NEW YORK (AP) – Pregnancy, childbirth and life with a newborn in the middle of a pandemic have sparked great anxiety, ever-changing hospital protocols and intense isolation for many of the millions of women who have done so worldwide.
As the pandemic extends into a second year and economic concern persists, demographers are studying the reasons for an anticipated baby drop pandemic. Meanwhile, women have learned to go through masked labor and to introduce newcomers to loved ones through windows.
Fear, anxiety and chaos were particularly acute in New York City during the first months of the pandemic in what was one of the most devastating spots in the country.
Whitnee Hawthorne gave birth to her second child on May 7 in a New York hospital. Ten months later, her baby has yet to meet her paternal grandparents, who live in Louisiana.
“Our first child met them in the second week of her life,” said Hawthorne, whose husband was happily beside her after the ban on partners during childbirth was lifted in her hospital several weeks before her time.
As a black woman, she said, she decided she would leave the state instead of going into labor alone.
“I am well aware of the high maternal mortality rates among black women and also, having had a negative experience with a nurse during my first delivery, I was scared,” said Hawthorne.
Like Hawthorne, Nneoma Maduike was masked when she gave birth on August 1 to her second child, a son, after a pregnancy full of strangers.
“The anxiety was absolutely terrible. The information was evolving as fast as you can imagine, ”said Maduike, who lives in Brooklyn. “I didn’t know what direction to follow. My husband is a doctor and he still went every day and it brought even more anxiety. “
Twenty-four hours after a Caesarean section, Maduike was released to go home. At the time, hospitals were trying to protect new mothers and babies from the virus by removing them from the virus as soon as possible, while also relieving the burden of skeletal teams.
While the husband was present for the delivery, neither knew that the hospital would require the newborn to stay in Maduike’s room, instead of the nursery, just in case. Her husband returned home to be with his eldest son, leaving her alone to look after the baby right after the surgery. Then it was difficult to get her husband back to the hospital due to security concerns.
There were no visitors, of course, in stark contrast to his first delivery. No friend was allowed to pass through the hospital with balloons, flowers and food. Maduike’s mother, who lives in Texas, did not move for an extended stay after the baby returned home, a tradition in Nigerian culture. Her mother got a much shorter visit, but with little time to gather the many ingredients for ji mmiri oku, a black pepper soup offered to new moms after birth.
Maduike will not soon forget to find his baby in a mask. “There is something so sad about that,” she said. “You are afraid to remove that barrier because you just don’t know.”
Due to the travel restrictions of the pandemic, his father remains in prison in Nigeria and has not yet met his baby.
Liz Teich and her husband moved their 3-year-old son in February 2020 from Brooklyn to the suburb of New Rochelle before she gave birth to their second child, about two months later. They landed in a containment zone in one of the first COVID outbreaks in the United States. The hospital, under pressure from women due to childbirth there, just lifted the ban on delivery partners in the delivery room when Teich went into labor.
“My husband had to leave the hospital two hours after giving birth,” she said. “I was lucky. I suffered a hemorrhage after the first delivery. I was really concerned about being alone during a pandemic, when the hospital was understaffed.”
Thirty hours after delivery, Teich and her baby were at home.
“I didn’t even take a shower. I was too scared to touch the bathroom. We didn’t know if the virus was in the air or on surfaces, or really anything about the virus. I worked mainly at home because I was too scared to go, “she said.
Teich found himself folded in a hospital garage during contractions less than two minutes apart, after driving with her husband in search of a vacancy because the valet service had been eliminated. She did not want to be left, fearing that he could not enter alone.
“I thought, you know, if I give birth in the car, it would be safer than in the hospital,” she laughed.
The pain of separation was also felt in other ways.
Parham Zar, founder and managing director of the Egg Donor & Surrogacy Institute in Los Angeles, said that in the early months of the pandemic, parents who expected 52 births via surrogate were affected by travel barriers only at their agency.
“The vast majority of parents were located in China, and although birth parents are typically present during the child’s birth, they were unable to travel to the United States to join their children. Some surrogate mothers took care of their children for months before they were born. could be accompanied by their biological family, ”said Zar.
Jen Guyuron, in Cleveland, gave birth last March to a baby girl, Gigi, and she is pregnant again.
“No one has met Gigi and now we are going out with two babies,” she said. “The hospital was basically closing as soon as we entered. I remember perfectly telling my husband that he had better not cough or sneeze. We were in survival mode. “
Her mother, who with her father waited in her car at the hospital while she was in labor, wrote a poem for Guyuron after Gigi arrived. This inspired Guyuron to write a poem for his new daughter. She turned her words into a children’s book, “The Baby in the Window,” which she herself published as a way to let other mothers with a pandemic know that they are not alone.
The story waits for easier times, when parents can let other people hold their babies freely, visit their loved ones without masks and let their children play without worrying about the pandemic.
In the case of Gigi, brothers, grandparents, cousins and friends met her through the windows of Guyuron’s house. There were socially distant dinners in his parents’ garage and meals on his patio wrapped in blankets by a heating lamp.
“There is a lot of sadness about being isolated in our homes, with no family around,” said Guyuron. “It has been very difficult to be a new mother. You hope to come home with all these big hugs, happiness and family, and we had none of that. “
As Gigi knows only masks on the faces of others, Guyuron wonders if the revealed faces will be shocking to her.
“She only knows about masks,” said Guyuron. “They definitely don’t scare you.”
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