood. Have you heard similar types of stories to that Sophie?

Sophie: I have. Becca, thank you for sharing your story. I'm so sorry for everything that's happened to you. Yes, there is some conflict in this because, obviously, I felt this too. You wish things were different but at the same time when my husband went back to work after his first four weeks of parental leave, he was still in the apartment with me so I wasn't alone with twins from 8 till 5 every day. I really don't know how I would have gotten through that. In the sense that yes, we have been able to really, and I think other parents have shared this too, that when you do have a newborn, obviously, you do want to spend those first weeks at home really just being a family. Not feeling pressure to go anywhere or see anyone or do anything

In that sense, that's very much present for new parents now, but the lack of support I think is just the same. That's been hardest for me in so many ways.

Brigid: Let's go to Sydney in Queens. Sydney welcome to WNYC.

Sydney: Hello. You might hear a little bit of Juniper in the background too.

Brigid: Hello Juniper.

Sydney: I'm really glad you're doing this segment. I actually read this article just over the weekend and it really resonated with I think a lot of what me and my husband experienced. I delivered in December. Wore a facemask for virtually the entire labor and delivery, which was exciting, but would do it again if asked. No problem. I guess what you've been speaking about. Pregnancy is already such a medical crisis even under the best of circumstances, so to have the pandemic raging throughout it just heightens everything.

Brigid: Sydney, did you feel-

Sydney: Grateful things are moving in the right direction.

Brigid: Did you feel, and we want to congratulate Juniper on making her radio debut this morning. You're talking December 2020 was when your baby was born?

Sydney: Yes.

Brigid: At that point, we were starting to talk about vaccines. Is that something that has helped you in the months since, because you knew we were moving in the right direction?

Sydney: Yes, that is an interesting point. The early part of my pregnancy overlapped with some of the scarier months, particularly in New York City. I felt like I had different countdown clocks. The countdown to the election, the countdown to inauguration, and the countdown to my due date, and essentially also a countdown to the vaccine and when it would be widely available. That's the new countdown.

We finally have been able to start to see and coordinate with grandparents now that they either have been or are in the process of getting vaccinated and that kind of thing. Also the weather has made a huge change. I think now that it's spring again, getting able to get out there. Juniper is very opinionated too.

Brigid: We can't wait to have her back when we can understand more of what she's saying. Thank you both for calling this morning. We really appreciate it. I want to go back to Sophie for one moment about this idea of matresence. It sounds like adolescence. You wrote about it and I wonder if you can tell our listeners a little bit about what it means and how the pandemic specifically is changing your experience and likely to the experiences of many of these parents that were talking to you about it?

Sophie: I had never heard this term before I started thinking about writing this story. Then I came across it and it seemed to perfectly sum up a lot of the things that I'd felt. Matresence is a word that was coined in the 1970s by an anthropologist. It describes the process in which you go from being someone without children to someone with children, going from a non-parent to a parent. It mimics deliberately in its structure the word adolescence, because the same kinds of things apply. There are hormonal changes. There are physical changes, biological changes, there are emotional changes and there are changes in identity too.

You go from being a person who has always been one way in the world and built your identity around certain things to suddenly reforming your identity as being a parent. It's this really fascinating quite stark change. I wasn't prepared for it myself. It's not very well studied. As I said, I'd never heard of it. The thing that I found complicating in the pandemic that I still feel now actually is, my twins are eight months old, they were eight months old this weekend.

Brigid: Congratulations.

Sophie: Thank you. So few people have ever met them or spent meaningful time with me and them together. It's almost hard to build your identity as a parent if no one ever sees you doing it. In a way I feel like I've had these two lives. I had my life before I became a parent that was full of people and places and things work. All these things that I've built my identity around. Then I have had my life in this apartment for the last eight months with my husband and the twins and really no one else. It led me to wonder about this question, how does shape your identity or how do you form an identity when you're doing it in a vacuum. When no one sees you doing this thing that has become really the only thing you do at the moment.

Brigid: Absolutely.

Sophie: I'm interested, I'm curious if other people have had this experience too with the change in how they think about themselves and see themselves. Certainly being stuck at home, but also just having babies in general.

Brigid: Well, our fathers have called into the show as well. We're going to take a call from Adam in the Bronx. Adam, welcome to WNYC, congratulations.

Adam: Thank you. Thank you so much. I became a father for the first time 14 weeks ago. My son was born a month early and we were completely unprepared.

Brigid: Even if you thought you were prepared, you wouldn't have been prepared.

Adam: One of the most stressful things about this experience has been my wife's family and my family handling this in two completely different ways. With one family being a little more laxed with rules and another family using an abundance of caution, and trying to find that balance of including them in our lives but in a way that's comfortable for us. This was my mom's first grandchild and she's been waiting such a long time and it was really hard trying to keep a distance.

Brigid: I mean, the grandparents are as much a part of so many of these family conversations. We want to acknowledge how hard it's been for so many grandparents out there who are waiting to meet their new grandchildren. Adam, thank you so much for sharing your experience with us. Let's go to one more caller. I think we have time for Sophia in Brooklyn. Sophia, welcome to WNYC.

Sophia: Hi, nice to be on air.

Brigid: What was your experience like?

Sophia: I gave birth at the initial peak of the pandemic, in April of 2020, when they had changed a lot of the regulations regarding partner and labor support. I wasn't able to have my partner with me during recovery from my C-section. At a time when you're supposed to be celebrating one of the most joyous moments of your life, not only do you have the physical and emotional support that you would need, but also the city as a whole is grieving. To have your own personal joy while there's refrigerated trucks outside of the hospital and this mass mourning is a really strange experience. I think sets a tone that can be hard to overcome.

Brigid: Sophia, I'm so sorry. I cannot imagine a situation where you have to go through so much of that alone. Hopefully now that you are home, there's some comfort in that.

Sophia: For sure.

Brigid: Well, thank you. Thank you for calling and sharing that perspective. Sophie, thank you for your story. That clearly has resonated with a lot of our callers, a lot of our audience. I know I've seen it shared a lot in social media. I'm sure you're here hearing from a lot of parents. We wish you the best with your twins. We're going to have to leave it there for today. My guest has been Sophie Gilbert staff writer at The Atlantic. Her latest article is titled Becoming a Parent During the Pandemic was the Hardest Thing I've Ever Done. Thanks so much for coming on today.

Sophie: Thank you so much for having me, and thank you everyone for calling

Brigid: I'm Brigid Bergin, WNYC's senior political correspondent. I've been filling in for Brian who is off today. Thanks so much for listening.

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