‘We’re all in this together’: New mom on COVID-19 anxiety

 

SAINT JOHN — As a new mom, Camille Coates wants to make her newborn son’s safety a number one priority. When she heard COVID-19 began making its way to New Brunswick, she said her first reaction was fear. 

“There was fear in not only the virus getting into our household, but like how it can affect young babies whose immune systems aren’t built up yet,” she said. “When I started hearing everything about just how quickly it can spread in the community … everything starts running through your mind.”

Coates gave birth to her son Louis on Jan 22., and the first case of COVID-19 came to the province just before he turned two months old. When Coates spoke with STU Journalism, there were 26 confirmed cases. As of March 29, that number jumped to 66. 

Coates planned to visit with her family in Halifax this month so they could meet her baby in person. It was around the same time when the provincial government started encouraging residents to stay home and to self-isolate for 14 days. 

“So we put off that trip thinking, ‘oh, you know, we’ll put it off for a week since my parents and my sister and everybody back in Halifax had been travelling,’” said Coates. “And then everything really went out the window.”

After Premier Blaine Higgs announced the province’s state of emergency, it became mandatory for New Brunswickers to stay at home and avoid non-essential travel. When the situation started to “ramp up” in less than a week, Coates said it was a “weird feeling” for her. 

“When you first have a baby, it’s kind of an isolating experience in itself because you don’t really feel comfortable leaving the house too much,” she said. “Just when we are getting more comfortable going out to visit people, this all happens, and now we’re stuck inside.”

Thanks to Coates’ maternity leave from the Saint John Regional Hospital, however, she hasn’t had a problem with childcare during the pandemic. With her husband Dave working from home, he gets to spend more time with the baby. She sees the timing of it all as a bit of a “silver lining.”

“If I wasn’t [on leave], I’d be working in the hospital, so my anxiety would be through the roof, and I don’t know what I would do,” she said. “Going to the hospital and then coming home and having to care for [Louis], that would be really tricky in terms of our exposure risks.”

Coates said while an outbreak like COVID-19 is certainly unexpected; however, she does her best to stay positive. 

“It’ll be a crazy story to tell Louis one day that when he was two months old, all of this was happening in the world,” she said. 

Still, while Coates is a little sad that she can’t visit her family in Nova Scotia, she knows it’s for the best. She’s taking time to care for her mental health during this uncertain time.  

 

“I feel like everybody right now is having those feelings of anxiety and sadness and loneliness, and those feelings are valid,” she said. “I think the biggest thing is just worrying about how long this is going to go on.”

Coates’ family has been taking advantage of video call technology like Skype, FaceTime and Zoom. She said having that resource is something to help lift her spirits.

As for other new parents going through the same feelings, she has encouraging words for them. 

“We’re all in this together,” she said. “We all need to lean on each other right now.”

This story was also published in the New Brunswick Telegraph-Journal in Saint John on April 3, 2020.