PREGNANCY >> COVID-19
those opportunities for the social interaction around pregnancy and birth are no longer what they were. “That further isolates women,” Strong said. “There’s a lot of good evidence about the importance of social support, particularly in the immediate postpartum period, for preventing or protecting against postpartum depression.” For Renata Redford, 35, this could not have proved truer. Redford and her husband had moved from California to Gainesville to live closer to family. About a week or two before she went into labor, the country went into lockdown, and the hospitals changed their policies. “It was exhausting because every single day you would contemplate all the different things that were going to change,” Redford said. “You consider not just how birth is going to change. Everything went opposite of how I wanted to do my birth for a variety of pandemic-related reasons.” Luckily for Redford, her mother was able to self-isolate at the start of quarantine and was able to meet her son, Theo, when they came home from the hospital. Other than her mother, however, barely anybody else in her family met baby Theo. Raising a child takes a village, she said. “I wasn’t expecting it to be easy, but I wasn’t expecting this level of isolation when you first have your child and so forth,” Redford said. Despite some hospitals lifting restrictions to allow doulas during labor, expecting mothers still bear that crushing sense of feeling alone. Victoria Burns, 29, expects to give birth to her child at North Florida during the third week of March. Out of precautions against the pandemic, she does not allow anyone to come visit her, except for her mother and mother-in-law. She stays home other than to go to work and to run essential errands. At the beginning, the aspect of her pregnancy that had upset her the most had been her doctor’s visits. The standard procedure during the height of the pandemic was for pregnant women to attend doctor’s visits alone; Burns could not bring anyone with her. Only recently has she been allowed to bring her husband for the first time. Prior to that visit, he missed all her anatomy scans and ultrasounds. The doctor’s office sent him all the pictures and videos via text. “I was fine until I realized that it’s my first baby and in a time that’s so important, I can’t be around my family or my friends,” Burns said. “I probably cry multiple times a week about it.” To push through, she thinks about her baby. She goes into her nursery, sits on her rocking chair and rubs her belly. Similarly to how Burns uses her baby as encouragement to push through, Amber Kovacs, 34, found that, along with her faith, her three-year-old son helped her stay positive. By trying to give him a sense of normalcy, he kept her busy. Kovacs feels blessed to have experienced her first pregnancy before the pandemic. She had joined birthing and Bradley method classes, where she met couples whom she and her husband are still friends with. She also had the opportunity to enjoy a baby shower and gender reveal with friends and family. JAN/FEB 2021
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