Pregnant in a Pandemic

This past year I (along with many people I assume) have experienced great love, loss, the loneliness of isolation, the gift of life, had my faith challenged, stretched and strengthened in every way imaginable and experienced the highest highs and the lowest lows. I have cried tears of grief and of the most immense, unfathomable joy. I became a mommy and was pushed to my limits (I also PUSHED to my limits if you catch my drift…for almost 3 hours) and had to learn how to navigate being a new mom in a world that was completely different from the world that I lived in before I was pregnant.

I have learned so much about myself over this past year while going through a global pandemic pregnant with my first baby (who I would soon find out would be referred to as a Covid Baby, cute lol). I have genuinely never felt so scared, helpless and so unsure of what the future held for our baby and our family. When we got pregnant in early fall of 2019, we could have never in our wildest dreams have imagined what unfathomable changes and challenges were on the horizon waiting for us.

In May of last year, I was entering into my final weeks of pregnancy. We were in the height of the global pandemic. During this time, things were very unclear and it seemed like the hospital policies were changing on a weekly basis. For months I had been on a roller coaster of emotions. I started having anxiety attacks around all of the what-ifs and dreaming up the most unbearably painful scenarios for what my birth experience would be like. As time progressed, the news started getting scarier and scarier putting unimaginable fear into my heart. I spent my days at home sat alone in isolation waiting for any good news. As my due date crept closer and closer I became more anxious about the details surrounding it…

Am I going to be lying in a hospital room scared and alone surrounded by complete strangers?

Will I have to give birth to my first child without any support or my person and the father to my child in the room?

Will my husband have to miss out on the experience of being there for the birth of his first child?

Will I give birth to my son and then have him taken away from me immediately for the next several days if by some cruel twist of fate I or Brian were to test positive?

Will my labor be a sad experience not having anyone there to share in it with me?

The small, seemingly superficial, and trivial things that come along with being pregnant that many take for granted started to become big things for me in my heightened state of sadness. I became depressed and it made me sad to think that none of my family and friends would get to see my growing pregnant belly or share in the excitement with me as I was trapped at home in isolation. I had baby showers planned that were all postponed until they were finally all cancelled because we felt we couldn’t be selfish and possibly risk our health or that of our child's for a celebration. I felt like I didn’t get to experience any of the fun parts of being pregnant or that I wasn’t allowed to be excited. I was sad all of the time thinking, “Why me? Why did this have to happen right now?” And then of course guilt would follow soon after, knowing that I should be feeling grateful and blessed that I had a perfectly healthy and growing baby. And of course I was so so happy and relieved that my baby was healthy as could be, but I just couldn’t shake the sadness. I so desperately wanted the full, normal experience. I would have constant emotional breakdowns. It made me so unexplainably sad to consider that I was missing out on so much joy that comes with preparing for your first child.

I would hear from everyone: my loved ones, my doctor, the media, “I’m so sorry, this isn’t how it’s supposed to be. This isn’t normal at all that you have to experience this. Pregnancy and delivery is so much different right now.” It never made me feel any better, in fact often times worse. This was my normal and all that I knew.

Around this time there was news popping up that many hospitals around the country were not allowing any maternity patients to be admitted with a support person. Not even spouses. Our hospital was still allowing one support person per patient, but my anxiety skyrocketed as my mind went to the scenario where I give birth to my first child alone without Brian there to share in the joy of the arrival of his son into the world because he’s not allowed to enter the hospital. I was terrified and started having intermittent panic attacks. I spent the whole last trimester anxious and trying to keep myself and Brian as healthy as possible by avoiding all contact with anyone so that there was zero chance that he would have to miss out on the delivery. I started questioning every move we made and if even the smallest outings (to the grocery store, a walk around the neighborhood, anything) would pose a risk and make us regret not being more safe. I had to start going to all of my OB appointments leading up to giving birth alone without Brian since patients were not allowed to bring anyone in the building with them. Doctors were unable to give any reassurance or answers as to how any of this would affect my baby. I was carrying a life inside of me and I had no way of protecting him.

Of course with any sad, unfortunate situation that you are dealt, you need to pause and evaluate to consider what God might be trying to do in your life. I really had to muster all my strength and pick myself up off the ground emotionally to stop and look around to see all of the positives in this situation and to see how God was using this unfortunate time to create a hidden blessing.

This challenging chapter in our lives made Brian and I resistant to any curveballs and turbulence that life my offer us. We only had one another to lean on and he was my #1 support and rock throughout the whole second half of my pregnancy. He was the only one that got to watch my belly grow towards the end and in turn our love grew for each other and our son and brought us closer emotionally than ever before.

I was forced to lean on my faith more than I have ever had to before and I turned to scripture and prayer, which even though it’s difficult to admit as a Christian, had not been my default leading up to this point. There were a couple of verses that really helped get me through. Romans 5 was a great reminder as to why God allows difficult things to happen to us:

“We also rejoice in our afflictions, because we know that affliction produces endurance, endurance produces proven character, and proven character produces hope. This hope will not disappoint us, because God’s love has been poured out in our hearts through the Holy Spirit who was given to us.” - Romans 5:3-5

Ecclesiastes 3:11 helped to remind me that there is always light at the end of the tunnel. Even if things seem bleak, there is always hope and God always has a plan in place for our future. This was especially reassuring during a global pandemic:

“Yet God has made everything beautiful for its own time. He has planted eternity in the human heart, but even so, people cannot see the whole scope of God’s work from beginning to end.” -Ecclesiastes 3:11

I also took so much comfort in the words of Jude in his closing benediction when he reminded us that evil is no match for the power of God. I dove deeper into this in my blog on Jude’s birth story here.

So now being on the other side, having given birth, bringing my baby home and raising my son in the midst of this pandemic, where he has only ever known masks and social distancing, I will definitely say that looking back on everything does still make me very sad. I think that I will always be deeply sad, heartbroken for myself and bitter that the pandemic took from me what should have been one of the happiest and joyful times of my life. Of course I am thankful for the things that I gained from it and for the lessons, humbleness, humility and trust that the Lord had planned for me to understand through this experience. I had the absolute blessing of being able to grow a life inside of me and all of the beautiful, tender moments that come with that, and experience a bond with that unborn life that is unlike anything that can ever be replicated despite all of the chaos surrounding it. However, I have finally come to terms with the fact that it is also okay for me to feel sad for myself. And to sit in those feelings as I reflect back on the most impactful year of my life.

I feel like I’ll always have a special connection with other moms out there who also had their baby during the pandemic and had to endure months and months of fear of the unknown for the growing life inside of them. My return to social media has provided me with such a flood of accounts of other women who have shared in my experience and take to the internet to share their feelings of sadness in the hopes of reassuring and validating similar experiences of other mom’s. In sharing my story, that is what I hope I am also doing for others.