My family has gone to every length to protect our family from COVID since March. We’ve masked, we’ve distanced and we’ve enveloped ourselves in a very small community of friends to get through this time together. We never expected to be exposed – until we were. 

We were spending time with friends on a Saturday night in October. We took the kids to a local pumpkin farm, ate chili and cornbread, and sat around the fire together once the girls went down in pack n’ plays. These friends are in our small COVID “pod”, so we felt comfortable being with them and taking the few days following to limit our contact with others. 

The evening after our time with them, we got a text message from the couple saying that Mr. had lost his sense of smell and taste, and was feeling achy and flu-ish. Cue the sense of impending doom. Had we seen anyone since we saw them? Did we share food? Hug? Did the babies play too closely? We had been so careful – it didn’t seem possible that we could have been exposed. Our friend let us know that he would get tested the next day and we immediately made plans to do the same. 

After scrambling for the rest of the evening trying to locate testing centers, we finally went to sleep nervously. Our rapid test results the next day gave us great news – we were negative. Our daughter’s test also came back negative. Our state department of health’s contact tracers gave us a call walking us through our experience, and advising us to stay in close quarantine for 14 days. 

Every state handles COVID exposures differently, but I certainly didn’t expect to deal with 14 days of anxiety, boredom, and parenting with no possible outlet. And we were the lucky ones – we ended up remaining asymptomatic throughout the duration of our quarantine. So many people universally have dealt with terrible sickness and death, so for us to be bored felt like an undeserved blessing. 

Our house is very small to begin with at only 900 square feet, and once our contact tracers asked us to go into lockdown we felt like we had moved into a closet. My husband had to work from home and while we were extremely fortunate to have that option, he had to convert our bedroom into his office for two weeks.

Each morning I had to get out the changes of clothes I’d need for the day and set them on our entryway table because there was just nowhere else to put them. I had to reschedule appointments and cancel all other plans. I couldn’t go to the grocery store or even the pharmacy.

Temper tantrums and meltdowns interrupted my husband’s work progress and phone calls. What started out as a modest 900 square feet quickly turned into what felt like 10. On top of all of this, we knew that it was very possible that we could still become symptomatic and even sick in the remaining incubation period. 

You might have already experienced this, and if you haven’t, I hope for your family that you remain unexposed. But how did we manage?

Where we didn’t have extra room, we had to extend a lot of grace. Inasmuch as I was frustrated that I couldn’t take the 2-year-old anywhere other than the park (the playground was off-limits), I had to be reminded that my husband was also terribly frustrated that he basically had to work on our bed for two weeks without any breathing room. Allowing our frustrations to compound upon one another would only make things worse, so this was a time to practice assuming the best of one another and defer to their comfort just out of love and care.

We rallied the troops.

Our contact tracers were extremely helpful in providing information about resources, but we also asked for help on our own. These days it’s so easy to do grocery pickup and delivery, and our family and neighbors picked up other things like prescriptions that we needed and couldn’t access on our own. Keep in mind that there are many grocery stores that offer free grocery pickup and utilize those resources when you can.

We notified our community and protected the privacy of our sick friends.

Our friends had not intended to expose us, and we still felt like it would be kind to do our part in protecting their identity. We knew that if it had been us we would have felt terrible about exposing friends, and we wouldn’t want to be part of a gossip chain. We also notified our neighbors and mail deliverers that we’d have to be in a more strict lockdown for a while.

We leaned into it and did lots of silly things.

I didn’t give myself a hard time for adding more PBS Kids into our regular programming, and we didn’t allow ourselves to feel guilty about eating and serving more junk food than we normally would. We jumped on furniture, made tooting noises, and gave lots of “ugga muggas”. We also spent every possible moment outside. I drew boundaries on snacktime and mealtimes to keep myself from going insane. I love classical music, and since it brings me so much calm and peace, I introduced it to my daughter. Who knew – she liked it!

We took care of ourselves.

Where it was possible, we slept in an extra half hour. We asked a physician about vitamins (talk to your doctor first) that would be beneficial to keep symptoms at bay. We went to bed early and drank lots of water. We went on so. many. walks. We spent a few minutes each day tidying up so that our tiny house didn’t turn into a pit. All of these things were so important whether or not we got sick. We wanted to make our two weeks as peaceful as possible. If we did get sick, we wanted to do everything we could to take care of our bodies. 

Speaking of our bodies – when you’re constantly worried about losing your sense of smell, there’s nothing like smelling your own armpits to make sure you haven’t lost it. Try your best to laugh a lot at the little things and allow yourself to be silly with your kids – all with the understanding that this will pass, and that being quarantined and bored is a blessing!

Disclaimer: The Latched Mama blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment.

Content from the Latched Mama blog is not intended to be used for medical diagnosis or treatment.  The information provided on this blog is intended for general consumer understanding and entertainment only; with experiences shared from Mom to Mom. The information provided is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice.