The reality of a pandemic pregnancy

25th October 2020. 11:43am. Pregnant. Ensue all of the emotions: excitement, nerves, shock, disbelief. Little did we know that this was only the start of a very unique and unusual pregnancy journey because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Recently, I have been thinking about how my pregnancy was different to so many others because of the pandemic, and that's when I realised how many things had to change.

The first 'event' that was drastically different were the scans. No-one was allowed to come with me to my scans or any midwife appointments to try and limit social contact. This was really hard for Matt, missing out on the experience of seeing his baby, hearing her heartbeat for the first time, finding out the gender together in the room, seeing her grow. This was also incredibly difficult for the mothers - I was lucky and had a pretty hassle-free pregnancy, however those who received horrible news or were informed about complications had to go through this alone. I can't even imagine how hard that would have been. These rules became more frustrating as the pregnancy developed, as pubs began to re-open, people were allowed to socialise with their mates and get drunk, but the father of my baby was still not allowed to attend scans unless we paid to go private. Apparently paying £100 for a scan magically means Covid won't get us! 

The second change was to seeing people. My pregnancy fell at a rubbish time in terms of Covid. I could see people during my first trimester, when I felt nauseous at every smell, tired and emotional. We then went into lockdown during my second trimester, when I felt great and wanted to see everyone and do everything. Then things opened up again in my third trimester when I felt uncomfortable, tired and hot, but I had to isolate from school to protect the baby anyway. The hardest thing was not seeing my family, who live in Surrey, during the second trimester, so they could see our baby grow and experience the pregnancy with me.

The final stage which was tough was the whole induction and labour process. I was in hospital for 4 days before being induced (that's a whole other story), but during this time I could only see Matt during visiting hours, and I was only allowed one visitor. This was very isolating and difficult, I was feeling the natural emotions of nerves and anxiety anyway, but I couldn't talk to anyone about these. We ended up being moved to a hospital 50 minutes away because our local hospital was short staffed. Luckily, this meant that Matt got to stay with me after I was moved to the postnatal ward, otherwise he would have had to leave his newborn baby after only 3-4 hours of getting to know her. This was awful for so many first time parents and had a real impact on male mental health.

We are hoping to have another child in the future if we are lucky enough, and we feel as if that pregnancy is going to be like a first time pregnancy all over again. So many people lost out because of the pandemic, so I just wanted to share how this changed the pregnancy process.

Jess x