Before my son turned 7 months old, he had tested positive for the trifecta of name-brand illnesses. RSV at 3 months, flu at 5 months, and COVID at 6 months. Check, check, and check.
When I got pregnant with my fourth child, I expected life to be loud, chaotic, and chock-full of plans. We'd spent almost a full year distancing, and I was relieved my son would be born halfway through 2022, a much more "routine" year than the ones prior.
Our son, Fox, was exposed to COVID the day he was born. I should've known that any child doctors PCR-tested on the day they're born would be in for a wild health ride. What I didn't anticipate was having to spend his infancy navigating the worst viral season we've ever seen. My plans of leaving the house and socializing the baby turned into lubricating thermometers, tracking temperatures, sitting in steam, squirting saline, and boogie-sucking. Thankfully, he's the best sport.
A fever in the first eight weeks is an automatic hospital visit. How we got our newborn through that hurdle was nothing short of a miracle because someone in our household was pushing an over-100.4-degree fever every one of those weeks. The day we brought the baby home, our toddler broke out in a head-to-toe rash from Fifths disease. Two weeks later, he brought home pink eye from camp and, henceforth, every cold known to man.
Fox spent a lot of time safely stowed in the bassinet behind two baby gates — a place where both he and the dog felt protected.
Soon after moving our son out of our room and into the nursery, we moved him back in with RSV hovering as he gagged and gasped for air. We watched for chest caving. We sat in the shower steam until our walls bled with moisture. He recovered, then suffered from bronchiolitis — a nasty residual cough after a respiratory illness in infants.
The holidays were our Superbowl. We went in with game plans. Fox was our football, but he wouldn't be passed around. We stood like two offensive linemen reciting "COVID times" whenever someone asked to hold him. Unfortunately, our older children were defensive lines, and they outnumbered us. They raced to see Fox after school to tell him about their days — which is aggressively adorable if you've never seen small children talk to a baby about math and art projects in detail. The gates came down; the viral load crept up.
Fox spiked his first fever with the flu. The thermometer kept climbing, and so did my anxiety. Again, we moved him back into our room, made our en-suite bathroom into a steam sauna, and restarted the
saline-booger routine. A depressing milestone is when your infant stops whining about the nasal syringe because they are so accustomed.
Two days shy of turning 7 months old, Fox began the familiar choke cough, shivers, and inconsolable cries. We sat on the crinkle-sheet paper as I held my kids down for their umpteenth rapid test. COVID positive. The last of the big ones, and my small guy now had them all.
I felt despair and anger, but at that moment, I also knew I had done my best.
As much as I want to keep my kids healthy, I also can't keep them locked away. We're most grateful our son had mild experiences and recovered quickly — not every family has been so fortunate. "We're living through unprecedented history," his pediatrician said. I left the office with a sense of radical acceptance of what parenting during this viral season is — and a promise not to punish myself for things that lie beyond our control.
Samantha K. Smith is a writer living in New York whose published work can be found in The New York Times, Granta Magazine, Slate, CNN, The Washington Post, and elsewhere. Follow her on Twitter: @samanthakristia.
