So much was unclear. Calendars seemed meaningless and any semblance of a sleep schedule had fallen away long before it was just the two of them—mother and newborn.

A few weeks earlier, so much had looked so different. There was new life and new hope. As happy as everyone was to be in this child’s life, it was essential that they keep their distance to give it a world to live in someday. The access to joy she had anticipated was cut off, leaving only the despair and anxiety that had defined most of her life before the baby arrived. At least she wasn’t the only one at home now.

People were being told to thrive in the face of chaos. The idea was that we couldn’t allow the pandemic to keep us from us. Masses assumed a familiar retreat behind screens through which they could still observe one another. They gardened, made obscene amounts of bread, bought plants, adopted animals, sent questionable texts, and imposed their warped ideas of connection onto a situation they couldn’t control.

She wanted to find the energy to indulge in the misery, but someone would always need her. She couldn’t sleep for too long or venture to a separate room—not that her apartment spanned more than a room and a half.

The nanny had been let go and sent to safety. The child’s father now had permission to be as distant as he’d become before any talk of a pandemic. She didn’t even blame him. They imagined that they needed this child to heal things they could have only healed themselves. They had a few hopeful moments after the child was born, but the added urgency of keeping the human population as alive as possible halted their fumbling romance.

She wondered if everything she had ever done—including bringing this child into the world— was part of a foolish quest to finally feel like she mattered. All those years of loneliness, inertia, and self-doubt culminated in being trapped with the ultimate responsibility. The silver lining was that she was learning everything she thought she could never learn about love.

She had to have hope, communicate effectively, and manage fear for two. Leaving work voluntarily to add a new life the world’s strained population felt like the closing of a significant chapter in her life. She was certain she wouldn’t be treated the same way when she returned to a professional setting, even in a pre-pandemic society. According to everyone else, her life was already supposed to have undergone profound, irreversible change. Now, she would welcome feeling judged or patronized if it meant she could sit in a room with another human being.

Pregnancy had already acclimated her to counting days, hours, pounds, and opportunities. Bringing life into a zero sum world had meant becoming acutely aware of what she could leverage to make another person’s life marginally better. Now it felt like the stakes were being recalculated in a way no human being could reasonably process. It was disheartening to get used to counting days and waiting for either salvation or the sudden onset of fairness.

She never wanted to be the kind of parent that always brought up their child as a conversation topic. She had spent many months publicizing as little as possible, but it also means that she had deliberately kept this significant chapter of her life hidden from the people she desperately wanted to reach now.

At least the baby wanted real things. She was missing the likes, Facebook invites, and photo tags she had learned to chemically register as important. In fact, the only way she was taught to live this milestone in her life was by sharing, filtering, and optimizing each development. Instead of documenting this new life for the corporations that exploited her, she sat with the chaos and decided to simply remember what she could.

As long as the baby was consistently fed and able to rest, she could continue looking forward to each day instead of hiding.