Page 63 - Eclipse - RVC Alumni Magazine - Autumn 2020

CLASSNOTES
Maternity leave in the COVID-19 lockdown Bev Panto, BVetMed 2009 and PG Certificate in
Veterinary Education 2020
When I found out I was pregnant with my first
baby I was over the moon, and started dreaming of a glorious maternity leave from my job as a zoo and wildlife vet; filling my days with baby classes, play dates and lots of coffee and cake. But it was not to be!
I had my daughter, Emmie, by emergency C-section in February, just a few weeks before the country and the world was plunged into the uncertainty of a global pandemic. After a prolonged stay in hospital and then a surgical recovery,
I was starting to feel ready to leave the house and introduce Emmie to our friends and family...cue lockdown!
It was a very unsettling time, not least because suddenly without warning my entire support network disappeared to be replaced by Zoom calls with friends and family and occasional well-meaning, but quite frankly pointless, calls from
the midwife and health visitor team. Like most new mums, I didn’t have a clue what I was doing, what was normal, what to worry about and what to do with this tiny, little, demanding milk-hungry human!
A few days before lockdown, when
it became apparent that we wouldn’t
be seeing lots of friends and family
for a while, we decided to take a leaf out of the Boris playbook, and started recording ‘Emmie’s daily lockdown address’. These were two-minute videos of Emmie that we recorded every single day, with a theme or positive message
to share our progress and updates with friends and family. We had no idea quite how the daily address would take over our lives and how many people would look forward to receiving Emmie’s little piece of positivity every day. We always dressed her in an outfit to match the theme, and surrounded her with relevant toys and items from around the house
- we shared messages like ‘control the controllables’, 'support British farming' and ‘thank you to the NHS’, as well as themes like shoes, insects, under-the- sea and technology, and celebrated a whole plethora of weird and wonderful national and international celebration days, such as World Giraffe day, Earth day, British National Tea day, and my favourite, hug your cat day!
Planning the daily addresses gave me a focus and something to aim for in between feeding, changing nappies, laundry and occasionally trying to get a rare bit of sleep myself! After a very apt 111 addresses, when lockdown started to ease, we replaced the daily videos with ‘Emmie’s weekly waffle’, which we are still doing!
I never could have imagined having a new baby in such a strange world. We didn't register her birth until she was over five months old, she's never been in a shop and I have enough baby sensory toys and books to open a shop - but we've had the unexpected and lovely benefit of being together as a family for
a whole six months before my husband had to go back to work. Emmie is seven months old now, and although we've missed so much, we're now loving
being able to take her to baby classes, swimming lessons, and to the zoo to meet all the animals she’s heard so much about! We've started seeing friends and family – without the need for our trusty gazebo, which was an absolute godsend to see people socially distanced in the garden, come rain or shine.
Who knows what the future holds, but for me, work is inadvertently starting to pick up again – I've already delivered
a wildlife webinar series, dealt with a couple of zoo emergencies and have just started lecturing at Harper and Keele Vet School - there’s no rest for the wicked, even with a new baby!
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