As we look back over the last 12 months of navigating the COVID-19 crisis, the experiences moms had navigating pregnancy, delivery and postpartum has been vastly different from pre-pandemic pregnancies. We’ve had four contributors deliver healthy babies during the pandemic, each with very different experiences dependent on ever changing learnings and policies developed.
We’re sharing their family’s unique stories through this new series, Pandemic Pregnancy Diaries, as a way to celebrate the courage they had navigating unprecedented times. Read on for Kate’s experience, who delivered in November 2020 at Scottsdale Shea.
XO,
EVM
I found out I was pregnant at the beginning of the pandemic. At the time, it was scary, but a lot of unknowns were still unfolding. Luckily, we weren’t the only people going through this, so cheers to you if you experienced a pandemic pregnancy, too.
All of my pre-natal appointments were attended alone and the special moments I thought I would share with my husband were instead done over FaceTime and through a play-by-play when I got home.
But, the real “omg this is really not how I imagined it” was my birth experience: I imagined my mom there, and my mother-in-law, too.
I imagined my step-dad and father-in-law running for coffee while they awaited those little bells they ring in labor and delivery and the news of our sweet boy making his debut.
None of that happened.
My husband and I, like many, encountered the most significant part of our life thus far, alone, but together.
Throughout the pregnancy, we kept hoping the rules at the hospital would change. We hoped that by some metric, things would look okay for everyone’s safety, and our parents would be permitted inside. Maybe not in the delivery room, but at least into the hospital at all.
This was not the case.
The day came and we made our way to the hospital. Luckily, I have a friend who is a delivery nurse there and she was going to deliver Teddy.
Our parents had decided to tailgate and await the birth of the first grandbaby, and tailgate they did (with cheese boards and champagne in hand). The sweet nurse who I knew had done something special for our parents: she had placed a little teddy bear in the window so they would know which room was ours. Our parents positioned their hospital tailgate facing that way and Nate and I headed into to have this baby!
Since this was my first little one, I didn’t know that this experience was any different. So all the nuances of the hospital seemed “normal to me…” We checked in, we had a c-section, and Teddy made his debut earthside. We were wheeled out of the O.R. and into our room. There is where we got the epic “Simba” moment from The Lion King of lifting our newborn baby up into the window to our parent’s tailgate setup. Our parent’s genuine reaction was priceless and an incredible memory to treasure.
It was alternative, they weren’t in the room, but the love was still there, and the specialness was most certainly there.
Covid mommas: This is no joke and this is not a drill. Things might be different than you imagined, but the ends do justify the means. You still get your sweet baby at the end of laboring and the immense love will still be present, even if socially distanced.
The road might be a little different, but the love is still profound and at the end of the day, isn’t that why we have babies anyways? That next level love that not even a pandemic can stop.
