{"id":204201,"date":"2021-03-16T23:53:25","date_gmt":"2021-03-16T20:53:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/anxiety-confusion-terror-relief-giving-birth-in-pandemic\/"},"modified":"2021-03-16T23:53:25","modified_gmt":"2021-03-16T20:53:25","slug":"anxiety-confusion-terror-relief-giving-birth-in-pandemic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/anxiety-confusion-terror-relief-giving-birth-in-pandemic\/","title":{"rendered":"#Anxiety, confusion, terror, relief: Giving birth in pandemic"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#Anxiety, confusion, terror, relief: Giving birth in pandemic<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n

NEW YORK \u2014 Pregnancy, birth and life with a newborn in the middle of a pandemic has brought on high anxiety, ever-shifting hospital protocols and intense isolation for many of the millions of women who have done it around the world.<\/p>\n

As the pandemic stretches into a second year and economic worry persists, demographers are studying the reasons for an anticipated pandemic baby bust. Women, meanwhile, have learned to go through labor in masks and to introduce fresh arrivals to loved ones through windows.<\/p>\n

Fear, anxiety and chaos were particularly acute in New York City during the early months of the pandemic in what was one of the country\u2019s most devastating hot spots.<\/p>\n

Whitnee Hawthorne gave birth to her second son May 7 in a New York hospital. Ten months later, her baby has yet to meet his paternal grandparents, who live in Louisiana.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur first son met them the second week of his life,\u201d said Hawthorne, whose husband was thankfully by her side after a ban on birth partners during delivery was lifted at their hospital several weeks before her time.<\/p>\n

As a Black woman, she said, she had decided she would leave the state rather than be in labor alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m keenly aware of the high maternal death rates for Black women and also, having had a negative experience with a nurse during my first birth, I was scared,\u201d Hawthorne said.<\/p>\n

Like Hawthorne, Nneoma Maduike was masked when she gave birth Aug. 1 to her second child, a son, after a pregnancy filled with unknowns.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe anxiety was absolutely awful. Information was evolving as quickly as anything you can imagine,\u201d said Maduike, who lives in Brooklyn. \u201cI didn\u2019t know what guidance to follow. My husband\u2019s a doctor and he was still going in every single day and that brought on even more anxiety.\u201d<\/p>\n

Twenty-four hours after a cesarean section, Maduike was cleared to go home. Hospitals at the time were attempting to protect new mothers and babies from the virus by shuffling them out early, lightening the load as well on skeleton staffs.<\/p>\n

While her husband was on hand for the birth, neither knew the hospital would require their newborn to stay in Maduike\u2019s room, rather than the nursery, as a precaution. Her husband went home to be with their older child, leaving her to care for the baby alone soon after surgery. Then it was a struggle getting her husband back inside the hospital due to safety concerns.<\/p>\n

\"This
This photo shows Whitnee Hawthorne and her husband, Jody Smith, on May 8, 2020, at Mount Sinai West in New York soon after Hawthorne gave birth.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

There were no visitors, of course, in stark contrast to her first delivery. No friends were permitted to drop by the hospital with balloons, flowers and food. Maduike\u2019s mother, who lives in Texas, didn\u2019t move in for an extended stay after the baby came home, a tradition in their Nigerian culture. Her mother did manage a far shorter visit, but with little time to gather the many ingredients for ji mmiri oku, a yam pepper soup offered to new moms after birth.<\/p>\n

Maduike won\u2019t soon forget meeting her baby in a mask. \u201cThere\u2019s something so sad about that,\u201d she said. \u201cYou\u2019re terrified to eliminate that barrier because you just don\u2019t know.\u201d<\/p>\n

Due to pandemic travel<\/a> restrictions, her father remains stuck in Nigeria and still hasn\u2019t met her baby.<\/p>\n

Liz Teich and her husband moved with their 3-year-old in February 2020 from Brooklyn to suburban New Rochelle before she gave birth to their second child about two months later. They landed within a containment zone in one of the earliest COVID surges in the U.S. The hospital, under pressure from women due to deliver there, had just lifted its ban on birth partners in the delivery room when Teich went into labor.<\/p>\n

\"This
This image released by Jen Guyuron shows the cover of her children\u2019s book \u201cThe Baby in the Window: For All Parents Who Had Babies During The Global Pandemic,\u201d illustrated by Tanya Matiikiv.<\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\u201cMy husband had to leave the hospital two hours after the birth,\u201d she said. \u201cI was lucky. I suffered hemorrhaging after the first birth. I was really concerned to be alone during a pandemic when the hospital was short-staffed.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thirty hours after giving birth, Teich and her baby were home.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t even shower. I was too scared to touch the bathroom. We didn\u2019t know if the virus was airborne or whether it was on surfaces, or really anything about the virus at all. I mostly labored at home because I was too scared to go,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Teich found herself doubled over in a hospital parking garage during contractions less than two minutes apart after circling with her husband looking for a spot because valet service had been eliminated. She didn\u2019t want to be dropped off, fearing he wouldn\u2019t be allowed in on his own.<\/p>\n

\u201cI thought, you know, if I give birth in the car it might be safer than in the hospital,\u201d she laughed.<\/p>\n

The pain of separation was felt in other ways, too.<\/p>\n

Parham Zar, founder and managing director of the Egg Donor & Surrogacy Institute in Los Angeles, said that in the early months of the pandemic, parents awaiting 52 births via surrogate were impacted by travel barriers at his agency alone.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vast majority of parents were located in China, and while the biological parents are typically present during the child\u2019s birth, they couldn\u2019t travel to the U.S. to unite with their children. Some surrogates took care of the children for months before they could be joined by his or her biological family,\u201d Zar said.<\/p>\n

\"This
This photo shows Liz Teich on April 20, 2020, soon after giving birth at a hospital in White Plains, N.Y. <\/figcaption>
AP<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Jen Guyuron, in Cleveland, gave birth last March to a girl, Gigi, and she\u2019s pregnant again.<\/p>\n

\u201cNobody met Gigi and now we\u2019re coming out with two babies,\u201d she said. \u201cThe hospital was basically shutting down right as we walked in. I vividly remember telling my husband that he better not cough or sneeze. We were in survival mode.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her mom, who with her dad waited in their car at the hospital while she was in labor, wrote Guyuron a poem after Gigi arrived. It inspired Guyuron to write a poem to her new daughter. She turned her words into a children\u2019s book, \u201cThe Baby in the Window,\u201d which she self-published as a way to let other pandemic moms know they aren\u2019t alone.<\/p>\n

The story looks forward to easier times, when parents can freely let others hold their babies, visit with loved ones without masks and let their children out to play without pandemic worry.<\/p>\n

In Gigi\u2019s case, siblings, grandparents, cousins and friends first met her through the windows of Guyuron\u2019s home. There were social<\/a>ly distanced dinners in her parents\u2019 garage and meals on her patio wrapp<\/a>ed in blankets by a heat lamp.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of sadness being isolated in our houses without family around,\u201d Guyuron said. \u201cIt\u2019s been really hard as a new mom. You expect to come home to all these big hugs and happiness and family, and we didn\u2019t have any of that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since Gigi has largely known only masks on the faces of others, Guyuron wonders if revealed faces will be jarring to her.<\/p>\n

\u201cShe only knows masks,\u201d Guyuron said. \u201cThey definitely don\u2019t scare her.\u201d<\/p><\/div>\n

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