What no one told you to expect while expecting
Today’s story comes from Lydia in Hoboken, NJ. She shares about the circumstances surrounding the birth of her first daughter in May.
When we decided to expand our family at the end of last summer, I truly couldn’t imagine the world as it is now.
After so carefully calculating and planning for a much-wanted and much-anticipated pregnancy — waiting almost five years into our marriage, buying a condo with room for a future child, securing our financial stability, health insurance, and support system — the last thing we thought we would need to plan for was a global pandemic.
Both my husband and I started working from home the second week of March, as the extent of the outbreak in NYC (where we both work) became clear. I was seven months pregnant. This was right when I was supposed to start seeing my OB every two weeks, instead of every four. However, the timing of the restrictions meant the last visit I had in-person, prior to delivery, was early February. My March appointment was moved to a virtual visit with a home blood pressure cuff and bathroom scale on my end. This was the new normal for my prenatal care until I showed up at the hospital for labor and delivery.
Both my medical team and I felt this virtual care schedule was sufficient, since I was healthy and my pregnancy was considered low-risk. I chose to look at the situation as a positive and be thankful that I could avoid the potential contagion of going into the city or being in close contact with healthcare workers.
The flip side to not having any physical exams or checkups in my third trimester was that I couldn’t be 100% reassured everything was ok. This was the tradeoff to not adhering to the regular checkups in person. And so, while I was content and unworried about my remote prenatal care, I never considered delivering the baby outside of the hospital. I have a strong faith in the medical profession, and as a first pregnancy, I had no idea how I would handle the delivery process. I was also unwilling to risk experiencing a problem that could only be addressed with hospital care.
But choosing the hospital route also came with ever-changing restrictions and regulations. Our game plan was to hopefully wait out both the restrictions on support people and the peak of the epidemic. Fortunately, the course of the pandemic enabled both by scant weeks. Across my third trimester, I went from staring down delivery alone, to my husband being allowed to join me in labor and delivery but required to leave an hour after the baby was born, to my husband being able to stay for the entire labor, delivery, and recovery.
The last month of pregnancy, the month of April, was even more surreal than the start of the third trimester. We had been in quarantine for two months already. The epidemic was peaking in the hospital where I would deliver. We tried to be as careful as possible and reduce stress in order to not accidentally induce early labor. My feelings went through a 180 degree turn as the month went on, from deep concern about infection and the risks of a premature baby, to contentment knowing the baby would be full term while the local caseload decreased steadily. By my May 8th due date, there continued to be no signs of impending labor and we were looking at an increasingly-likely induction.
Ultimately, this is what happened the second week of May. Five days past my due date we arrived in Manhattan at 8am for a scheduled induction. Luckily, everything went smoothly and our daughter was born that evening just before midnight. I was impressed by the care we received at the hospital and the precautions staff took to avoid infection. But it was an extremely anxious day-and-a-half of mask wearing (even through labor and delivery) and hand washing, followed by a stressful two weeks at home learning to be first-time parents without any visitors, help, or safety net, and screening ourselves for symptoms.
Upon reflection, I can see several silver linings to being under quarantine while heavily pregnant:
Getting to wear comfortable clothing.
The ease of working remotely.
Not dealing with public comments and harassment.
Grocery shopping during ‘protected’ shopping hours.
And commuting without traffic on our way to and from the hospital.
But I also see quietly devastating downsides as well:
My husband not being allowed to attend ultrasound appointments to see his first child (before the full quarantine and remote appointments).
A cancelled baby shower.
No visits from any of my family members, in late pregnancy or now, as they all live a flight away.
The loss of the ability to exercise or even walk outside without heavily weighing the risks of doing so.
And innumerable cancelled small appointments and joys: special restaurant reservations, a broadway show, prenatal personal training sessions (a gift from my husband), a trip to Georgia, a bachelorette party for a friend.
Though each was individually a ‘small’ thing, their cumulative weight has felt heavy to bear.
Our daughter is now 7 weeks old. None of our family members have held her or seen her from closer than 6 feet away. I don’t know when our family members from the west coast will get to meet her in person. My husband is ‘back’ at work (from home), while we are still figuring out new parenthood and trying to keep a newborn quiet in our small condo during his meetings. We are navigating this without any in-person help.
We are immensely, incandescently privileged to have these challenges and not more fundamental concerns, such as shelter, income, or food. Even so, this experience has been nothing like we planned or expected, and I imagine it will continue to evolve as the pandemic rages on.
We have yet more difficult decisions ahead — when to introduce her to vulnerable grandparents, when to pursue child care, and when to introduce her to peers for social stimulation. All of these questions seem impossible to answer, as the risk seems too high. I know we will eventually be forced to make hard choices. Until then, we are grateful to be where we are, to have survived successfully bringing a new life into existence under this pandemic new normal.
Ultimately, I feel optimistic about what the future could hold: a pandemic-free world in which our precious little girl will grow up free from the worry and challenges of her entry into it.
