Are you or your partner pregnant -- or have you delivered in the past few months?
We want to hear from you.
Recommended Videos
< Ready to participate, just after reading the headline? Scroll down and you’ll see the Google Form. >
Editor’s note: As someone who’s been pregnant twice in the past five years, and is training to become a birth doula, I love hearing about people’s experiences and birth stories. I’ve listened to my friends on social media talk about their struggles, being pregnant during a global pandemic, and it made me realize how MANY things they’re thinking about. For example ...
- The fear of catching COVID-19, or having someone in their immediate family contract the virus. Not knowing yet the full effects of this novel coronavirus on an infant.
- Having to deliver with only one support person in the room, in many hospital settings.
- The idea of taking a COVID-19 test while in labor.
- Laboring in a mask, which might be the case for some if a coronavirus test came back positive.
- Pre-delivery isolation: Going to obstetrician and ultrasound appointments alone.
- Trying to manage a healthy pregnancy while working full-time or part-time, raising other children, possibly assisting with virtual learning and more -- for many, all without the same level of child care.
- Labor and delivery classes either canceled or moved to online formats.
- Unemployment, furloughs, health insurance matters: For some, this has meant a financial strain while preparing to expand your families, and for others, it might translate to a change in health care providers or the loss of insurance halfway through a pregnancy.
- Knowing that family and friends won’t be able to meet the baby right away (even siblings can’t come to the hospital in many cases), or having to choose between that and maintaining proper social distancing safety measures.
- Having to arrange for childcare or keep a partner home from work so that the mother can deliver, attend appointments alone or otherwise handle the pregnancy.
- Possible shorter hospital stays, post-delivery.
- Less in-person prenatal care.
- Feeling a little isolated or just plain stir crazy, stuck in the house post-delivery, during a time when it’s common to lean on your support system and take help from your network.
- Lost baby showers, sprinkles, other related celebrations.
Did any of those bullet points sound familiar, pregnant readers?
Hopefully we helped get your wheels turning.
On the flip side, maybe you’re expecting a child and you’re simply feeling grateful for this period in your life. Not everyone is able to get pregnant whenever she’d like, and losses are common, too. If you lean toward “just happy to be here!”, we still want to hear about how things have been during this new and exciting time. Does a pandemic pregnancy take the pressure off when it comes to having visitors at the hospital where you’ll deliver? Are you enjoying the peace of settling into a new routine as a new family? Is online shopping kind of your thing anyway?
Your turn to share, friends! We’d love to start a series featuring one family’s story a week.
Here’s that form: