Viral Diaries (9)

April 23, 2020

South Carolina

My mother will be back by the weekend. I have some hang-ups about her return, but I know better than to try to get in her way once her mind is made up. Hayden cannot wrap his head around why she is so insistent on coming home when she'll end up having to return in the next coming weeks, but I know my mother- and I know she misses her family. She will probably never verbalize it, but being away from her pregnant daughter and newborn granddaughter is likely tearing her apart.

We've been approved for an apartment and will be moving in the next week or so. I'm grateful that my husband, child, and I will be in our own space, but the chaos of everything happening right now is overwhelming. I am still healing from my c-section, and cannot do much other than pack light boxes and try to game plan. Our daughter is still in the NICU and I worry about being too far from her.

We recently found out that we may have been exposed to the virus. Until the potentially exposed person's results come back, neither one of us has been to hospital to visit her in the past few days. It was revealed yesterday that the original test was spilled in transit and another one must be taken, so we will have to wait even longer. While I feel the test will come back negative, I am burdened with anxiety. The hospital has a camera with a live feed so that we can see our daughter, but it is not the same. Bottles of breastmilk are building up in my fridge, and I worry that she will need the burgeoning supply of milk before I am able to deliver it to her. If I've been exposed, it won't matter- I'll have to throw it all out anyway.

I've been trying to occupy my mind and time with writing and preparing for life during and after the move. I meditated for the first time in months today and listened to an album I haven't heard since high school. In some ways, I am feeling like myself again. In others, not at all.

As he sat with me in the hospital, Hayden turned to me and told me that I would not be the same person leaving that I was when I came in. With each day that passes, I come to see just how right he was.