Notes on a Pandemic Birth

Four years later, hospitals have changed but the trauma lingers

Photo by CDC on Unsplash

Last week, my friend Liz and her partner had a baby (Congrats! He’s adorable!). I called Liz a few days beforehand, to discuss the inherent anxieties and oddities of hospital births. As we chatted, I realized how much has changed since my son was born in October 2020. While hundreds of thousands of Americans were dying from a terrifying virus, more than 3.6 million of us gave birth. We didn’t want to complain, especially when we walked out with healthy babies. But it was a frightening time.

• We couldn’t leave the room, much less the hospital. That’s tough when you arrive for a routine induction and stay for five days, including a traumatic C-section. At one point, my husband wandered into the hallway in search of coffee, and a nurse yelled at him.

• My doula was not permitted to attend the birth. By this point in the pandemic, some larger hospitals had allowed doulas back in, but not the small, private institution I chose. Birthing people could have just one support person, and in my case, that was my husband.

• No one could visit. Not my mom, mother-in-law, or scores of other friends and relative who were dying to see the baby and might have made those five sleepless days more bearable.

• Food was limited. Years ago, when my friend Shelley had her first daughter, I brought her favorite guava empanadas to the hospital room. We had no such luxuries. I gave birth at 9:30 p.m and begged for a sandwich afterward. It took hours for a nurse to sneak me one, and I think it was actually from the nurse’s station—not intended for patients.

• Prenatal hospital tours and childbirth education classes were canceled. In my supreme ignorance, I thought an online Lamaze class would be pointless. Instead, my husband and I slogged through an 80-page PowerPoint presentation provided by the hospital. We were woefully unprepared for childbirth.

• Everyone was masked, and scared. I kissed my baby for the first time through a surgical mask. In the previous eight months, I saw my obstetrician’s entire face maybe twice. He was the person I entrusted with my son’s life—and my own. I still wonder how our relationship might have changed if he had not been rushed, overworked, and overwhelmed by the pandemic.

• Child care was a pipe dream. In the days before the vaccine, no one could tour day care centers, and we were too scared to use them anyway. My son was six months old before we were able to hire a part-time nanny. He was 22 months old when he finally got the vaccine. Like every other working parent in America, we nearly lost our minds.

• We spent far too much time alone. To be fair, our friends and family made heroic efforts. Right after my son was born, my mom flew from Denver to North Carolina, and quarantined for two weeks before she met her grandson. My Aunt Jessica isolated herself at home in Virginia so she could drive down while I was in the hospital, and greet us at our house with fresh baked bread. My mother-in-law spent hours with our son asleep on her chest so I could take a nap. But none of them could visit frequently. Every time they interacted with other humans, they put our son at risk. So the village we hoped to build was tenuous, and fragile.

• The isolation took an enormous toll. Breastfeeding, sleeplessness, the Jenga moves require to attach a car seat to a stroller—we endured all the challenges of new parenthood alone. I didn’t take a walk with another mom until my son was three months old. Later, we ran into a third mom on the bike path and cheered. “Pandemic moms unite!” we joked. It wasn’t really funny. We were refugees from a strange shipwreck, clinging to each other to survive.