Pregnancy In The Time Of Corona

Pregnancy is supposed to be a time of joy and excitement. This is something you normally would like to share with your whole family. With the recent events in the world, pregnancy is now scarier and much more challenging than before. Several things about the way a pregnancy is handled have changed and the stress can become overbearing. How will these changes effect you and how can you do your best to make this experience as normal and family oriented as possible.

With social distancing being the new norm for everyone, this means for the time being there will be no more social gatherings such as baby showers and gender reveals. You can no longer announce the pregnancy at family dinners or outings. This is especially hard on women who are experiencing their first pregnancy. There are some alternatives though. Luckily Youtube and Facebook live might be able to help you here. You can also do a drive by gathering which is now becoming very popular among pregnant women everywhere.

A drive by baby shower is especially handy. You can invite people to come and drop items off while you sit in your driveway. This can be a fun alternative as you feel like there is a parade just for you. Just make sure friends and family stay 6 feet away. You don’t have to open gifts right there. You can even use Facebook live to do a live video later of you opening the gifts.

Another thing that has changed about pregnancy is the amount of times you will be seeing the doctor. Thanks to modern technology, you will have the option to do web chats with your doctor. I recently did this and my whole family was able to be present, as I live at home for the time being. This can be challenging though, because you wont be getting a close look at baby, like you want. It is also advisable to invest in a blood pressure monitor as well as a scale, so your doctor can have up to date information about how mommy is doing.

The most challenging thing for me right now is midnight cravings. With many places closing earlier than normal, it is harder to get that late night pregnancy craving you may be wanting. Make sure you have a wide variety of snacks at home so that you might be able to calm that craving just a little bit. Of course if you are craving a certain thing from a restaurant, that one may be harder to handle. With the internet though, you might be able to find a copy-cat recipe. Just make sure to stock up on ingredients as well.

One of the biggest changes with pregnancy during this time would have to be who can (or in this case cant) come to office visits and who can be in the delivery room and even in the hospital. Sometimes it feels like we have gone back 50 years, to when men sat outside and waited. It’s heartbreaking to go to every single appointment alone and not with someone who wants to be there. When we found out we were expecting in February, before all this chaos started, my fiance let me know that he wanted to be involved in every aspect of the pregnancy. A month later, that was no longer the option. He wasn’t even able to be there to hear the heartbeat for the first time. I was able to though, with the permission of the Ultrasound technician, get a video recording of the babies heartbeat.

Before we found out about the pregnancy, we wanted my daughter to be part of the delivery. This may not be an option anymore, depending on how things are in the world in late October. She is really saddened by this, as this baby wasn’t supposed to happen. We were told several times, it would take a miracle for us to have a baby and here we are. Some places aren’t even allowing the mothers partner to be part of the labor. I am hoping we don’t get to that point here. It be like stepping back in time. This also sadly means that family is no longer allowed in the waiting room. We will have to rely on videos and pictures to allow everyone to meet this new life. It might also be sometime before friends and family are allowed over to see the bundle of joy in person.

These changes may be hard to handle, but the rules and regulations are put in place to protect not only ourselves, but our little ones as well. Hopefully with time, things will get better and we can go back to normal. For now, we need to follow the guidelines to the best of our abilities and not allow the stress and confusion of it all to get to us. Just remember to take lots of videos and pictures to document your little ones journey into our world.