My Story: Dealing with Pregnancy During a Pandemic

MB discusses some of the difficulties she dealt with in her third pregnancy during the Covid pandemic. She also recalls how helpful and caring the doctors were during her hospital visits.

Transcript:

MB: I just was pregnant through the pandemic, and, you know, gave birth during the pandemic and this was my third kid. But it was quite a different experience and I think it introduced—the whole pandemic has introduced a lot of challenges and things for pregnant women to consider that, you know, we haven’t had to think about before. And so, I think it’s a great opportunity to sort of talk about that, and spaces where, you know, people can support each other.

OBOS Today: Yeah, absolutely. Could you tell me, I guess, just what it was like being pregnant throughout the pandemic?

MB: Yeah, I think probably in a word it was nerve-racking, and especially, you know, we already know pregnancy can be a vulnerable time for a lot of reasons, and, you know, you’re more prone to infection and, um, and the strain, you know, on your heart and your cardiovascular system, even just from, uh, like pumping double the amount of blood volume that you normally pump.

So, by the time like you’re about to deliver, you have twice as much blood in your body as you normally do. And that’s a lot of, like, strain on your heart and your lungs to oxygenate all that blood. And so, I think, you know, knowing that Covid is also a stressor on the cardiovascular system and, you know, people who have like lung conditions and things like that.

And sort of juxtaposing that with, you know, being a pregnant person, it was a little—was pretty nerve-racking. And then socially, I think navigating the whole issue of, okay, who am I gonna see, and who am I not gonna see, and how awkward is it gonna be to tell people that I’m not going to see them. And so, I think the, like, physiological piece, but also the social piece, were both pretty unsettling to navigate, especially since we haven’t had to go through anything like this before.

OBOS Today: Yeah, absolutely. That sounds really scary. I’m sorry you had to go through that. But yeah, what was kind of, like, doctors visits and stuff like during, like, during your pregnancy, during the pandemic?

MB: They—those actually felt not too bad because I think that there was a lot of effort to provide a good sense of security and safety. And so on the one hand, it was nice, like everybody, you know, was wearing masks; they were really thorough with symptom checks and stuff like that. And they were taking our temperature every time we arrived. But for most of the pregnancy, partners were not allowed, like, in the ultrasound, you know, room, so unlike with previous pregnancies, I was by myself for all of the prenatal visits, so that, you know, that moment where you see the first heartbeat, or, you know, find out, um, find out more details about the baby and the sex chromosomes and all that stuff. All of that you sort of, like, go through on your own. And I think towards the end of my pregnancy, they started allowing one partner to come in, but that was pretty, you know, pretty different. But it didn’t feel too bad in the sense that, you know, everybody was, was really, um, great about keeping their masks on and stuff like that. So it felt like a pretty safe environment.