Birth During Covid: Don’t Stress Yourself Out

As I have said before on this blog, we are living in a weird time right now because of Covid19.

For expecting mothers and fathers out there, I wanted to share my wife and I’s hospital experience during the birth of our daughter. I wanted to share to hopefully ease the minds of expecting parents a little bit. It’s already a big step bringing a new life into this world. Now, add a pandemic to that. I can understand the higher stress levels.

Obviously every hospital is different and some call for stricter protocols than others. When coronavirus first started spreading, of course I was nervous of what it could bring to my pregnant wife and newborn.

As time wore on, the nerves calmed more because of the little impact it seemed to have on pregnant women as well as newborns.

I’ll admit. I didn’t like the idea of not being able to be in a triage room with my wife should she have to wait for her labor to progress. Her first pregnancy, we were in there for hours. Sitting in a car waiting would have been tortuous when all I would want  is to be by my wife’s side. Luckily, I waited for all of 20 minutes, more on that later.

I will tell you that there really wasn’t a moment I didn’t feel protected or safe in the hospital. I can’t speak for all hospitals obviously. But, I would like to think most are taking necessary precautions.

For us, there were two ways in and out of the hospital. Both had security set up and screening people. They took my temperature and gave me a wristband at the entrance. Once in the room, they took my temperature again.

The hospital was much quieter than when my son was born. Part of that comes from the limited staff and people walking around. Less people equals a higher sense of security.

Once you were in your room, you were limited on where you could go. Not that I was leaving the room much anyway.

All the nurses and hospital staff were wearing masks along with the patients.

We were also in and out of the hospital within 48 hours, which of course was nice. I doubt most people really enjoy sleeping in the hospital. I hate it. So only having to spend one night before bringing our little bundle of joy home was nice.

Normally I am more profound and longer winded in what I write here, but this didn’t need to be. Overall, don’t over-hype the idea of giving birth during this pandemic. Your hospital likely has a great plan for safety in place. I know ours did.