1

PRESENTS

277 NEW MOTHERS. ONE SHARED STORY

 We’re supporting the wonderful charity Sands with
Born in Lockdown, so while our book is free for anyone to
download and read, if you’d like to help contribute to the
important work that Sands does with bereaved parents
then please do make a donation at
www.mothershipwriters.com/borninlockdown

Trigger warning: Please be aware that Born in Lockdown contains

stories and experiences from authors that could possibly be upsetting
or triggering for anyone who has been affected by pregnancy loss
or the death of a baby. If you would like support and to speak
to a member of the Sands Helpline, freephone 0808 164 3332 or
email helpline@sands.org.uk.
 First published in 2021 by Mothership Writers

www.mothershipwriters.com

All rights reserved

Introduction © Emylia Hall, 2021

Prose and poems © individual authors, 2021

The rights of Emylia Hall to be identified as the editor of this work

has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Design and
Patents Act. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means,
electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise,
without the prior permission of the publishers.

Cover design and interior layout by Esther Curtis.

 INTRODUCTION

Welcome to Born in Lockdown, a one-of-a-kind story with 277

different authors and one shared experience: new motherhood in
2020.

Two years ago, I set up Mothership Writers, running creative

writing courses especially for new mums, and I continue to see at
first-hand just how nourishing and transformational writing can
be. The coronavirus pandemic has considerably intensified what
is already a challenging time, making the need for self-expression
ever more vital. In November I launched a collaborative writing
project for mums who’d given birth that same year. The idea was
to encourage writing for pleasure and purpose: to find, amidst the
clamour, the space to hear one’s own voice. And, together, to tell
the story of what it was like to become a new mum in 2020.

The creative approach to the project was inspired by the likes of

Jenny Offill’s Dept. of Speculation, Maggie Nelson’s The Argonauts,
and the 1 Second Everyday video app. I asked participants to
write in fragments, each comprising no more than a handful of
connected sentences. The joy of such a style is that fragments
can be scribbled during a night-feed or recorded as a voice note
while out walking; they reflect the flitting nature of our thoughts,
allowing us to capture moments that might otherwise be lost to
time; best of all, they feel accessible and achievable.

There was no brief or fixed direction, aside from the reassurance

that anything and everything about an individual’s experience
mattered; that the most seemingly ordinary moments had grace;
that nobody’s contribution would be able to say it all – the power
lay in the collective effort. I wanted Born in Lockdown to reflect
the diversity of the mothering experience, and to speak of the
complexities and conflicts as much as the joy and wonder. There
were no selection criteria – anyone who wanted to be included
would be included.

I had no idea what to expect but as word spread, the expressions

of interest flooded in, and I knew we’d go far beyond the ‘20 or
so mums’ that I thought we might need to create a meaningful
collaborative work. I’d always had faith in the project as a process
– the cathartic benefits of a notebook and pen, the ‘permission
to write’ factor – and as more and more new mums got involved,
that belief was validated: ‘it has reminded me of me when I most
needed it,’ wrote Farrah; ‘writing is a healing process and a peaceful
act, which we lockdown mothers need more than anything,’ said
Burcu. As the fragments started arriving in my inbox an increasing
feeling of excitement was building inside me. Here were urgent
dispatches from the frontline of mothering during a pandemic;
pitch-perfect articulations of personal experience; 50-word pieces
that captured moments and emotions that were so raw, affecting,
and inspiring, my tears streamed as I saved each one to my ever-
burgeoning Born in Lockdown folder.

That was when I knew we were making something good. Really

good.

It’s been a great privilege to have the job of finding the narrative
threads and stitching together this vast patchwork of experience;
a whole, made of many, many small parts. As you read, you’ll be
hearing 277 different voices from all across the UK (including a
few from overseas too): overlapping, echoing, and sometimes
opposing. No single author’s fragments appear side by side. All
the writers’ words are verbatim and unedited – and every single
one deserves to be read.

You’ll notice the recurring themes of the missing ‘village,’ of

isolation and uncertainty, and the extra pressures on mental
health, just as you’ll also read of silver linings, new connections,
and incredible gifts. Altogether, our book is a remarkable record
of new motherhood at this time; an unflinchingly honest and
moving account, where – despite the pain and hardship – such
love and hope shine through.

One of my favourite lines in our book is, ‘The very thing keeping
you apart right now will one day bond you together.’ Born in
Lockdown was made in exactly that spirit. My heartfelt thanks go
to all of the 277 new mothers who were willing to trust me with
their stories, and to unite – across distance, through lockdown –
to make something so special. And to remind us, ultimately, that
we’re all in this together.

Thank you for reading.

Emylia Hall
Founder, Mothership Writers
BORN IN LOCKDOWN
 1

Saturday morning. I’ll take a quick test while Ben makes the

brekkie. I just had a feeling. Five months of no booze, dairy and
monthly acupuncture – would today be the day? The two lines
came up and I was amazed at my calm and poise. This one is going
to be okay, I told myself. 

My name is Hope. A wisp of a shape in the corner of your eye. You

dare not look at me directly. We play peek-a-boo in the corners – a
hide-and-seek of insanity. Dare you hold me? Don’t grasp … the
weight of your dreams might crush me.

The blue line on the stick letting us know you were inside me,
overshadowed by news of a national lockdown and uncertainty for
expectant mums.

Husband has just arrived. I tell him, ‘Sit down. It’s about to start.’
The baby squirms, she must be deafened by my heart pounding.
History unfolding; addressing the nation. New orders: stay home!
Tears fall freely. In just ten weeks I’m due to give birth. The room
begins to spin with fear.

As I stare at the empty cradle in my arms, I am so scared of what’s

to come and being alone during such uncertain times. But with
that uncertainty comes you. You’re the constant. You’re here with
me now and you’ll be with me all along the way until this journey
places you in my arms.

I didn’t feel sick anymore. Please God, not again. We booked a

reassurance scan. I waited for the lady to do her sympathetic face.

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She turned the screen around and pointed at a tiny baby, as if it
was the most normal thing in the world. We cried and laughed in
disbelief at this tiny, wondrous baby shape on screen.

My baby is due in February. I sit indoors on the most comfortable

couch I can find and stare outside at Steve – the squirrel –
preparing his nest for winter. ‘Hey Steve,’ I say softly as I continue
embroidering a little Van Gogh kit I bought for myself. It keeps me
busy and off screens.

‘What a great time to have a baby,’ people kept telling me. ‘We’re
stuck inside anyway.’ I’m not so sure. ‘There’s no perfect time to
have a baby,’ people kept telling me. ‘You’ll never be ready.’ Except
I am ready. I wish the world was as ready as I am.

‘It’s like coming out of prison,’ said the old man on the hill we’d
hoped would be more secluded. Somersaulting in your cushioned
world, I wondered what you feel, what you’ll see in your lifetime.
We retraced the contour of the route we took there, in glorious
open space.

One positive of lockdown is that I wasn’t the pregnant woman in

the office. I didn’t experience what I have seen others go through
where people slip up in meetings and say, ‘oh don’t worry, you
won’t be here for that.’  Instead I was a voice and face on Zoom; a
voice and face doesn’t sound pregnant. 

Working in a GP surgery while pregnant was at times scary. I

worked throughout my pregnancy as a receptionist, the doctors
always reassuring me that I was safe, cleaning maxed out and

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special procedures put in place to make sure we could continue to
work within our new crazy environment. 

It’s positive, I’m elated. The date is booked, I’m excited. We’re
high risk, I’m scared. The classes are cancelled, I’m clueless. The
date is moved, I’m angry. We’re locked down, I’m lonely. 

Moved house before lockdown 1. All my classes cancelled and

knowing no one. The midwives reassure me it will be alright, but
really nobody has had to do this before. I cannot hold my mother’s
hand; I cannot visit my friends. When I’m moved to ‘at risk,’ my
partner doesn’t want me to mix.

Booking in my induction through a pandemic really set off my

anxiety.   The idea of having to do the first part of labour alone
made me feel physically sick. The last time I had to go to hospital
other than for appointments was for my miscarriage procedure.

My husband drives me to my last midwife appointment but can’t

come in. I find where I’m supposed to go in this new location and
get directed to a waiting room by the receptionist. I’m the only
one there and it’s eerily quiet in this big hospital.

The sonographer can only find one heartbeat not two. My heart
breaks at the words of this stranger while my husband’s beats fast
as he waits in the hospital car park. Moments that feel like hours
pass until she says, ‘No, sorry there are two. Still two.’ I text him
the good news. 

‘My mam gave birth at home. Three times and that was during a

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war. You’ll be fine... this might all be over by September anyway.’
We don’t meet each other’s eyes as we both nod continuously and
send a rally of optimistic sounds through the screen. 

As my bump grew, we couldn’t wait to meet you 

Going to scans on my own 
I felt all alone 
Then you’d kick to say 
That’s not true 
And I knew I had you.

Eat Out to Help Out started. I was enjoying freedom with a friend
and her lockdown baby. I had a bleed in the restaurant, so I drove
myself to triage. I had rib pains and thought it was just the baby
kicking. Nope, I had pre-eclampsia and was 33 weeks pregnant.

37 weeks pregnant, a heatwave, I went for a walk. Sitting on a

bench was against the rules. I needed to sit down, the weight of
you was too much. I sat on a bench. My eyes darted left to right. A
smile reached my lips. Was I a criminal?

I dropped off the radar of the overstretched (beloved) NHS

throughout this pregnancy. At 40 weeks, I was consultant,
intervention (and fear) free. I yearn for the pandemic to show us
what is not working like this. I pray that we restructure our lives
to be together better.

My nan passed away after contracting Covid. I wasn’t able to see

her in her final days through fear of contracting the virus whilst
pregnant. I viewed her body through the screen of my phone, the

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photo permanently etched into my mind. I watched her being
lowered into the ground over video call the day before my due
date.

40, about to have my third baby and Boris announces over-70s

must shield. The realisation that my parents won’t get to meet
their newest grandchild immediately dawns on me. All I want to
do is weep. I may be an established mother, but I need my mum
and dad.

We know the surrounding streets like the backs of our hands. We

can name every sound and smell. We can identify trees by their
leaves, birds by their song. We know every inch of this house. Now
we wait to finally know you.

The afternoon before the contractions started, I ventured out

after the thunderstorm to a beautifully empty park. A calm spread
through me as we meandered, the bump and I, all alone, along the
shiny, wet, tree-lined paths, admiring the raindrops dotted on the
leaves and flowers and breathing in the warm fresh air. 

The world is panicking; there is a pandemic and it is peaking. I

cannot change my due date. As I go into labour a full moon is
rising over the bay. I stand outside and stare up at it and then
down at my huge spherical belly. Calm comes and I know what I
need to do ... it is just me and him.

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I am woken by a belt tightening painfully around me. The pressure
pushes through me, as if I am being crushed and pulled apart all at
once ... all I can think is, my baby is coming to meet me. It’s OK to
be scared, but there’s no need, it’s just my baby. My baby is coming
to meet me.

I tried for a home birth; the midwife arrived at 11pm. Her and
Daddy sat eating Auntie Fluff’s lemon drizzle cake and drinking
coffee. I went upstairs at 3am, I was tired. Daddy and I had a cuddle
on our bed underneath the fairy lights, I knew it was the last time
it would be just the two of us.

It’s 2am when my waters break, like you’ve pinged me from the
inside with an elastic band. ‘Hello! I’m ready!’ We head to the
hospital full of hope and excitement, TENS machine in one hand,
mobile phone in the other, taking blurry selfies as we drive. 

They said waters wouldn’t really break in a gush. Except mine did.
Two waves and then blood. 999 still asked, ‘Does anyone in your
household have a continuous cough?’

You drop me at the entrance to the hospital. This feels too much

to carry on my own. The weight of our baby in my belly, laden with
overnight bags and heavy with fear and anticipation. You kiss me
goodbye and drive home. I don’t know how long until I see you
again.

Outside the hospital where I was told my body was no longer a

safe place for you, policemen guarded the entrances and press
photographers watched the exits. Nobody was exempt; not the

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Prime Minister, not you. We were all learning to fear the air we
breathed.

In the early morning light I left my husband in the car and set
off on foot, a solo expedition to the delivery room. My body was
contorting intensely, rhythmically, as I waited. Waited to be
buzzed into the delivery suite, waited to be greeted by the masked
midwife, waited for your arrival.

I took the stairs, six flights to the birth centre. My contractions

were close together, so I had to move quickly after each one. Too
scared of Covid to touch the handrail. Dangerous alone. But safer
than the lifts and I hoped the climb would help me dilate.

The fresh spring air from the window nips my face and momentarily
takes my attention from the scraping pain. The usually bustling
street below is empty. People held hostage. At home in fear and
defence. I stand alone in a hospital room. Power inside grips me.
The budding trees present beginnings of new blooms to no one
but me. I watch the silent street and wait. 

Fear. Fear of being on my own, fear for my safety, fear I will never
meet him. A black woman, scared. Scared by everything I have
read. The experience of many others before me. Anxious about
being there on my own, my husband not allowed to be by my side.
No-one to advocate for me. Will they hear me? I want to meet my
son.

I had to leave my husband waiting at the door in the dark. I lay on

the bed for hours, alone and contracting whilst strapped to a heart

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rate monitor. ‘Can my husband join me?’ I asked when I’d seen a
nurse briefly, to which she replied, ‘We don’t know yet.’

Fear. On my own. Empty corridors. Contractions, oh the

contractions. My husband waiting patiently to be allowed to join
me. Stuck in hospital, too poorly to be at home. Baby refusing to
budge. Midwives helping where they can, so busy, rushed off their
feet. Lonely, terrified and pained. Waiting, waiting. 

Then I crumbled, without my partner, going into the hospital,

wobbling mouth under mask. But other women built me back up
with kindness to help weave our story. Those who’d done it before
told me relief would come. The midwife pulling down my mask,
‘What would your ideal birth be?’

The midwife must see the look of alarm on my face. ‘Don’t worry
all is fine, I am smiling at you under this mask,’ she reassures me.

I was alone for seven hours before my husband was allowed into
the hospital. But I never felt lonely. I was fully supported by the
kind masked strangers caring for me. He arrived with enough
energy drinks and sweets to warrant the corner store man asking
if he was going to a rave.  

My husband had to wait on the solitary chair in the corridor. The

midwife checked how dilated I was, then left me. She came back
an hour later and said he could join me. I peered at him through

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the labour ward door before pushing it open – red-faced and teary,
alone in the middle of the night, like I’d been – and beckoned.

Eleven hours in, I feel broken, unheard, vulnerable, alone. A

wheelchair rattles: music to my ears. The lift bings: a glimmer of
hope. The sight of my husband brings my smile back. Relief spreads
as I enter the delivery room. ‘I’m Kate, I’ll be your midwife.’ I feel
safe.

Lying on the delivery bed, giving birth on a boiling hot day, I felt
as if I was burning alive. Fans weren’t allowed due to the risk of
spreading germs. So instead of holding my hand like I’d imagined,
my husband stood and waved a sick bucket over my face, frantically
trying to cool me down.

The outside world faded away. The pandemic and lockdown

were out of mind.   It was just me and the midwife. Giggling at
the hypnobirthing book in my hand. I started reading it the night
before. Yes, that’s amniotic fluid. Yes, it’s four weeks early. Yes,
this is happening now. 

As the medics all came running into the room, I was sobbing. That
one midwife looked me in the eyes and told me it’s OK and for me
to focus on her. To breathe deep and not to be scared. She would
have given me that ‘mummy hug’ if she was able to.  

The labour room is serene and candlelit. I’m supposed to be

breathing quietly but instead I stomp and sway and yell. Labour is
fierce and wild and so am I. I dance through it with my husband,
learning the steps as we go, battling together to meet you. 

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And when they told us, at midnight, half-way through labour, that
visitors were now banned, I breathed a sigh of relief, which was
quickly followed by a grunt of ‘get me that epidural.’ At least I’d be
able to sleep instead of fake smile for the people who hadn’t just
pushed a baby out of their vagina.

He can come when you’re in established labour. Hospital bag

unopened, waiting. Established labour. Never mind the fairy
lights, playlist, oils. Established labour. Never mind a hand to
squeeze. Established labour. On my own, but never alone as baby
reminds me through the waves and breaks. Established labour.
Water. Blood. Surges. Finally, he is here. And so is my daughter. 

I press my head against the wall of the empty, lonely corridor. I

gulp handfuls of water at the sink. My body tells me it’s time to
push. Finally, they call him. He runs up the stairs to greet you, to
hold me; taking them two at a time.

I never believed in things like heaven and hell until I gave birth
and found myself in both at the same time.

When the pains came, they were mine. The insistent compression
of lockdowns had made a bright circle of focus inside. When
I realised I would birth alone in this room, that this child was
coming so fast no one else would make it, I was in a rhythm, on
fire and fierce.

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I have never felt so alone and yet so focused. The pain is
excruciating, unrelenting – will I break from within? I am alone
from 2cm to 7cm, in this dark hospital waiting room with only the
walls and a TENS machine to moo at. You are coming and fast.

I knew I could do it, or perhaps I just knew I would (have to) do it

either way. With huge love, in the darkness, locked down, looking
inwards, the baby came. I felt their head. It was incredible.

The nurse kept saying, ‘She’s coming round the corner.’ In my

head I wondered where the hell is this corner? But come you did
– from an imagined being, to a real, breathing tangle of arms, legs
and umbilical cord, in one moment. I couldn’t comprehend it, but
there you were.

Never known fear like it. The unknown in the unknown by the
unknowing. Constantly trusting the eyes of strangers. The masks,
the masks! Have we met before? My world reduced to looking
through rectangles. All the scared eyes of women in labour must
merge into one long scream.

I tell the midwife I want to go home. She insists on checking my

progress. As she lifts the sheet, I feel you coming. One push, two
push, you’re delivered quickly into the midwife’s bare hands.
Placed on my chest I should feel overwhelmed with love. I feel
empty, sad, scared. 

I’m no longer part of the world that I know. I’m part of another,
older world. I’m a wild animal, roaring with a primal pain that
resonates through my body. Afterwards I feel heroic and destroyed.

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I’m not gonna lie, it was a tough birth (gas and air only – I must’ve
been mad!). I’d only held you for all of five minutes when I had to
be whisked off to theatre for emergency surgery. I’d lost a lot of
blood and things were touch and go, but you and my Viking kept
me going; this doesn’t surprise me at all, since you’ve kept me
strong through a global pandemic and the loss of my job.

I now believe that no person knows resilience until you have

birthed a child.

During my emergency shoulder dystocia delivery, thinking baby

girl would not make it, someone – perhaps a midwife – through
a mask, smiled with her eyes through the chaos and said, ‘Does
Daddy have a hat for baby?’ and in that moment I knew. She was
finally on her way and everything would be okay. 

It could have been a year. That silence that lasted too long. Deaf to
the beeps, the suction machine, the gas, the clinks of the tray, the
muffled conversations. Until you cried. The most beautiful yell in
the world. 

‘She’s got hair! Loads of it! And it’s dark!’ my husband exclaimed,
a little muffled by his mask. He’d given me the strength I needed
and with an almighty push our daughter came into the world and
she wasn’t the only one in tears! It was the most beautiful moment
of my entire life.

I felt an elephant sit on my abdomen – then he was out, over the

blue sky of a paper curtain. We shed our masks, as if choreographed,
to greet this tiny pink sparrow – a daddy-long-legs, a scrawny

20
sweetheart. Through tearful laughter, I kissed his face. We call
him Little Baby.

The first time I saw your face, was the happiest and most complete
moment of my life. Everything suddenly made sense. I couldn’t
believe how perfect you were, right there, being handed to me.
From inside of me to lying on my chest – you were love itself.

Lying like a corpse. Someone must have cleaned the blood from
my legs. So sore. They put you on my chest. Your face was turned
up towards me, tiny under the blue hat I bought you. Your pretty,
scrunchy eyes and button nose … your poise and radiance rocketed
through me.

‘Is it strange looking at vaginas all day?’ I ask with my legs akimbo
as the midwife stitches up my perineum. Two other midwives flank
her either side, holding bright torches aloft so she can see into the
dark ravine from which my baby has just emerged. ‘You get used
to it,’ she replies. ‘It’s as normal as looking at your eyes for us.’

There was one midwife that I remember; her name was Julie. I’ll
remember her forever.

Weeks later, I realise why I felt so unexpectedly calm as I was

wheeled out of the birth room into theatre. It was an exhausted
relief to finally be surrounded by brisk, efficient people; safely in
the capable, confident hands of modern medicine. Or was I just

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delirious on painkillers? ‘Let’s call him Frodo,’ I said.

As I’m rushed into theatre, it’s the sheer number of people I

notice first. Midwives, doctors, consultants, paediatricians, and
anaesthetists, a gathered crowd of strangers awaiting our arrival.
Through my mask I hear myself say, ‘This is the most people I’ve
been around in months, it’s so nice.’ Realising, perhaps late, how
isolated I had really been.

The surgeon said, ‘Are you ready to find out if you have a boy or
a girl?’ The last time I felt excitement like that was Christmas
morning as a child.

Baby in distress. Emergency C-section needed. Nurses, midwives,

doctors everywhere asking so many questions. You didn’t cry.
Silence. Then I heard it; I looked at your dad and, with tears in his
eyes he said, ‘She’s absolutely beautiful.’ We had done it. I was a
mum.

You arrived. There were no singing angels, fanfares or fireworks;

only a cold table, the numbness of drugs and harsh lights. You
were perfect despite my turmoil. Whose baby is this? I wondered.
He can’t be mine. He’s too magnificent to be born to me, at a time
like this.

At last. The operating curtain cocoons us as Daddy lays you on my

collarbone, warm and sticky against my cheek. My lips search for
your skin beneath my blue surgical mask. Your weight on my chest
grounds me. Tears prick my eyes and I exhale. We did it, little one.
You’re here and you’re safe.

22
You were whisked away so quickly after the emergency section.
Covid restrictions meant you and Daddy were taken out of
theatre. The stitches seemed agonisingly slow as I lay there alone,
desperately waiting for the first touch, first cuddle, with my baby
boy.

Your dad went with you to the baby table, your tiny nostrils flaring.
He told me you fought for every breath.

I rang the hospital again and they asked to speak to my husband.

Weird, I thought. They didn’t want to speak to him before. Next
thing I knew, Jack was calling 999 on loudspeaker. In between the
pain and confusion all I heard was, ‘Jack, you’re going to have to
deliver this baby.’ 

The ambulance blocks our street, blue lights silently pulsing,

panicking the neighbours. Oblivious inside the house, we are
frozen in time, the three of us (well, two people and a head to be
precise). Our baby glides gracefully into his daddy’s waiting hands,
wide-eyed and womb fresh, while his brothers sit downstairs,
watching Kung Fu Panda.

The midwife arrived to applause - the Clap for Carers. Such timing.
Then later, through the fog of labour, the sound of tinkling bottles
as the milkman delivered his round. Funny how the mundane
occurrences of life continue, even amid the magnificent arrival of
new life into this strange world. 

23
Suddenly you are here, and you cry out. We cry with you, as we tell
you that you are ours. 

The slippery feeling of his arrival was like none other. I felt the
warm, wet umbilical cord – very suddenly – between my legs.
The crying came fast and loud, and we looked at one another and
repeated, ‘We did it!’ Finn was here. And the sun was coming up.

One final push, a guttural noise and you emerged into the room.
This tiny creature covered in goo; a silent stranger but already
known to me. I am ashamed that my first words to you were, ‘You
smell gross.’ But you did, and I loved you completely from that
moment.

There’s a mound of spent clothes on the floor, clotted red, as the

steam renews me, and I urge the heat to soothe my waning uterus
– she worked hard. Afterwards, I dab myself with trepidation and
a towel at arm’s length, thighs clamped shut, trying to save the
bathmat. 

I remember standing there at the side of the road, just us three.

One of us – the littlest one, just seconds old – peering up at us
calmly through the bright June sunshine, and the other two – my
husband and I – staring at each other in silent shock and wonder
at the early arrival of our beautiful daughter.

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 7

The anxious wait in lockdown, the strict rules, the Covid swabs
and no visitors. The lonely hours in hospital cradling you in my
arms, waiting to go home. On quiet wards with no visitors, no
balloons or flowers, just spaced out beds.

It may not be what we all envisioned nine months ago, but that’s
the nature of this very big, unpredictable beast.

After the birth our wonderful midwife popped her head around
the door without her mask on. It meant so much to finally see
the woman who had been there throughout and who had seen me
naked, had had my leg on her shoulder; to see her face for the first
time after hours together.

Around 9ish a nurse came by the recovery bay, ‘I’m afraid you have
to go now, sir.’ I’d forgotten all about the global pandemic, having
been in our own personal one these last 24 hours. And with that
you had to leave us, your shell-shocked wife and your brand-new
baby son.

There were three other women on the ward, but I couldn’t tell
you what they looked like, the distancing measures and curtains
shrouded us in loneliness. I could tell you, however, how they
sounded at 3am when they rang their partners hysterically crying,
and when they begged the midwives to allow them to go home
early.

On 15 April I gave birth to our beautiful baby boy. My third

baby, but the first to be born in the midst of a pandemic. From

25
the moment I arrived at the hospital, I was met with the smiling,
masked faces of the midwives – all of whom apologised for their
protective equipment. True NHS Heroes.

To the lady in the PPE, the blue masked face and gown. To the
name I know but the face I don’t. 20 hours in, to the lady who got
me through the final bit. To the lady whose accent I still hear but
who could pass me in the street. To the Scottish angel on labour
ward, THANK YOU. I was not fearful, you held me strong, you let
me anchor into your chest and you helped me to believe I could
do the rest.

The midwife embraced me. She saved me in that moment. I

messaged my mum to prepare her for breaking the rules as soon
as I was allowed out of hospital. That moment will stay with me
forever. I’ve never needed to be held by my mum so much, as a
new mum myself.

I’ll never forget the curtain opposite me in the observation ward

going back and seeing another mum cradling her newborn. She
looked up, our eyes met and we both smiled at each other; the
only smile I’d seen since my husband had had to leave after our
son was born.

I had to move from the relative refuge of the side room. Should
I take a bed on the potentially virus-ridden ward, without the
support of my soon to be banished husband? Or go home with
only a first-time parent’s naive love to protect her? I stayed.

What is this feeling, the one that has me tearing up whenever

26
I have a moment to think? I thought I was in pain, missing the
support of my husband, and helpless to protect my newborn from
the hospital racket. Yet this feeling remains: what just happened?
And worse: am I okay?

I walk in the corridor to the toilet – alone – and back to my room,

although it hurts after a C-section. I rock my newborn baby –
alone – in my arms, although I need to sleep so much. I touch my
baby’s cheeks and smile – alone – and cry – alone.

This takes me to the very edge of what it means to be human.

I’ve spun out. I haven’t slept for three nights. Suddenly I don’t
recognise where I am or who the baby in the room belongs to. She
doesn’t look real. My heart is racing, hormones in meltdown.

Panic hit as I realised we didn’t have enough of anything. I called

your dad, ‘We need more stuff …’ through little gaps between the
sobs. ‘Okay, what stuff? I’ll get whatever we need…’ All I could
muster was, ‘Just baby stuff, you know what I mean, just get a load
of baby stuff, please hurry.’

It’s mothers only in the NICU. One parent at a time on the ward.
Sorry, it’s one family only in the parents’ accommodation so you’ll
have to stay elsewhere. No parents allowed in theatre, say goodbye
here in the corridor. Two parents left standing. 

Dad wasn’t allowed in the ward, so we met outside the neonatal

unit. I’ve had my daily visit; it was his turn now. It felt as if we
were teenagers, hiding as if doing something bad, but we were just
longing for each other, wanting to know that everything’ll be fine. 

27
New friendship opportunities were missed on the maternity
wards. No cotside cooing or corridor conversations were allowed
this time. Just a room for us two, surrounded by the faint echoing
of other new mums and babies. But the bubble brims with love
and understanding. It’s just me and you.

The hospital was not the curse we expected, the no-visitor notice
not as bad as all that. You see, I thought I would be lonely but,
how could I? In the end it was just us in that pandemic prison, and
even the masked midwives couldn’t come between us.

I first held my baby at five days old. I remember the nurses helping
to untangle the wires, shutting off the bleeping machines for us
to have our first very overdue cuddle. He slept on my chest almost
immediately, and I just knew he was waiting for this moment as
much as I had been. 

We call you pinchy, milky, pinch-pinch, babushka – everything

but your real name, which you’re still growing into. We wait to see
who you are.

When I finally held my son, after days of contractions and a

complicated induction, forceps and needles, the pain became
barely noticeable background noise. Whenever 2020 gets too
much to bear, I think of that moment. My whirlwind of a son,
bringing so much peace.

That first magic night, absorbed by your constellation of birth

mark sprinkles between your brows, like looking up at a bright sky
on a clear silent night. Each part more beautiful than the last and

28
impossible to take in beyond imagination. Better than perfection,
you were real. 

Your eyes open for the first time, just for me, in the quiet of the
night-time hospital ward, flickering open to reveal you. Dark
glimpses into your soul, little man, dear friend.

It is 19 March 2020. It is chaos. My baby is a day old. He will not

latch. I am drowning in the heat of the postnatal ward. The shops
are sold out of formula. I want nothing more than to go home and
to stay there for the next three months.

My timeline is filled with videos of doorstep clapping. It reminds

me that it’s Thursday. I look around the dimly lit postnatal ward to
see midwives and cleaning staff expertly doing their rounds. Hot
tears plop down my cheeks. My baby’s here and we’re both OK. It’s
all OK.  

Dim yellow light surrounds our little bubble and bed. Curtains
open around us to cooler blue light and a sister midwife, other
midwives. No birth partner or visitors. Just me and you in a hospital
gown, towels, sheets all wrapped up together. Lovely warm bodies,
so blurry and still now.

The two kind midwives let my husband see me for a couple of

hours the following day. I was so thrilled to see my husband and to
watch him cuddling our precious boy. He could not hold his tears

29
to finally see us properly.

To the midwife who was there for me after a long, tiring night
of feeding my newborn. Exhausted and hormonal without my
husband by my side. ‘I wish I could hug you,’ she said, as she put
her hand on my shoulder. I will never forget you.

At 10.30pm on 19 May 2020, my midwife Carey said, ‘In my 12

years of midwifery, I have never seen anyone take to being a twin
mum as well as you, you are amazing.’ It was at that moment that
I knew I was supposed to be a twin mum and that everything was
going to be OK.

They swabbed my throat and nose between contractions, and a

midwife delivered the result the next morning – how foolish I had
been to joke from 37 weeks about my ‘pandemic baby.’ They sent
us home with masks to wear around said pandemic baby for her
first 14 days.

Standing by the lift ready to take our baby home, the midwives
stood with us, keeping safe distance – although that all felt a little
pointless with what we had been through together just hours
before. I would have loved to hug them, but we weren’t allowed to
touch anymore.

The time came to say goodbye to Mary, our 72-year-old midwife. I

thanked her for the safe arrival of our precious boy. The Queen of
Midwives smiled, her kind eyes framed by bright blue eyeliner. I
told her once this was all over, I’d be back to give her a hug. 

30
The drive home with our rainbow baby was just so magical. Nothing
really happened, there was no particularly poignant moment, no
scene setting song on the radio. Just us and our rainbow going back
to our little bubble of love that we’d been living in since March.

Home time at last. No more wires, no more monitors, no more

blood tests, no more blue lamps, no more prodding and poking,
no more shift changes, no more expressing, no more bottles, no
more nurses or doctors or ward assistants. Just you two, Mummy
and Daddy.

We made it home. As the door closed, a full 120 hours since the
last time we’d left the house, the raw pain and anguish of our
experience engulfed me. The midwife visited daily. PTSD. Talking
Therapies. Birth Trauma. Getting help. Start to heal. ‘You will feel
better, I promise.’

The relief to come home. You’re here now, you’re safe and that’s
all that matters.

All that peace we wished for with your sister, all that time to be
alone as a family of three. Now we have it, we long to be with our
extended family. To pass you around, to show you new faces and
new places beyond our four walls.

Deafening silence. Loved ones supposed to be bursting through

the door, bickering over who gets to cuddle my son first. Arms

31
filled with gifts, teddies, toys. The postman delivers these tokens
instead. Family, friends only seen through a screen. The house
empty, isolating, like our prison. ‘Stay at home’ directives echoing.
Sleepy, milk induced cuddles were my medicine. 

Waving out a window, heartbreakingly introducing a beautiful

baby that nobody can hold.

On the stairs again. Trying to get the boy to latch without the pillow.
My three-year-old wants to be on my knee too. She squeezes as
close to me as she can. Sometimes I think she’s suspicious of this
boy who arrived as the world turned upside down. 

There it is on the screen, pink and grainy. ‘Nose to nipple,’ says the

stranger on the other end, as my husband manoeuvres the iPad to
optimum intrusive position. The mewling mouth of my daughter,
her tied tongue pinned helplessly to her mouth as milk sprays
furiously. Breastfeeding support, remote and vulnerable. 

Your delicate skull cracks into my teeth, our bones ricocheting

off one another. I feel a sharp pain spreading through my upper
lip, and yet you are unperturbed. Over to Daddy; I need time to
compute and to forgive.

I’m in tears from sleep deprivation, raw nipples, the head butt to
my jaw as I hold you close when you cry … My life’s upside down,
body ruined, bank account drained, yet I’d do anything for you.
In the middle of the loneliest, disturbed night, I still love you the
most.

32
I’m tired. He needs me. I need a wee. I’m so thirsty. The washing
machine beeps. The dishwasher beeps. Even the fridge beeps; I
forgot to close the door. I’m tired. He’s crying again; is he hungry?
I’m hungry. And I’m lonely. I want someone to make me a cup of
tea.

Sitting on the edge of the bed I catch my reflection, wet hair, at

least I managed a shower. Baby in arms. Figuring it all out. No one
to pop by to celebrate, to hold or even meet this tiny bundle. 

She missed them by eight years, my mum. Eight poxy years. My

lockdown babies. The children I never thought I’d have. The
grandkids she never knew. My tiny little twin miracles. Smiling
back at me with their nanny’s shiny eyes and mischievous twinkle.
How she’d love them. And how I miss her. More now than ever.

You’re asleep. Finally, you’re asleep. Your breathing is so calm

and peaceful. My arm is dead, and I’d love to lie down, but I don’t
want this moment to end. What if I’m not enough? Is anyone else
awake? There’s a light on across the street. They are awake. We
aren’t alone.

Focusing on the weight of this tiny person on my chest I slow my

breathing, listening to his own little breaths and soft sleeping
sounds, earnestly trying to commit them to memory. In the wee
hours, in this perfect moment, I have never felt my own mortality
so keenly. I silently will time to stop. 

I cried every day the week before you were born. I didn’t want to
part with you. I felt such peace with you inside. Nothing could

33
touch you. Maybe that’s been the hardest part. Not necessarily
the long drawn out birth, the possibility of birthing you alone …
or even your brief stay in the NICU. It may just be that I no longer
have you all to myself. 

I’m so tired I just want to sleep, but I keep opening my eyes to

watch her breathing, checking she’s OK, and watching her tiny
face and stubby little fingers and feeling amazed that I was part of
bringing this being into the world and that she’s so perfect.

There’s a peace that comes with knowing there’s nowhere else to

be except for right here in your tiny grasp, my baby.

Your Grandfather died in March, two months before you crashed

into my world, crying like a duck. You filled the space where grief
lives. He would have thought you were fantastic.

10

After you came home, we saw the postman daily. Once, we received
three bouquets before noon and were irrationally furious. We laid
each one on different neighbours’ doorsteps and received back
one fan for the heatwave, one hand-painted card, and one note
saying it had transformed a terrible day.

Early days with a freshly delivered baby: disorientating, euphoric,

foggy, awakening, repetitive. Learning to read and respond to the
cues of a whole new being. This, third time round, is expected. The
unexpected is the world closing down. Milky sofa snuggles with

34
box sets are exchanged for homeschooling and books.

I wonder if this is how it used to be: the entire cosmos of family

life reduced to a single space. I clear toy cars and plates from the
table, settle the baby in the cot in the corner and turn the lights
low as my son, bouncing with tiredness, hovers expectantly at the
door.

My eldest is having to isolate due to a confirmed case at nursery.

Really though, how can I entertain a pre-schooler and a baby, all
day, every day, shut away? I’m glad they won’t remember days like
these. I hope I don’t either.

The world’s wonders are empty, hospitals are full. Play parks
closed, with tape, like a crime scene. Our bed is full but so are
our hearts. Tired eyes explore your perfect, tiny, soft face. Your
eyes flicker open. You smile as you watch the light dance away the
shadows. 

I spend a lot of time watching the two of you together, big sister
and baby sister. Beyond grateful we are safe and have all this
time together. Beyond sad that our closest family and friends are
missing out on the love between you both. 

Day two of self-isolating with a three-year-old and a newborn. It’s

9.40am and no one has cried yet. Except the baby. But he cries
because he is scared of his own farts so I’m not sure he counts.

Last Google search? ‘What to do if you drop mobile phone on

newborn baby’s head?’

35
I can’t decide if it’s worse that the world is missing out on you or
you are missing out on the world.

The Hawa Mahal always beguiled me

With its intricate Jharokhas
For women in purdah to observe the bustling world outside
I used to wonder what it must be like
To watch but not partake in life
To be locked up behind those pink sandstone walls with your baby
To see but not be seen
Now I don’t have to wonder

My mum took her first ever solo flight, wearing two masks, and
suddenly was in our kitchen sterilising my breast pump. She sat
with me each night in the dark listening to thumping white noise
while I waited for you to drop off. I avoided telling my new mum
friends whose own mums were all so far away. 

11

Tears stream down my face as I shakily cradle my precious baby

on the sofa, feeling trapped and guilty. I finally plucked up the
courage to go for a walk. A local boy deliberately came too close
and responded to my noisy protest by questioning why I took her
outside.

Five days old and I need to get to the shops, I’m scared to go out.
I stand in the aisle; the shelves are bare. I feel warm tears on my
cheek. How will I feed my family? The world was so selfish and

36
now we are left with nothing. 

No nappies. Not a single brand in newborn size is available. People

are at it again: hoarding. I cry. I wonder what they’ll do with their
mountains of nappies, toilet roll and pasta. I assume they hope if
they stack them high enough, they’ll keep the virus out. 

I walk as fast as I can, but your little cries are getting more
desperate. It’s nearing your feed time and I’ve totally mistimed
our walk. We stop and sit on a bench in the rain and I scramble to
put my coat over you, sheltering you whilst you look up, content
and happy. Lockdown feeds have turned into alfresco feeds. 

I knocked on my friend to say hello. She asked me to hold you

up out of the pram so that she could see you. When I got home, I
realised that this was the first person that you had been introduced
to. All of a sudden, it felt overwhelming.

Sometimes, she looks at her child and cries: pandemics, wars,

melting icecaps and biblical droughts haunt her tortured mind.
‘Why did I bring you into this world?’ She falls asleep – pillow
drenched in tears, T-shirt drenched in milk and postpartum sweat.
Her motherhood looks nothing like pictures in magazines.

Shapeshifter:
Who am I now?
Becoming.
Home to a heart that beats to a new rhythm.
Underneath the rubble of birthing and sleepless nights.
Soft moss of baby sweet skin and morning kisses

37
I call to myself at the midnight hour
Sometimes I see a familiar face appear in the mirror.

She says lockdown doesn’t change much for her, ‘Family is far
anyway.’ Then she washes the brave face off and cries for her
parents who will not be holding their granddaughter any time
soon – their first, only, first and last grandchild. The clock’s ticking
in two corners of the world.

My sister comes to the doorstep to meet you. She’s driven for two
hours to just stand on my doorstep and look at you in wonder.

12

It takes a village ... I wish I could see mine. I’m aching, leaking,
bleeding and oh so very tired. Anxiety gnaws away at my groggy,
hormone-saturated mind. You are like a little milk limpet and I
cling to you in return. We’ll get through this my girl, we have to.

Between the hours of 1am and 4am are the loneliest. Maybe
because it’s colder, but as I feed my baby I can’t help but feel a
longing to see family. What’s different this time is I can’t make a
plan to go see them to help get through the night.

I miss my mum. She always says how proud and happy she is seeing
me in my new role as a mummy and I just can’t stop thinking on
how much I learned from her and how much I still need to and not
having her here makes it so hard.

38
It is 5am and I am praying to a god I have neither affiliation nor
negotiating rights with. I stare at the ceiling and think, please
let her go back to sleep. I open one eye and glance at the baby
monitor, hoping for a miracle.

Having a newborn brings its own sort of lockdown, I think.  

We can meet in the garden. But they can’t access the garden
without coming through the house. Should they hold their breath
and not touch anything? What if they want to hold the baby? What
if they need the loo? Should they bring their own picnic set? And
what have we decided about them holding the baby?

My heart broke a little bit when I saw my parents ‘meeting’ their

granddaughter for the first time; a sheet of glass separating my
little girl from the loving arms that I knew ached to hold her. It’s
not how things are supposed to be.

You met Abbie over video call. Well, kind of. You were crying as
we checked your nappy, and Chi was howling beside you (she does
that when you really cry). You met most of your family whilst
they were masked up, smiling eyes above fabric squares. The first
person to hold you apart from us was Gran-Nan. Each of you, all
of us, sharing stories with our eyes.

With tears in her eyes, she gazed in through the patio doors
at her first grandchild just days old, fast asleep in her Moses
basket. What she’d give to reach through the glass and give her a
cuddle. Welcome to the world, little one; a strange world at that.

39
I didn’t have the dependable support of my parents when my son
was born this summer, because of the pandemic. All our carefully
laid plans for them to visit were torn to shreds by a virus none of
us had an inkling of when we last met at home in January, in India.
But new life waits for no virus, and so he was born.

Smiling faces appear on my phone, he and I in a smaller box in

the corner. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘it’s Granny and Grandpa who live in the
phone!’ He smiles widely as my dad begins to sing ‘Little Sir Echo,’
like my grandpa sang to my siblings and I years ago.

I still check my two-year-old’s breathing last thing at night

after the baby’s last feed. I slowly stroke her hair away from her
forehead. She is so utterly beautiful. I feel yet more guilt about
how angry I am with her sometimes now, how sick of the whining
when I am trying to feed her brother or sit down for a rare rest. Our
relationship changes as surely as she grows taller. I don’t think I
like it. I love her no less. I am so tired.

No-one told me it would be like this. After seven years of trying,

eight miscarriages, countless referrals, examinations, tests and
procedures. Then it happened: twins. No-one told me how sad I’d
feel. To finally get what I wanted. How isolated I would be. How I
grieved my old life.

13

You were a week old. Overflowing with love, hormones and fear,
my new responsibility felt heavy like a wet wool coat. Cases were

40
rising fast. Early and underweight, surely you were too fragile for
this precarious world. ‘I must keep her safe,’ I sobbed, ‘but how
can I protect her from this?’

An old woman bends towards my baby. She coos, and a gummy

smile lights up his unmasked face, a bright point of connection in
a long dull day. She reaches out to touch him and I yank the pram
away. I hate it, but I have to do it. She frowns and stalks away.

Roll up! Roll up! No need to observe two metres with tiny twins!
Stick your head right in that pram despite the mother’s facial
expressions. Yes, her hands must be full, her life must be crazy,
buy one get one free, how does she do it and, of course, rather her
than you! Keep those comments coming! Speculate and titillate –
double trouble here for your entertainment!

I’m desperate. I need reassurance and friendly, knowing faces.

We’re supposed to walk the park in pairs, but as each buggy pulls
up, we stand still, a group of lactating criminals giving lockdown
rules the finger. Breaking the law just to know that someone else
has cracked nipples and piles.

‘Forever is hard to imagine until you’re faced with it.’ I sighed out
everything I had, leaving behind a crispy leaf-skeleton impression
of myself. It wasn’t how I thought I’d be mourning my father –
with a mummy-friend on a hard, wet, park bench, nursing our tiny
boys.

Sandra was the first mum friend I made pre-lockdown. We met on

the tube and connected over being pregnant and from Germany. We

41
both had lockdown babies and felt that acute, draining isolation.
She has a laugher that feels like sunshine and there have been so
many moments where I just want to give her a great big hug. And
I have to stop myself. 

He thought she was wonderful. She is the only other person that
has got within a hand’s distance of him. I felt spoilt that someone
else saw my baby and all his details; she thought he was the most
beautiful thing as well. 

Strangers point at my baby and say, ‘It must impact their

development, not seeing faces? Not interacting with many people?
It’s interesting.’ No. It’s not interesting. I never wanted my baby,
my first, to be a guinea pig, an unknowing participant in a study of
the pandemic’s social consequences. 

I hid behind a car to feed her. I’m so sorry baby, I’m not ashamed
of you, but I was scared that someone might see I was doing it
wrong. I was stupid to come, I wasn’t ready, but after four months
of indoors you needed to see the sea. 

She’s making me drink from these things again why can’t I just
have the bottle? OK let me try, I clamp down and she screams and
cries, Baa (Grandma) rushes to take me as I cry too. Unknown to
Mummy, I have Strep B.

I get it, you don’t normally see what’s underneath my bra – you
still can’t see it now – but almost, and you haven’t seen much
of this kind of thing – breastfeeding – before, and that equals
uncomfortableness. My baby is hungry, and I just want to feed

42
them. I say just – it’s a pretty big thing right now.

I’m so sorry we didn’t realise what was happening. Sorry for all
those tearful nights, misattributed to colic. Sorry for the near
constant unsatisfying feeds, my body failing us both. No one saw
you, you see – you weren’t weighed, we didn’t know. Despite that,
guilt haunts me.  

I want to be at home where it is dry and where children are not

screaming at me. The only way home is to walk. To sing, to talk,
to coax, and definitely to ignore. The trees collect water on their
leaves and form heavy drops; this coat can’t cope.

‘An appointment has been made for you in March 2021.’ I walk past
a rainbow in a house window. I’m fuming. Rage tastes metallic and
unfamiliar. I want to slap this broken, indifferent system across its
dysfunctional, underfunded face. I feel abandoned and helpless. I
want to Tweet, get on Newsnight and shout from the rooftops. We
matter! Our bodies matter. We are still here! I feel quiet shame.
Bad immigrant. Bad socialist. I stroke her head.  

I feel that Covid restrictions have offered some people/hospitals

a cloak for racism ... on more than one occasion I have seen
Caucasian couples being able to attend some appointments
together and join each other during labour earlier, when myself
and my husband have been denied this privilege.

Few really acknowledged that prior to this second lockdown, the

three of us had been sentenced by our GP to months of shielding
with our newborn.  Since then there’s been a debilitating push

43
and pull from the government. ‘You’re allowed to do this but we’re
hoping you won’t do that.’  

I hate that people pull down their masks to smile at the baby, even
clear ones. They think she’ll be scared of them when, of course,
she’s very used to them and has never learnt to associate them
with anything more upsetting than Aldi or going to the pub.

I sit you on the path at F’s homeschool group and run to the car.
It doesn’t occur to me to ask another parent to hold you. One of
them picks you up. I bite my tongue from screaming, ‘What are
you doing? You’re too close.’

‘Cover. Your. Mouth.’ I could feel eyes looking at me. Was this
freenews moral panic something people were and should be
reacting to? What was this bred up brown woman shouting about?
It was over as soon as it began. It was a telltale sign of things to
come.

14

I was feeding you in bed. You were eight days old when I
remembered. My birth mum. I knew I had to call the care home to
check in and let her know you had arrived safe and well.

The soulful look of my little man’s eyes as he searched for my

breast. Once latched, the soft sucks and swallows echoed in our
little cocoon.

44
You were nine days old when she died. We said goodbye by phone.
Her breathing laboured as the nursing staff reminded me to say
she had another grandchild. How could I not have remembered to
say? She told me she didn’t want to be here anymore, the last time
we spoke. She didn’t like the food.

Now I know why sleep deprivation is used as a form of torture.

She was awake wanting boob every hour again and wakes at
the slightest movement so co-sleeping is barely helping. After
these nights I can’t stop crying all day and fear I have postnatal
depression again. I just can’t shake the sadness. 

So much time to think these days. Whilst you feed, gently suckling,
or the rare occurrence when you sleep on me. So much to think
about. What will your future consist of? What will mine? Do you
weigh enough? Are you content? 

During the living room zooms, I seethed with a quiet resentment.

My mother-in-law’s health anxieties demanded such a zealous
approach to risk management. Every conceivable transmission
route discussed with a certain glee. As she laid out her terms for
an eventual meet up, I felt my precious little daughter reduced to
a disease vector. 

All those hours preparing to birth and I never prepared for after. I
thought I’d want my mum around me often, but I didn’t. I thought
I’d be happy to share my baby, but I wasn’t. All those months of
being all that she needed was suddenly over.

At this point I am beyond tired; I push the twin pram up the hill

45
with my head resting on the handlebars.

It hurt to walk. Breasts on fire, tears free-falling down my face,

blood escaping down my legs, stomach muscles separated. A body
torn in two. The midwives wouldn’t come to the house, the risk
was too high. How I managed to be on time for that appointment, I
will never know.

No couples smiling and holding hands. ‘Do not cross’ tape keeping
you from approaching reception. Chairs spaced out in the waiting
room as though there wasn’t enough of them or someone very
unorganised did it. It’s all very strange, and a world away from all
the other appointments we had together.

The nurse isn’t ready for us yet. I stand very still in a zone marked
out with black and yellow striped tape, as if not to tamper with a
crime scene. My baby reaches inquisitive fingers to my face and
pulls down my mask with a twang. Peepo! 

I feed you on a plastic chair in the doctor’s waiting room – half

covered breast, half covered face. You gaze up and I hope my smile
travels through fabric. Your brow furrows. My heart hurts. Then I
realise, this is all you know. It’s me that is grieving.

Only one parent is allowed into appointments with him. I’m trying
to listen to something important about his head and brain and a
scan to check everything is alright, but I’m also bouncing him up
and down, trying to keep him happy.

Lockdown means only one parent can attend her medical

46
appointment. I hold her alone as the doctor asks me if I can call
my other half in. That they are going to break the rules for this.
And in that moment, I know coronavirus won’t be our biggest
fight this year.

On the chemo ward it’s all ‘how’s your baby?’ through masks, my
temporary escape from motherhood one of needles, Smooth Radio
and the smell of saline. Every three weeks I revel in the chance to
share news of my children with the world outside our flat.

My little boy, you were named after your great-grandmother, who

was 104 when she died. Even then she had great skin; great skin
and the softest cheeks. The look you give me after you’ve fed is
her look. Her way of being satisfied, of being grateful for every
small thing.

Thankful for circling the park. Thankful for cold air in my chest.
Thankful for my steps getting stronger with each crunching leaf. I
smile at the other mothers – a distanced show of solidarity.

In playgrounds I study the other mothers. I want to know how they

are doing it: ‘it’ being motherhood; ‘it’ being a global pandemic.
I want to ask them if they are OK. But I don’t have the words. I
suspect they don’t either.

I shamelessly get a girl’s number in the park. It should have been

embarrassingly forward. But her addition in the swing and mine in
my arms meant it was fair game. Everyone was lonely, right?

47
 15

I imagined writing my diary in an elegant notebook while my baby

was napping. I’d sip coffee and come up with something witty.
But the truth is I’m too tired. I never have the free hands. So I’m
typing this on my phone in the dark while breastfeeding.

Black cloud: becoming a mum at start of lockdown, whilst shielding

husband, then made redundant from dream job (during maternity
leave!) on top of suffering from long-standing depression. Silver
lining: no visitors; no pressure to be anywhere by a certain time;
husband furloughed = lots of family time; my daughter gives me
the best reason to get up. 

ME: what is sleep? Boobs will pop. Bedraggled. Milk EVERYWHERE.

Stood in my pants at 10am. WOAH Projectile. Hello mum bun.
Ravenous. No, you have stomach muscles. Reheat my tea for the
3rd time. The great unwashed mother. Global pandemic what the
actual fuck! YOU: the most perfect peaceful and beautiful thing I
have ever seen.

16

We went to the museum today. I wonder if, someday, children will

look at exhibits about what life was like at this time. How will
these restrictions be viewed retrospectively? I watched passers-by
through the window while I gave Hugo his bottle. I thought how
ironic it was that, although I am now always in the company of
another human, I have rarely felt so alone.

48
I sat with my daughter alone in the Transport museum cafe 
One of the last ones to leave the city
The final countdown before
lockdown 
This is London but not how I knew it
I wanted to tell her

The weirdest thing was having to find mum and baby friends
through the Peanut app. We hung out by the park gates nervously
looking at faces like we were going on a Tinder date. I didn’t have
any good opening lines.

Winnicott’s idea of ‘ordinary devotion’ is sublime and terrifying in

equal measure. Nothing feels ordinary about the devotion I show
you; not the time, care, energy, nappy changes. None of it. And yet
all this is completely gloriously ordinary.

My baby’s birth has left me incontinent, a third-degree tear

reaching across my dignity. No number of Kegels in the last five
months has prevented the accidents that foist themselves upon
me. I wonder how many other mothers are pushing their prams in
the park, quietly soiling themselves in their Sweaty Betty leggings?

It’s 38 degrees inside and out. We are trapped indoors. The only
thing which keeps you entertained is dancing. You cry whenever I
stop. I am melting. I dance to the tune of a tiny tyrant.

When you’re narked because your partner stole your only news
of note for the entire week, which was that Joe did a massive
poo. This, on a birthday catch–up call with friends, asking how we

49
were, what news. I was outraged – that was my poo! Andrei had
actual updates – he had been out on his motorcycle, started a new
job even. As for my news? That really was the size of it.

I’m stuck on the sofa. Breastfeeding. Sweet life serum slumps you
to sleep. There’s a knock at the door. Another human! What joy!
I hobble to the door, baby in arms. The postman looks at me. I’m
overjoyed and over-tired. He’s stunned and avoiding eye contact
… I’d forgotten to put my tit back. 

Midwives came wearing garbage bags that passed for PPE. Thinking
especially of those who could smile without visible mouths, we
made it outside for the inaugural thank-you clap. But then we’d
be nursing or changing or soothing or shushing, before hearing
applause outside and thinking, oh, it must be Thursday.

The days stretch. One after the other. I had thought they would
be punctuated by baby classes, catch-ups with friends and coffee
mornings. Instead they are listless. So I am listless. 

I thought motherhood would be another string to my bow. But

it’s a whole new instrument. I feel a genuine panic that my brain
might never surface; that I won’t shake the fog of hormones,
bone-aching tiredness and the knife-sharp alertness of new
motherhood. 

Rocking, swaying, bouncing. Newborn in the sling, in the kitchen.

Four-year-old watching TV in the lounge, still. Husband working
from home in the spare room, still. Rocking, swaying, bouncing,
still.

50
Soft snuffly squeaks. Heart-wrenching cries. Frothy poo
symphonies. The toaster pop. White noise bristling against my
eardrums. The tick of the clock counting down endless days
indoors. The silent ping of the green message icon lighting up my
phone in the dark. Sounds of lockdown motherhood. 

He cries when it hurts. That can be about so many things: effort,

failure, boredom, loneliness, just generally being unsure of what’s
next. The things he has to get used to if he’s going to be able to
learn to keep on going. So sometimes I let him cry. 

I won’t remember at all. This is my greatest fear. That all these

months spent sat next to each other will blend into one moment
with no defining features. No hook to hang my memories on.
The moment will have passed. And I and everyone else will have
missed it.

The world stood still but you didn’t. You grew and you bloomed
and there was only us to see it. We existed in our own world and
everyone else in theirs.

It broke my heart to see them cry as we drove away with forced

smiles. The grandparents of my baby travelled three hours to see
their first granddaughter for only two hours, two meters away, two
weeks after her birth. I will never forget their sadness and mine.

When my son rolled over for the first time, I cheered so loudly
it scared him. He burst into tears. I did too. It’s odd, I think, this
feeling of pride. Almost too much to bear.

51
Holding my two-week-old son, I answered the call I’ve been
expecting for the last few days – my dad has died. I sit alone with
the baby processing the news and he needs feeding as soon as the
call has ended. It isn’t until my toddler has gone to bed that night
that I allow myself to break. 

17

I have been feeling a little emotional since my baby arrived.

Sometimes I cry for no real reason. Today I cried because one day
she’ll be all grown up and will leave our home to start her own.
Yesterday I cried because I spilt my drink on the dog. 

You lie propped up in my lap, sporting a dramatic pout, those

abundantly chubby cheeks and a receding hairline. Comically
old before your time, a pensioner in miniature. And momentarily
I’m overwhelmed with grief for the aged version of you that I’ll,
perhaps, never meet. And then you fart; I smile, and both our
tensions are released. 

Wrapped in a blanket, I held you as the first clap for the NHS
began. As the claps got louder, you looked up at me. My tears fell.
Then, as if there was no noise, just stars shining above us, I took a
deep breath, whispering, ‘I will protect you.’ 

Since little one arrived, I often get scared in the evenings.

Apparently, it’s normal. It makes me miss my mum even more as
she made me feel safe. I hope I make my baby feel safe. 

52
The first night my baby slept through the night, I woke up
wondering why she was asleep. For the rest of the night I lay
awake and kept checking she was breathing. Then I cried because
my little girl didn’t need me already. 

My ring broke today. It’s a dainty opal ring which shimmers

with rainbow colours. I got it while pregnant for the third time,
terrified and hoping for a rainbow baby. Is it because I’ve got both
my rainbow babies now? Am I supposed to let these other two go? 

We spoke with friends in New Zealand today. They are expecting

a baby. Sharing our experience of lockdown and not being able to
see family gave me a glimpse of what it must have been like for
them. Lockdown is like being 11,000 miles away.

I regularly feel terribly guilty. My daughter was born in April and

due to my fear of the pandemic I have not taken her anywhere
inside. She hasn’t been to any baby classes or even into a cafe. The
other NCT mums have met up but I am too scared.

Pixelated fragments of care and advice; your latch checked over

Zoom, my stiches checked on FaceTime, my mood checked over a
phone line that keeps cutting out.

No one came to see you, to smell your hair or stroke your face. The
gentle coos or warm embrace. No one came to see me, to ask if I
was doing OK, to cook a meal or make me tea.

Your father has lost his job and I wasn’t allowed maternity pay. What
a mess this pandemic is, and you still haven’t met your grandfather. 

53
 18

I took the bus today. I stayed standing, keeping my distance from

the bloke whose face mask was slung around his neck. Mine was
right in Isaac’s face because I’d done the sling up too high again.
He spent the journey entertained by this blue patterned babysitter
– poking it with his hands and giggling.

I don’t really need the limes, but we will go anyway, for something
to do, for a quiet moment where I can take a few long breaths as
I push the buggy down the street. I will see photos of children
through every front window and I will wonder once again, how
something so terribly ordinary could feel so terribly difficult.

I’d put on lipstick and a sling to walk the baby to empty parks and
back. Twice, we arranged to ‘bump into’ fellow fresh parents so we
could sit two metres away, the wives perched on the smoothest
available rocks, learning to breastfeed without flashing the other’s
husband.

There is nothing like the solidarity of being with another mother.

A mother who is relaxed and at ease with her babe. My friend
Sylvia puts it so well, as she takes another drag of her cigarette.
‘If he screams and people look, well fuck ‘em – that’s what babies
do.’ I love Sylvia.  

It’s amazing how eight strangers who saw each other on computer
screens during three NCT zoom calls can become an unbelievably
valuable support group via WhatsApp. We have a great bond and
I’m sure we will be friends for life, which is incredible as we haven’t
even met each other yet?!

54
In years to come, when you look back on these challenging times,
can you comfortably say that you were the best version of yourself?
Or at least tried to be? Did you show support and empathy for
those around you suffering? Or just judge and criticise their every
move? 

Note for a mother in lockdown: Do not refer to my child as a ‘Covid

baby.’

I rubbed Vaseline on his cradle cap today, Claire told me to use

coconut oil, ‘World foods aisle in the supermarket ... Jamaica
section.’

He’s grown to not like the masks when shopping or at appointments,

he can’t see mummy’s smile so stares blankly until it’s quickly
popped off and giggles emerge when he can finally see the smile
across my face.

She has to chase me because I don’t hear at first. ‘You dropped

this,’ she says. She’s standing too close. In her hand is our muslin,
though it looks alien somehow. Thanking her, I can’t quite meet
her eye, as if that was the infectious part of the exchange.

I finally got a place on the Baby Sensory class the week we went
back into lockdown. I sat waving feather boas and plastic bag pom
poms energetically over Zoom whilst you crawled disinterestedly
round the living room knocking over a plant and managing to
switch off the internet.

Trying to enjoy a drink with friends, outside of course, with no

55
entry allowed. Feeding gently in the evening sun but rain starts,
pitter patter. She is sucking harder and harder. Rain is falling
louder and louder. Trying to laugh but also not sure what to do …
we are all wet through. 

Grandad’s 70th birthday. Second without your nana. Our bubble.

You’re grizzly – maybe you feel the emotion. Suddenly, heads
turned and hands touching each other: you’re ‘chatting’. You’ve
realised there’s another half of you. We watch, crying. It’s as if you
knew we needed that today and someone else is watching. 

During Covid I have announced my pregnancy on Zoom, had a

virtual gender reveal, attended all appointments alone and in a
mask (which I fainted in the first time), given birth pretty much by
myself (as my husband was not allowed in until I was 9cm), I feel
I’ve experienced racism as a black mother, looked after a newborn
as a new parent (we were not prepared even though we thought we
were), attended all postnatal appointments alone (still in a mask),
looked after a newborn with no visitors to offer a little reprieve …
is this normal!?

If I howled whenever I wanted to, I think

I’d howl even more than you do.
But with every night you sleep through
Every time you say thank you
And every moment you sit quietly, waiting
I will thumb another corner of your already perfect body
Into the mould.

Because all the intervals between loving you are now prescribed –

56
nappy changing, feeding, sleeping, etc – I feel motherhood most
when you’re not with me. The odd time I head to the shops alone
– my lockdown outing – and you’re left with your father and I run
out the house, arms still flailing from the release of your weight.

I meet you again each week as new faculties come online. ‘There’s
more of him today,’ I say to Iain, holding you in my arms. ‘I know,’
Iain nods, ‘I see it too.’ I cried today that my own mother won’t
meet this version of you. You’ll be new again by the time we see
her next. But never this new.

19

Sensory play but who is playing? I have déjà vu. I am 13 years old
sitting in Mrs Osborne’s maths class watching the familiarity and
the ease of the clique. Impossible to penetrate, awkward to try.
I am 30 years old, sitting with my baby and still not part of the
clique. 

I’ve been counting down to our trip ‘up north’ for weeks. Only
Riley’s second visit to her grandparents, thanks to everything. My
phone buzzes. We’re moving into tier 2. I call Mum in a meltdown.
‘At least there’s FaceTime,’ she soothes, trying to put a brave face
on. I snap.

Work was crazy and my husband burnt out in the first few months
of having our baby. At one point he found playing with her
exhausting. I took her for more and more aimless walks; she slept,
he napped, I wept. Nobody could come because of lockdown. It

57
didn’t really seem like real life at that point.

You arrive home, late, again. Your skin is grey, your eyes tired
and weary, you look thin. You take your clothes off in the garage.
‘Don’t forgot to take your pants off before you get in the shower,
Daddy,’ giggles Emily (age three). I sit and wonder if my three girls
will grow up thinking that Daddy stripping off naked in the garage
and casually walking through the house to shower immediately
after arriving home from work is ‘normal.’ For now, it is. 

I am so proud of him for working in the NHS, but this was becoming
tinged by a resentment as others spoke of how wonderful it was
that their partners could spend more time at home. Around me
the isolation grew, and the walls closed in on me. 

The days are really long.

My bath was interrupted once again by your big eyes and rolling
tears. Daddy skulks in and again utters the phrase, ‘He needs you.’ 

When you were still nestled within me, I loved long showers. What a
thrill, after so many years of longing, to feel my body transformed.
Rubbing soapy hands over my surprisingly firm bump, I swayed
and sang ‘You Are My Sunshine,’ imploring the universe not to
take you away. 

I think back often on the birth of my first son, the anxiety, the pain
and the isolation. Returning to the ward after having my baby was
a strange experience, no partners, no visitors. I couldn’t wait to
leave; I can’t describe the atmosphere. In my most vulnerable

58
moments I was alone.

I think back to your newborn days. I can’t remember them;

just a blur of chaos, disruption, exhaustion. This was usual of
motherhood, I’ve done it once before, but this time was different.
No events help distinguish the moments, no visits, no holidays.
Nothing to punctuate the murkiness of memory.

The tier announcement put us in tier 3, not unexpected but hard

to take. The hardest thing about this is the isolation, not being
able to see family, or go for lunch with a friend. Some days I’m
fine, other days I could just sit and cry.

I have a secret. My daughter was conceived using an egg donor.

Friends tell me she looks like me, and I know they are just being
kind. But they don’t know our secret. My husband tells me she
looks like me and I worry he hasn’t processed what we’ve done.

From the person meant to be most dear to me, the words, ‘How
are you, my love?’ would have reclaimed a thousand mountains.
Instead there was recrimination and vilification. 

Yes, I’m crying over the fact that my plan to get out today didn’t
happen! To where you ask? Oh, nowhere special just for a walk
with my husband and daughter. Yes, I know it’s crazy, I’m crying
over not going for a walk, but you don’t get it, I’m losing my mind
being stuck in this one bedroom flat for yet another day.

This too shall pass, this too shall pass, this too shall pass.

59
Lockdown was easier when you could sit outside and let the sun
warm your mind. Nowadays, I’m stuck in the same room watching
outside get greyer and darker. Getting out of the house and out of
my head has been much harder this time around. 

My heart aches to hold my boy while he sleeps in his cot. Maybe

it’s the ever-growing feeling of loneliness and abandonment from
the outside world. He has become somewhat of a safety blanket
for me, when really, I should be his; I am the mother after all.

This is not how it was supposed to be.

It is not mentioned. Never talked about. Never acknowledged. The

shame of my breastfeeding grief and trauma feels so real to me. I
hold a constant visceral ache. The relationship I had longed for is
not going to be a reality. I am shattered by this.

The dreaded moment had arrived. I stood in the kitchen, paralyzed.

My loud sobs in reckless abandon could not comfort me. My pain,
excruciatingly raw. My breasts were so engorged from your recent
arrival. My anguish was inconsolable. I could not do it with a
bottle. Cancer had bereaved me of breastfeeding.

She was so heavy. It felt like I was moving in slow motion but
finally I pulled her out of the ice-cold water and onto the wooden
platform we’d come from. She gasped for breath for what seemed
like an age, before letting out a wail. Soaked to her skin with her
hair slicked back, she looked more perfect than I’d ever seen her
before; our hearts beating nine to the dozen, adrenalin surging
round our bodies.

60
Leaving my husband at the entrance to A&E, as the news of
the unfolding pandemic intensified, has to be one of the most
terrifying moments of my life. For the next nine days, my baby
boy and I were left alone, unaware if we would ever see him again.

It feels like we decided to have you in another world. I love you, I love
you, I love you. But it feels like we decided to have you in another
world.

20

It takes a village to raise a baby, I read somewhere. Where’s my

village, I wondered? Feeling so removed from everything today.
Even your baby giggles can’t penetrate a certain greyness. It’s like
this month, November. You’re playing on the floor and I’m writing
these lines, crying. I wonder how many other mums are out there,
like me at the moment. And that made me feel a bit less alone, but
not any less sad.

On the more difficult days I forget about the easy ones.  She cried
all morning – big salty tears rolling down her cheeks as she looked
at me in desperation, trying to communicate where it hurts. 
I pretend we have a telepathic connection, but the truth is I have
no idea.

As the second lockdown was announced my heart sank. The small

trusted support network I’d managed to build would no longer to
be able to help me at home and I feared my mental health would
spiral again being stuck indoors alone with an unsettled baby and
difficult toddler.

61
My four-week-old baby is scared of me when I wear my face mask. 

Mum and dad have taken you out for a walk to give me some time
to myself during lockdown, but an hour in and I’m still here, sat on
the sofa. ‘Me time’ is filled with racing thoughts, guilt and worry
about how I’m going to fill the time when you’re back.

You’re asleep. It’s my chance to rest, but my mind is far from

restful. I can’t help but wonder how my first months as a mother
have turned out in some parallel universe. Where no virus has
turned our lives upside down. Would I be the same mum? 

I’m a long-distance swimmer, and I used to think I knew a bit

about endurance, but nothing compares to solo parenting a
colicky baby in a pandemic. I can’t bear being unable to console
you as you scream for hour after hour, purple, rigid and drenched
in distressed tears.

My body is left weak, hollowed out and decrepit. Yes, you are pure
joy and my life hangs on your every movement, that pure skin. But
the weakness has seeped into each part of me like a dark ivy.

Wouldn’t it be lovely to call my mum, or anyone really, and have

them ask me how I am, how I actually am. ‘How is the baby?’ ‘Is
she sleeping okay?’ ‘Is she eating enough?’ If only they could see
me. I would love to be fed, hugged and rocked to sleep for just one
day.

The anxiety of your vulnerability constricts my chest like barbed

wire. Awake, asleep. Are you breathing? What’s going on inside

62
you that could take you from me? Every day I force it away and
minute by minute it crawls back there, zigzagging across my
mellow and leaving its ugly mark. 

The walls drip, sopping with a black tar lie substance. It is an

impenetrable curtain of sop, of wet, of dried blood gone off. The
depression had landed.

21

Postnatal PTSD. Seven months as a new mother have been the

greatest of my life and also the darkest times I’ve experienced.
I am losing myself. I knew it would be hard; Covid has made it
harder; this is too hard. This is hell.

I’m done. I can’t do this. Your crying is incessant, your screams

ear piercing and I just can’t do anything right. What’s wrong with
you? What’s wrong with me? Motherhood is meant to be newborn
snuggles and a flow of guests. It isn’t meant to be this hard. This
lonely.

Fuck Covid.

No one warned us. My normally calm, quiet two-week-old

daughter is screaming inconsolably after her tongue tie procedure
hours before. She is not only in pain, but she can’t latch, and she
is starving. I feel an overwhelming sense of failure as my partner
gives her formula while I express – milk and tears flowing from me
in equal measure. 

63
Not being able to fully attend to one baby or another, one baby
cries as I am nursing the other to sleep, it is unbearable. Winnicott
says a mother of twins can only fail as she cannot give either baby
her full attention and the babies suffer because of this. Every day
I fail despite my best efforts, despite giving everything that I can.
The good enough mother of twins fails to be good enough; it is a
torture.

Two little words. Two tiny syllables. Tier three. One big feeling.
One overwhelming syllable. Dread.

She said she understands but, in my sleep-deprived haze I can’t

stop my inner voice from forming the words. ‘No, you don’t, you
can’t. You had friends and family around you to help, to make you
tea and take the baby out so you could sleep or rest.’

Having auditory hallucinations

hearing birds and thinking they are babies
going a bit mad. 

She paces the streets in the winter dark; half-ghost, half-woman,

eyes sunken, skin pale, and only seeing her own shadow makes
her remember she is still alive. She paces relentlessly back and
forth, and then leans down to whisper, to beg, ‘Please, baby, sleep,
please.’

Through gritted teeth I begged you to please sleep. ‘Please. Just

for a short while.’ Tears streaming, faces contorted. I bounced, I
rocked, I sang. I said ‘sorry’ a hundred times. ‘Please forgive me.’
Your eyelids became heavy, drooping like the daffodils outside,

64
tired of their heavy heads and ready to rest. 

I should be sleeping
Sleep when the baby sleeps
But I can’t
My mind is on fire with thoughts
Each one igniting the next
I try to put them out
One whole year of you
One whole year of this
I need to get some sleep.

22

You finally talk to the right person and it feels so good to finally
tell someone that you feel depressed, but you want your mum.
Unfortunately, you can’t see your mum because of lockdown. You
start to get the help you need through the doctors and this helps
you to feel better and more connected with your little girl.

I am not a perfectionist, quite the opposite. But my body created

something absolutely perfect, and the pressure to maintain that
perfection is immense. And from this failure to be perfect develops
the ever-present maternal guilt. But despite all my failed efforts,
you remain perfect. You do it by yourself. 

Weeks beating myself up over not wanting to solely breastfeed

… knowing there was nothing physically wrong with me and
constantly hearing ‘breast is best’ … the anguish over not wanting

65
to do it anymore ... then D-Day comes, the bottle of formula is
given and the only feeling is one of relief.

I can’t lie, it’s been a challenge navigating how to be a new

mummy, whilst stuck indoors, with significant anxiety to manage.
But without you in my life little boy, Covid-19 would have taken
every smile and stolen all my joy. 

After nine months with rare, bizarrely distanced and slightly

awkward visits from grandparents, family and friends it makes me
sad to think that prior to our beautiful arrival I fretted about how
to cope with these treasured guests in our home whilst trying to
learn how to be mum. 

Our four walls are so familiar now; the hum of the fridge, the
noise the tap makes when the washing machine drains. It’s lonely.
A loneliness I have never felt before as I am indeed not alone but
mothering in isolation. A Zoom call once a week in the diary. Meet
with one friend for a walk, at a distance, do not touch. And yet and
yet and yet, I keep going as I can.

Are we out of the woods yet? I asked myself in the darkest hour
of the night struggling in every way possible with motherhood,
with you curled up in my arms. Suddenly you opened your big
black eyes and gave me a miraculous smile. Yes, I thought tears
streaming down my face, we WILL be out of the woods.

I thought it was normal to hyperventilate before your bedtime. I

thought it was normal to triple check if I have bottles for you
when we are out. I thought it was normal to cry back into your

66
face as you wail at me. I thought it was normal to feel as if I hadn’t
taken a full breath in days. It was normal for me.  But now I see it
was anxiety, off the scale anxiety for your first two months. And it
wasn’t until that subsided that I realised what normal really could
be.

We went to our first baby group today. She sat up so straight like
an eager child at the front of class, a wide smile beaming across
her face, looking from baby to baby. Similarly, I looked from mum
to mum and swallowed a lump in my throat as I realised what we
had missed these ten long months. Just being in a room with other
mums gave me reassurance, confidence, solidarity and hope. I
didn’t get a chance to speak to any of them. Lockdown 2 began
the next day.  

The reality is I need to stop Googling ‘travel restrictions to Spain’

and admit my defeat. Acknowledge I won’t be able to go home this
Christmas. Assume my baby won’t meet her family and they won’t
be able to hold her until, well, who knows? Maybe for another six
months. She’ll be one year old then.

This new season, I want it all: laurel wreaths, marzipan stollen,

cream liqueur. But these have been bleak times. Instead, we bed
down behind curtains and doors, burrow you deep in my arms –
cheeks two ripe berries, mouth flickering a new smile: an advent
candle radiant in the dark.

My favourite time with you is in the evenings these days. After

a long day and when at least some chores are done, we lie on
the bed and I feed you to sleep. I can almost feel your little body

67
relaxing against the bed, and against me. And for a bit I forget
about everything else and it’s like our own little universe, right
here.

You only fall asleep when touching me, be it a hand, a mouth

or your whole body trying to spoon me. I read countless tips on
getting you to self-soothe and haven’t slept properly for months
but I don’t mind. I’m coping, you’re happy, and secretly I love
sharing my bed with you.

Six weeks on, I am finally able to look at my caesarean scar in the

mirror without balking. A lingering linea nigra traces a line down
my belly and I realise that the two lines combined seem to form
the shape of an anchor, keeping me moored in rough conditions.

Shattered, unwashed, surviving off coffee, baby’s watching

the same episode of True for the fiftieth time and my breakfast
consists of her eggy bread leftovers. This is not the mum I planned
to be but I’m the mum I need to be right now and I’m OK with that.

A totally spontaneous, gratifyingly vigorous shag. I actually

approached my partner to ask him to go to Aldi and get some
houmous but his expression suggested that this would improve
our evening more than houmous and suddenly there we were,
pants round ankles. Tunnel vision to block out Mr Crocodile and
various finger puppets and cardboard detritus that Joe is making
use of on the playmat. 

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 23

They say it takes a village to raise a child, but where do you turn
when the village is closed? The usual support is deemed ‘unsafe’.
You have no choice but to dig deep inside, trusting that you were
made for the role of being a mother. You focus on that bond
between you and your baby, you realise that this is your most
important life’s work and that nothing is more precious than this
child. 

We lay in the shade under the pear trees in the garden on warm
summer afternoons. I saw the tree through your eyes, the light
filtering through the leaves, seeing it all anew. Feeling the breeze
and your breath on my cheek and hearing your delighted gurgles.

I see my soul in you, my son. In the way you study the world.
You gaze at the trees, figuring out how they dance. We will dance
alongside them. My soul and yours – dancing with mother nature.
Two Mamas and their creations. Just pure love. 

The way you turn the back of your hand over on my chest when
you feed. The way you never really batted at objects but reach
out so elegantly and gently, with such great concentration. How
putting your vest over your head always makes you wiggle and
giggle. What a responsibility I have, being the only person in the
world who sees the essence of your character forming.

Becoming a mother doesn’t feel like losing myself, it feels like side-
stepping. Like creating a new identity. Or rather being given a new
identity. And leaving my former one sat on the side, unfinished.
And now I have to tend to this new version of myself alongside the

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old, and the new version comes with somebody new who relies on
me entirely. So that old version just sits there and waits.

Breastfeeding is exhausting. I can’t remember the amount of times

I’ve thought about giving up. But we’ve made it to ten months. If
you’d told me on day five (the absolute lowest point for feeding)
that we’d still be going, I wouldn’t have believed you. 

I’d forgotten how toe-curling breastfeeding is at the beginning. I

mean my toes literally curled. The initial wince as baby latches on
and the ritual of lathering on the nipple cream before, during and
after sometimes. And then one day it doesn’t hurt anymore, and
the stashes of cream become redundant.   

That hand, that tiny soft hand. Stroking the milk out so delicately.
I forget that initial struggle and the chaos of the state of the world
melts away. I think so clearly in my haze of sleeplessness; I hope
I never forget that perfect little hand in this moment of pure joy.

There is no feeling like the weight of a tiny person, breathing

delicately on your shoulder in the night, full of milk. I so want
my sleep back, but I also want to bottle this feeling – holding him
there, smelling all warm and trusting me completely.

The first time you smiled, I felt my heart explode. Nothing

matches that moment; it will live with me forever. Through all the
restrictions, isolation and uncertainty, you are happy and that’s
what matters the most.

Her first laugh, a full body chortle, floors us. We are crying with joy

70
as her giggles get louder. The happiness spreads as we Zoom the
grandparents to share the delight.

One positive outcome of Covid is that we go walking more than

we did before. There’s a family of swans on the canal that hatched
in March and now they’re almost fully grown – which is crazy but
reassuring that no matter how hard life is, the world keeps turning.

I experience the city really differently. There are so few places

to sit. I’ve been breastfeeding at bus stops, in a passport photo
booth, on someone’s front wall. Seeking out green space to slow
down and bask in the closeness with him. Yesterday by the river a
kingfisher flew by; I felt such joy.

Swings again today. Why can’t I lick the swing? your eyes say. I tell
her, ‘OK, normal times licking the swings would be just fine.’

Facemasks everywhere yet my daughter seems to have the ability

to read people’s eyes. She reacts to people in the correct way, a
smile, a frown, a laugh! At least no one will ever be able to lie to
her. I’d better teach her how to play poker.

The motorway was deserted, the air was fresh, and I could see
further than I ever had before. I took a deep breath with my
daughter strapped to me in her carrier and felt grateful that her
tiny lungs had clean air to breathe.

My feet have pounded this beach a thousand times in the years that
led to you. I’ve howled salty tears that mix with the salty sea over
our babies who came before but couldn’t stay. Now, silent streams

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of disbelief, of joy, run gently down my cheeks as I hold you in my
arms. Waves washing over my feet. Together, we remember them.

He’s cranky in the carrier and commandeers my hand so he can

play with my fingers, bend and stretch and squeeze them. I feel the
warm tug of his lips and look down to see his little face contorted
with disgust. What does my weaning regime say about introducing
hand sanitiser?

Tiny fat fingers pull on the fabric covering my face. I gently peel
them away and readjust my mask. But he’s smart – and only a few
seconds pass before they reach up again to unveil one of the only
faces he knows, as he squeals in delight.

You’ve been immersed in a virtual world. Forced into clumsy,

pixelated interactions. Born into a cold, digital family. This is not
normal, my little one. Honesty pours from your open heart. Use
your fierce stare and ferocious smile to penetrate their artificial
barriers. Remind us what it means to be human.

It is bittersweet when I am wearing a mask and she still returns

my smile. How sad that it has to be this way, but, what a joy, to
know that love can radiate through. 

I look at April and think of her innocence on a daily basis. Milk,

nappy changes, now weaning. It’s all normality for her, she has
no idea of the struggles we have faced or that she was born in the
middle of a pandemic. That is a little light at the end of a very dark
tunnel for me.

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You hold onto my face, look me in the eyes and then lean forward
and rest your head on mine, noses touching and your eyes close. I
think it’s your way of giving me a kiss. Melts my heart every time.

I’m gazing down at you now, after our car crash earlier, with even
more love and attachment than before (how is that possible?!).
You’re staring up at me with a huge beaming smile and a little,
post-boob excited squeal; this look of pure love and fulfilment
makes everything OK.

From the first moment I saw you, my heart leapt to your service.
The only one who has ever appreciated my singing.

My daughter cranes forward in her sling to get a closer look at the

other women and babies. We sing; brief smiles playing across our
faces. Passers-by are clapping. A woman stops mid dog walk, with
tears in her eyes. She wants to say thank you. We realise it has
been a long time since anyone has heard live music.

24

I come across things around the house that I haven’t used in these
eight weeks – make up, swimming goggles, a falafel ball shaper –
and it’s like when you visit a town you lived in ten years ago. Then
the things I haven’t used in these eight months. One day, we’ll
have people over – from several different households – and pour
tea from the big teapot.

He smiles and almost lets out a laugh. My heart leaps and I almost

73
cry in a flash of absolute love. I savour it in my mind as the mist lifts
with the warming day outside, changing the hue of the cityscape
from a soft grey to a shining silver. I can hear the birds gather and
chat on the rowan tree outside. And we called our son Rowan. He
is lovely.

As we build the blocks up, one on top of the other, you are entirely
captivated. Amazed. Focused. And oops they all fall down. You
laugh. What a joy to have such interest in the small things.

I think perhaps the best time of day is when he’s asleep next to me

in his crib. Often, I berate myself for the things I haven’t achieved
in a day. But when I look at him sleeping next to me, I feel more
calm. I also feel love and pride.

The books say you’re now old enough to sleep alone, but I stay by
your side. I’m afraid to leave you because I am your whole world
and you are mine. When you wake up and see me, your smile is the
rainbow that makes everything feel manageable.

Today we reached the 100th day of our adventure together, a major

milestone in Korean culture when a party is held to celebrate a
baby’s arrival. No chance of that in lockdown, just another day for
the two of us in our love bubble as we hit triple digits in our daily
log.

I wonder if I’m a different mother because of lockdown. I gave up

on things I thought I ‘should’ do. Getting her to take a bottle: who
cares? Making her nap in her cot: why bother? We never set up the
nursery properly, because who would come to see it?

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You turned six months during the second lockdown. I baked
a hedgehog party cake and lit a candle. The recipe was for 30,
but there were only us three and you can’t eat. We polished off
the mountain of buttercream and chocolate buttons easily. I’ve
amended the recipe in my handwritten book.

I can’t tell, my daughter, whether you are truly shy or just

unfamiliar with people? 

How do I measure your milestones?

You were born today! No visitors allowed!
Two months old! FaceTime captures your first smile.
Four months old! Just Daddy and I watch you roll and giggle.
Six months old!!  Your grandparents laugh three hundred miles
away on screen as you contemplate pea purée.
Random strangers acknowledge your babbling, but their masks
hide their smiles.

I think you might have taken your first step today; at every big
development milestone I’m torn between excitement and sadness.
Also, Covid, how do I buy you shoes?!

Eight years ago, when we first met, I didn’t think the highlight of
my Saturday evening would be you opening a dirty nappy, turning
to me and saying, ‘Good news, my love, the shit is yellow!’ But
here we are. No regrets.

After putting baby to bed after yet another lockdown day my

husband grabbed me by the hand, put a blindfold on my face and
led me to the living room. When he lifted the blindfold, I was

75
surrounded by an array of candle lights, a decorated table with a
bottle of champagne and food … In that moment I remembered
how blessed I was to share this moment in history with my husband
and precious daughter.

Night-time feeds. Am I meant to hate them? I love them; that alone

time, just you and me against the world. You cry, you  feed, you
sleep. I am your world and you are mine. My daughter, mo nighean.
I will love you forever. Bidh mo ghaol ort, mo ghràidh, gu bràth.

25

Currently it’s 11.35pm, 20 minutes before the deadline and I’m

typing this left-handed on my phone, with my five-month-old
daughter in my other arm feeding and hoping that she will soon
fall asleep and enjoy lovely milky dreams. 

Your world is so small, lockdown baby, but you are teaching us

that we have everything we really need already, within these four
walls. Your heartbeat under my palm feels like tiny grains of rice
dropping into a secret pool. The steady ripples calm me. 

It’s been a bumpy start to my daughter Marni’s first few months of

life and I know this year will go down in history as possibly one of
the worst, but for me it was the best. So many lives have been lost
but as mothers we have gained so much.

Motherhood has provided so many unexpected gifts. Not least the

ability to grow a moustache and quite substantial chin whiskers. 

76
Covid doesn’t matter when you’re laughing your head off as I blow
raspberries on your belly. It doesn’t matter when you’re pulling
Papa’s glasses off his nose again or giggling with glee. It doesn’t
matter when you’re eating your toast fingers all by yourself at
lunch, or your casserole for tea.

I finally got ten minutes to sit down as little one is nursing,

although my boobs these days are used for more of a comfort than
nutritional value, the Christmas lights are flickering in the next
room, and it’s these times of relaxed chaos that I wouldn’t have
my life any other way.

It’s just you and me again today, kidda. We’ve weathered this
shitstorm together, side by side, skin to skin. His smile tells me
that he doesn’t mind, that I’m all the company he needs. I’m so
glad I’m doing this ‘new normal’ with you. 

My child, in a year of turmoil, change and isolation, you are my

silver lining, my reason for being, my hope.

I could sit here and mourn the bonding that we won’t experience
at mum and baby groups, or the new mum friends I’ll never meet.
But if I weigh up all we’ve lost against all we’ve gained, I realise
how lucky we were to have time in our little family bubble.

The most magical day of my life was the day I became a mother.
Your timing for me was perfect and I can only view this year as the
best year of my life because I had you. So thank you for letting me
be grateful for 2020.

77
Any 39-year-old woman who has spent four years trying to
conceive knows how essential trying to have a baby is. Maybe I
haven’t wanted to share because you can’t actually articulate the
pain of infertility, but I’ve wanted to share the hope, and the light
at the end of the tunnel that IVF can work, and miracles can come
true. Even in a pandemic. 

For ages I was really upset about my baby not being able to see
people smiling at her in the street or in the supermarket. But, the
other day, I realised that she does know, because she looks people
in the eyes. Maybe we’ve birthed a generation who make better
eye contact.

It wasn’t quite how I had imagined maternity leave would be.

It has been very lonely and isolating. I have been robbed of the
memories I’d dreamt we would make and we didn’t accomplish all
the activities I had planned. It makes me sad I will never get that
time back with her, but she is the reason I smile every day.

Nothing bursts a newborn bubble of bliss like a shitstorm. It forces

you to choose; the ditch of despair or the valley of hardship. Covid
be damned! Cancer be cursed! You, my darling, are my compass;
a reminder of peace. With peace comes clarity, and with clarity
comes purpose. That you are, my darling baby girl.

Daddy’s working from home. No commute, away from home for

hours each day. Quality time here to stay and the bond between
father and son blossomed. I watched with joy and love seeing our
son’s legs swinging from his baby sling, head nestled to chest,
sleeping soundly whilst he tapped away at his laptop. Bath time,

78
bedtime stories, every first – he got to see it all. 

There’s loads we couldn’t do but think about the extra cuddles

and kisses we’ve had. The lazy mornings wearing PJs till noon. No
school run or swimming lessons. Just endless days as a group of
five. Covid took away so much but it also gave us something we
never could have imagined.

I have one month left of maternity leave. I’m sad that this has not
been the experience I wanted it to be. But then I remember the
hours I’ve spent alone with Cora. Just the two of us. Me and my
baby. I’m not sure I would change that.

Baby brain isn’t what they said. It’s actually mother brain. MB is
multi-tasking one handed, eyes on a baby, a cat, planning meals,
sleeps, walks, things to buy today, tomorrow, next month for the
baby, the house, others. Mother brains are incredible, and I am
holding more than ever.

Garden gathering permitted. We talk, we laugh and wonder how

we’ll win the fight against our foe. We conclude that united we
stand, divided we fall. Meanwhile, my little miracle, as good as
gold, sits in her chair. The smell of freshly cut grass wafts through
the air. We breathe it in and let out a happy sigh as we remind
ourselves our health is our wealth.

On this weekend, for a whole decade, we have danced. Packed into

a womb-like tent. To honour it, we’ve arranged a safe gathering
outside. Five of my favourite females are dancing. I join them. For
the first time since I used my body to birth a human, I use my body

79
to dance. And it feels … INCREDIBLE!!

I’d forgotten how good it is to really feel the wind on my face and
my heart beating away as I run. 
I’d forgotten how bloody good music actually sounds. 
I’d forgotten that nature can be so healing. 
I’d forgotten that I can feel so powerful and so strong.

The sky was exceptionally blue. No rain. No clouds. No airplanes.

She looked at everything, from day one. Insatiable. And so, we
walked. Day in day out, we walked. The fresh air, the goslings in
the pond. We were both too tired to really take it all in, but at least
she would fall asleep. Sometimes.

The new mothers’ swimming club meets. There is a rota for

supervision of the babies, who sit in car seats and buggies, wrapped
in snuggle suits and hats. A relay of women head towards the sea.
The babies watch their mothers shriek, blue-lipped in the surf.
Afterwards, they sit two metres apart – silent, some shivering –
and drink tea from flasks. Salvation.

Today, sceptically, we log into an online baby group. As the other

babies appear on screen, a sunflower smile spreads across your
face: bright, open, warm. They reciprocate, blossoming. I smile
too, realising that the very thing keeping you apart right now will
one day bond you together.

80
 26

Before we could even begin to build our village, we were banished

to a wilderness with no map, no guide, no stars in the sky to tell us
where to go. We were suddenly a three, bound tightly and fearfully
together with love, like a bedroll.

The whole family was up before 8am. In a world where everything

was closed, all we could do was walk. No need for clean clothes,
coats over pyjamas. The fog was beautiful. The calmness in the
trees sent the little one to sleep. All was bliss.

Each day I see the world through new eyes. I see for her. There
is beauty in the simplest things. The changing leaves, the dog in
the park, the cat on the wall. She stands on the cusp of discovery,
poised to uncover the wonders and terrors of this world.

There is comfort in the fact you’re still not registered. My nine-

month-old little nomad. I know the day will come, but for now,
you are only known to us, and if you are only known to us, then
it’s like the world can’t touch you. Not being registered casts a
circle of salt around you and says, ‘I am not a part of this yet. I am
divinely protected from this shit show.’

Wrapping my baby’s first birthday presents and planning a freezing

picnic. Distanced. Outdoors, again. We shouldn’t be skulking in
the shadows; we should be shouting from the rooftops. ‘We did
it! We made it!’ 2020 will be that year we recall with an eye roll, a
sigh. How did we get through it? We just did.

We may not have had visitors. Hugs and kind words. Offers of

81
coffee and reassurance that it will be OK. But we had you, our
furious little bundle with downy soft hair that smells like home.
You sleep curled on our chests, only needing us, and so we only
need you. 

Some days we didn’t even go outside. A lot of days we still don’t

go outside.  We’ve been inside so long I can hardly remember what
the ‘old world’ felt like. Yet the rooms in this home are now filled
with a tangible sweetness that didn’t exist before. Maybe just
maybe this scary pandemic has a soft side. Actually, I think it may
have helped us become a family.

The leaves of the silver birches outside our window have turned
to gold. They are as brilliant as the sky on our last night together
when I paced through the contractions in the hospital car park,
your dad waiting for word he could join us, and fireworks bloomed
overhead – lit, I believed, just for us.

I want to stay in this moment. We can hear Daddy on the phone

next door. We see the leaves falling and it looks a bit chilly, but
we’re cosy in bed. When I sing you smile and that’s all that matters.
I don’t have to perform or meet anybody’s expectations. It’s just
you and me.   

I’ve spent hours staring at your face. Taking in all the tiny details,
each flutter of your eyelids, every glimmer of a smile. Each fleeting
expression gives me a glimpse of who you are and who you will
be. I have languished in these moments. Moments I would have
otherwise had to steal back from a busy day.

82
The world fell to silence, but my world has never been so loud. The
world stood still, but my world has never been so busy. The world
was lonely, but my world has never been so full. My darling babe,
born to keep me alive. 

With every new life there is a loss of another and that is painful. In
a time where we are unable to say goodbye, we learn to appreciate
what we have. The sleepless nights, the colic, the pain post-birth
seem insignificant. In fact, we’re lucky to have those things,
because it means we are living.

27

We were the first ones out. The first to see the blue sky  break
over the cathedral spires. The wind had died down. The rain had
stopped. Our bellies full of warm peanut butter porridge. I had
nourished us well today. I remembered your hat.

On our daily walk I tell my twins about the beautiful things

around us. The crisp autumn leaves and the birds in the sky. I take
a moment and look at the world through their eyes and it helps
me momentarily forget about the effects of the coronavirus. 

Sitting on our favourite bench in the park down the road. Under
the big tree with the thick leaves that give us shelter. You love
watching that tree as the sunlight peeps through the dancing
leaves. I love watching you. 

You’re decked in all the knitting your grannies can muster, love
in every stitch, though mittens hang by your side, rejected. In one

83
hand you clutch my finger, in the other a crisp beech leaf, curled
in on itself. You hold it aloft before taking a curious bite, then spit
it out, delighted and disgusted all at once. 

I was thinking about all the masked faces you’ve been seeing your
entire young life. And how you smile your big toothless smile, not
receiving or expecting anything in return. 

‘Lockdown baby!’ they smile, upon sight of our newborn. Yet

I always feel defiant. Two years of trying, a thousand ovulation
strips, too many single blue lines and, finally, IVF. If only they
knew – he is so, so much more. Born in lockdown? Yes. But not a
lockdown baby.

When you’re older, we’ll tell you how the schools closed. So too
the playgrounds, shops, pubs, restaurants, workplaces. We’ll tell
you of how we were allowed out only once a day. How family and
friends couldn’t greet your arrival. To you, they’ll seem like tall
tales from the olden days. 

This year I became a mother and motherhood has unravelled

me. It has ripped me apart, seam by seam, stitch by stitch; I am
threadbare. But my boy, you are mending me. Each day another
stitch, imperfect and incomplete, but perfectly complete to you. 

I push you and we walk. Because sometimes we need space from

one another. We walk because I want to show you the world. We
walk because it’s all we can do; it is all we are allowed. Looking up,
I see red kites soaring overhead. I cross my fingers.

84
 OUR 277 AUTHORS

Thank you to all of the Born in Lockdown contributors. You are

amazing. And this book only exists because of you.

Louise Ackerman–Murphy, Amy Adams, Jade Adams, Louise

Adkins, Roxy Afzal, Ailidh Aikman, Elizabeth Allen, Jessica
Anne Allworth, Emma Anderson, Gemma Anderson, Michelle
Arellano, Sarah Argyle, Becca Aspinwall, Allie Atkinson, Hazra
Aya, Sarah Aynsley, Hannah Bace, Anna Ball, Charlotte Balmer,
Louisa Barfoot, Rebecca Barnard, Libby Bates, Hannah Batten,
Amy Beard, Emma Beer, Katherine Bevan, Claire Birks, Charlene
Black, Amy Bluett, Juliette Boakes, Nicole des Bouvrie, Holly
Brenan, Angela Brightwell, Laura Brooke, Hannah Brown, Kia
Brown, Laura Brown, Eleanor Buchan, Susie Butt, Sophie Byrne,
Lisa Bywater, Anna Carter, Claire Cassidy, Karina Celis Jones,
Hannah Chard, Laura Chilver, Louise Collins, Gabrielle Coope,
Kate Cooper, Catherine Copley, Alice Cosh, Rachel Cottrell, Julia
Cranney, Marie Cronin, Jenny Cropper, Madeleine Culverhouse-
Mathews, Beth Cykowski, Johanna Darque, Anna David, Penny
Davis, Rebecca Day, Anna De Sapio, April Dean, Chess Dennis,
Alex Denyer, Kalika Dhivar-Swann, Janine Doggett, Leonie Drake,
Natasha Drake, Rachel Drayton, Chrissie Dreier, Victoria East,
Emily Eden-Holt, Carmen Edwards, Eva Elks, Katie Evans-Linsell,
Janet Ewan, Natalie Fallon, Laura Farrell Johnson, Anna ffrench-
Constant, Donna Findlay, Hazel Findlay, Fionnuala Finnerty,
Rebecca Ford, Natasha Foster, Nikita French, Hayley Frost, Laura
Fryer, Lorna Fuller, Polly Gannaway, Helena Garcia Requena, Lucy
Gardner, Vikkii Gates, Zeba Ghory, Jade Gilks, Michelle Goddard,
Laura Anne Goodwin, Sarah Graham, Cairis Grant-Hickey, Sian R
Granville, Ellie Green, Leana Green, Alex Greig, Rachael Haggerty,

85
Olivia Hall, Chantel Haron, Charlotte Hawke, Rose Hawthorn,
Lauren Hayhurst, Amy Healy, Sarah Healy, Kate Henderson, Laura
Hendry, Caris Hernandez-Brooks, Laura Higgs, Jesse Hill, Lucy
Hobbs, Natalie Hogg, Roxy Holton, Kirsteen Hook, Jess Hooker,
Sian Hopkins, Rachel Howard, Amy Howarth, Janie Hunter, Katy
Hunter, Sameena Hussain, Kate Ingham, Catherine James, Laura
James, Samantha Jarvis, Kate Johnson, Rose Kemery, Peejay
Kingham, Abbie Kinman, Becky Lawrenson, Victoria Lawson, Lily
Le Brun, Laura Leete, Bianca Leggett, Amanda Lewis, Chloe Lewis,
Jess Linington, Hilary Lowe, Jacqueline Lucas, Claire Lycett, Leah
Mahi-Booth, Holly Maries, Ana-Maria Maskell, Claudia Matta,
Silvia Matthews, Victoria May, Emily May-Coote, Sarah McBride,
Charlotte McGeough, Rebecca McGuffin, Dawn McGuigan,
Sophie McKechnie, Clare McKenna, Laura McKeown, Jennifer
McLamb, Michelle McLennan, Nicola Meare-Pitcher, Rachel
Medhurst, Alisha Meertins, Victoria Meldrum, Zoe Merridan,
Laura Mildon, Jessica Mitchell, Lorna Moir Collingwood, Sacha
Moreira, Georgie Morse, Naomi Murcutt, Hannah Newell, Jess
Nilson-Mair, Samantha Nimmo, Claire O’Shea, Beth Oakley,
Gemma Odofin, Rachael Oliver, Laura Ollis, Becky Ormrod, Emma
Osborne, Thea Owens, Laura Paddon, George Parfitt, Melissa
Park, Claire Parker, Jessica Parsons, Alice Partridge, Marianne
Paton, Deborah Pearson, Lucy Pike, Philly Piper, Charlotte Pirie,
Johanna Pittam, Jodie Pocock, Olivia Pope, Charlotte Potter,
Susan Pratt, Susanne Quadflieg, Anjali Ramachandran, Hannah
Ramsdale, Ruth Reeve, Emma Reffold, Zomuanpuii Renthlei
Vanek, Leah Reynolds, Natalie Reynolds Cushion, Kayleigh Rhys
Evans, Anna Rice, Gemma Roback, Alex Roberts, Roisin Robertson
Greig, Jen Robinson-Slater, Deanna Rodger, Susie Rout, Maria
Russell, Gemma Self, Elizabeth Shepherd, Susannah Shute, Lydia

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Shutler, Charlotte Simpson, Burcu Simsek, Francesca Singer
Ince, Rachel Smail, Holly Smith, Louloua Smith, Laura Speers,
Shanade Stannard, Jasmin Staveley, Sarah Stefanini, Elizabeth
Stennett, Katie Storer, Rachel Strickson, Rhiannon Tait, Lafane
Talati, Polly Taplin, Rosie Tapping, Shipra Taylor, Chloe Thomas,
Emma Thompson, Deniz Toprakkaya, Caroline Tregaro, Gemma
Tuck, Petia Tzanova, Victoria Valentine, Buzz Walsh-Beney, Anna
Wardley, Ellie Watson, Laura Watson, Susan Watson, Julie Watts,
Robin Webb, Grace Weeks, Laura Wetherall, Emily Whymark,
Claire Widdrington, Charlotte Wight, Charlotte Wilbraham, Hazel
Wilcox, Hannah Wilde, Ellie Williams, Em Williams, Gemma
Williams, Jennifer Williams, Nicola Williams, Katy Willings,
Tessa Wills, Sophie Wilsdon, Amy Winstanley, Astrid Wood, Katie
Joanne Woods, Kirsty Woods, Hannah Woolerton, Hannah Youell,
Farrah Yusuf, Irina Zlodeeva.

MOTHERSHIP WRITERS is a groundbreaking creative writing

programme for new mothers. First born in Bristol in January 2019,
the initial pilot was funded by the National Lottery through Arts
Council England; over 12 months, nearly sixty women – and
their babies – met for fortnightly workshops led by novelist and
Mothership founder Emylia Hall. Many hadn’t written for years;
every single one had a story to tell. Following the huge success
of the pilot, Mothership Writers Online launched at the start of
summer 2020, with eight-week courses now running every season.
Through inspiring, relaxed, and supportive Zoom sessions, new
mums explore their experience of motherhood, find confidence
in the power of their own voice, and learn the fundamentals of
creative writing. Emylia has now run over 100 Mothership Writers
workshops – and continues to love every single one of them.

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