Diary of a COVID pregnancy: 3 months
My husband and I are currently expecting our third baby.
In many ways, we’ve already ‘been here, done that’: pregnancy with a second or subsequent child is certainly different to the first time round when everything is new and unknown.
But every pregnancy is different – whether owing to symptoms, risk factors, or the current stage of your life, family and your resulting priorities. In our case, our daughters are now busy 5 and 3 year-olds, so the things we now spend our time doing are vey different to when I was pregnant first time round. Personally, since we had our last baby I have trained as a hypnobirthing instructor and childbirth educator, and am now fully immersed in the world of birth work in a way that gives me a new perspective to the one I had with my previous two pregnancies.
And of course, this time, we’re doing something that less than a year’s worth of parents will have done before us – preparing to meet our baby in the middle of a global pandemic.
This monthly diary* intends to chart the ups, downs and questions we’re dealing with during this unique time. I hope I can offer other pregnant women an honest take on my thoughts and anxieties as they evolve, and as a hypnobirthing instructor, I hope I can share some insight about things I’m doing to manage them.
*(Of course, in true 2020 style, all plans have been repeatedly thrown off by school closures and having to oversee a Kindergartener on Zoom for most of the school year to date, so there’s a bit of a time lag on these ‘monthly’ installments. Nothing like keeping it real, hey?!)
You can read about what was going on at 2 months here.
Weeks 9 – 13
We spent the first couple of weeks of this month away on ‘staycation’ in New York State. After months of being stuck at home, the change of scenery to a vacation rental house was so welcome – as was the swimming pool to combat the August heat! We took things pretty slow, which suited my first trimester fatigue (fortunately the only real symptom I’ve been having this month) and enjoyed celebrating our older daughter’s 5th birthday with family Zooms and a virtual dance party with friends.
My big focus this month has been honing in on where I want to have our baby this time round, and therefore if I need to change prenatal care providers. As I mentioned last month, we had both of our daughters at a city hospital within walking distance from our home, where I was under the care of a practice of midwives. I had good experiences with both births – especially second time round where I was able to spend a lot of active labor in the tub, and had my hypnobirthing skills to keep me really calm and focused – but there are different considerations at play this time:
Do I really want to spend more time than absolutely necessary in a hospital in the middle of a pandemic?
What’s the COVID situation going to be like come the spring, and what implications will that have for hospital care? As things stand in summer 2020, doulas aren’t allowed in hospitals in Philly, and if things got really bad again, would partner support be withdrawn altogether?
What about postpartum stays? With the girls we stayed in for two nights, which was great in many ways, but my husband could come and go. At the moment, once your partner is there, they’re not allowed to leave. What will that mean for our older daughters, and who’s going to be looking after them anyway if family can’t travel to be with us?
Being able to use the water tub made a huge difference to my second labor, but there’s only one at our hospital so it’s a total gamble as to whether it’s available when you’re there. One I’d rather not take.
Through my own deepening understanding of birth over the last few years, I also now appreciate the importance of environment so much more. Looking back on my previous births, the hospital setting definitely caused my adrenaline to surge, and the progress of my labor to stall for a period of time. Would a less medicalized environment suit me better?
I was up for researching homebirth providers, but for a whole host of reasons (not least the fact that typically homebirth midwives aren’t officially licensed in Pennsylvania, and therefore not covered by insurance – an infuriation for another day!) my husband felt very strongly that he didn’t want us to go down that route. So the last remaining option was a freestanding birth center. I looked into a center that I’d heard great things about in the suburbs of Philly, and signed myself up for a seminar to learn more about their approach – a pre-requisite for anyone considering transferring their care there.
The session was wonderful – the center’s philosophy is all about creating a homely environment and supporting low-intervention physiological birth, but the midwives who practice there also have delivering rights at a hospital which is literally right over the road, so if you needed to transfer they could continue your care. Doulas have continued to be able to provide in-person support throughout the pandemic, each room at the birth center has a tub, and you are typically discharged home within 4-12 hours of birth so we wouldn’t have a prolonged stay away from the girls. The only real downside is the distance – it’s about a 40 minute drive from us, which my husband feels quite anxious about – but ultimately he’s supportive of the fact that if I feel this is the best option for our birth and our family, it’s the right call.
The day after the seminar I got myself signed up with the birth center, organized the transfer of my records from the hospital, and booked my first appointment, which I had ten days later with a nurse practitioner at the center’s satellite office in South Philly – a 25 minute walk from my house. The office is small and intimate – more like a massage studio that a doctor’s office – and I couldn’t believe how much time I was given; all in all I was there for about an hour and a half, and felt absolutely no sense of rush in terms of addressing my questions. It feels like a great fit and really nice to experience something different with the pregnancy. I’m excited to see how it continues!
