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Welp, I made it until 0845 before feeling sad. At least the baby is fed. But this thread about trying to convince someone to get a covid test makes me think about how scary it was to give birth in a situation where no one was tested and health workers didn’t wear PPE https://twitter.com/nicksawyermd/status/1288489565058080772
Once she arrived I couldn’t think much about it, but up to that point, it was terrifying. Our midwife got probable corona and had to go on sick leave for months. She cane back for a few weeks but then left indefinitely. Still no tests. This was terrifying to me.
Spending 5 days in a hospital felt less scary at the time because having a newborn is an all-consuming experience. But Sweden’s strategy to let the virus “burn through” the younger population includes maternity and newborn care, where you don’t get to consent to the experiment.
This is where migration feels relevant. All the services I needed were stopped: my mental health support, my maternity care, my citizenship process. But I came home to a threat from immigration because hospitals report migrant mothers to the migration agency.
What was considered essential during this crisis was all punitive. Rights-based processes and supports were removed but harmful things remained in place. It’s left me feeling disempowered and abandoned as a new parent, as a migrant, as a human. And it’s not even what’s so painful
It’s being invalidated by people whose response is to explain Sweden to me as if I don’t understand. They’re telling me, a person having Swedish decisions imposed on me while being denied Swedish participation, and having my safety valve shut off, that my experience isn’t real.
Migrants and new parents are among many groups playing on hard mode right now. The response feels like a person drinking champagne on a yacht telling me why it’s for the greater good that I’m stuck in a life preserver 4 meters below them, and that we don’t understand the water.
I cannot stress to you the depth to which I WANT MY MOMMY, and hearing from people that my experience doesn’t count is just like...I’m going through this with you, Sweden. Not only am I here, I don’t have a choice not to. The impulse to explain and shame just feeds the isolation.
I resent the fuck out of people who post happy multigenerational family pics on social media, who have often explained to me why the Swedish way is for the greater good. I’ve given up more than they have and I also want my mommy. YOU HAVE YOUR MOMMY.
