Pregnancy and TTC During a Pandemic: Listener Q&A

Yeah, I actually got my shot three days ago at a Costco amongst the gluten-free foods. Of course. Well, they gave me the shot in the pharmacy, but then I had to go wait amongst the zucchini gluten-free pizza kit. Oh, okay. Zucchini cross pizza. How does he do? Like you do and I was so excited because then I went shopping at Costco like I haven't been in the Costco for so long and I was like well I'm here I'm gonna go shopping. That's exciting. Really? We'll see it all comes full circle because one year ago didn't you go to Costco for a big run before the lockdown? I did. I actually in February. So I looked it up because I was curious when the last time I had been in a Costco was when I got the first shot. I got my first shot at Costco a month ago, and then I got my second shot recently. And I looked it up and it was February 2020. And I had taken a picture of my shopping list.

And at the end of it, I had written doomsday supplies. And I had posted that to my Instagram story, like, ha ha, because everyone was sort of ha ha joking about it at the time. Right. Mid-February, no one thought the whole world was going to go on lockdown for a year, right? So that was definitely a blast from the past. Same exact Costco too, the Alhambra, California Costco, shout out to them. All right. I got mine in a much less exciting location, which was just a Kaiser Permanente, which is like a health network. or their clinics out here in the valley. Very unexciting. But I did enjoy the opportunity to go out in the world, be somewhere around other people. I found that exciting, which is sad. That's what it takes for me to be thrilled these days. I would say for my first shot, I was terrified of getting close to anyone.

And now for the second one, I'm rolling in with my 80% immunity, being like, hey, what's up? I'm going to go shopping at Costco with a cart, not running around picking up a few things. No, no, no. I'm filling up this cart until I can barely push it. Such confidence. And then I get to my car and realize I have a stroller in the back. And then I realize that I'm totally out of practice of shopping at Costco. Oh, yeah. Where do you even put all the loot? Exactly. I had some balanced on top of the stroller. I had some in the baby car seats in the back. They were empty, obviously. The kids were at home. But yeah, I feel good. I have to say, I did get some side effects, but they were really mild. Especially if you think about the alternative is getting COVID. So I just had some muscle aches, but nothing a little bit of pain killers didn't fix.

And I was reading about whether you should or should not take pain killers. And I came to the conclusion that afterwards, if you need it, it should be fine. So I took some and yeah, I feel great now. Side effects only lasted a day and I'm so happy to be on my way to immunity. Yes, yes. Our family has recently started going to playgrounds again. Like we got over that nervous hump of like, oh, I don't know. It seems so foreign and will you get sick and blah, blah, blah. Like just kind of went to a park one day and there was no one on the playground and the girls were like, oh my God. And I was like, okay, I think it's safe. And we just did it and got over that hump. And now it's like a whole new world has opened up to us. And we are going to a new playground or park Like at least a couple of times a week, there's so much up here to explore.

And that has been my saving grace in the last few weeks. It's the best. We stopped Playgrounds for a while. Like there was a long time where they were just closed and then they opened up and we went for a while. And then the big surge started happening around Thanksgiving. And so and I was in my third trimester. So we just decided like it was too risky. So we had to stop for a while. And it was real sad. It was real sad to lose it. Playgrounds are the best. Yeah, they're so great. My kids, though, they're so funny. Elle in particular, she's just like, oh, that park, can we just go to a new park, please? Like she just wants to explore new things. And I'm like, you've done nothing for the last year. Like this little neighborhood park should still seem exciting to you. It is to me. Yeah, you've been twice. Come on, kid. Exactly. You've been twice.

She's like, I know that slide inside and out. She doesn't say that. You know, that's the attitude. It's so funny. But it's kind of cool because it's gotten me to look around for other things in the area. I'm like, sure, I like new adventures. Why not? And we've discovered all these different little neighborhood pocket parks and gone a little bit further out into the valley and discovered this really, really cool one today with huge like oak trees and big boulders to climb. And so we've discovered new stuff and it's been nice. And I hope it's just a taste of like what's to come as we start being able to open up society again and get out there and do things. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. Well, I can't wait till you get your second shot, and so we can all hang out. Yes. Although, what are we going to do about the kids? Because the kids can't just be together.

I mean, they still need to be masked in distance, right? Well, this is a lot of controversy. It kind of depends on what you... It's like anything, right? It kind of depends on how your risk tolerance is and What the kids do do they go to school do they not go to school do they see other people I think that for me personally I feel like if all the adults are Immunized the kids can play together without masks and being distanced first of all it's so hard to keep kids distanced Masked is a little easier, I think, but personally, the risk is so low, especially if they don't go places, like they don't go to school. And if you're outside also. But yeah, it's a decision everyone has to make. You know, if people are at higher risk, that could be something. But you know, Emily Oster, she's written about it and it definitely got a lot of criticism.

But her philosophy on the whole thing is basically like, well, this is what the title of the New York Times piece was. was that your unvaccinated kids are like vaccinated grandparents as far as risk level goes. And people gave her a lot of shit for that basically because the headline was a little misleading. But I mean, I think what she meant was if you look at the risk levels, they are about the same. As far as like serious injury or death, right? Like kids do not get COVID the same way that adults do. So But it's something everyone has to make a decision of. We'll have to talk. We'll have to talk. I guess so. I'm sure we'll keep listeners in the loop. We will, we will. Speaking of listeners, Laura, we have got a very special episode planned here of listener stories. We got so many stories from

all of you about what life has been like in the last year and we put them together and we are so excited to share. Shall we get started? I think we should. Hi, Shanna and Laura. My name is Michelle. I live in Carpentersville, Illinois, which is just outside of Chicago. So I actually got pregnant in early January of 2020. I had decided to announce my pregnancy at work. um you know somewhere around the end of the first trimester and that was actually the last day that I worked in my office. I remember uh just all the excitement and all the hugs and then the very next day I just happened to work from home just because that was part of my normal schedule and then it was a Saturday and on that Saturday I remember just watching the news all day and being so frightened.

Fortunately, things didn't get all that terrible, you know, just with the toilet paper shortages and, you know, limits of getting soup and that kind of thing. As far as it affecting my pregnancy, my husband, we were very fortunate in that he got to come with me to a couple visits very, very early on before March, but then once Illinois started shutting things down, he wasn't allowed, of course, you know, to come to the appointments with me. Then in July I had a drive-by shower and that was a really hard decision for me to make but I just couldn't bear the thought of my family and friends, all the people who mean most to me getting sick by throwing something that wasn't socially distanced and I was so worried about getting the virus too and not knowing how that might affect me being pregnant. I can't wait to tell my son about the year he was born

and how he truly was the best thing to happen to us, the best thing to come out of the year 2020. And he's just our shining light for that and I love him so much. So thank you both for doing your podcast. I listen to you guys all the time. I love you guys and I hope you're both doing well.

We also had a night time curfew in place, so I was terrified about going into early labour and being pulled over by the police. and sort of having to scream at them to let me through like a crazy lady but luckily she didn't make an early appearance and I was able to apply for a permit in advance from the police to go and have my scheduled induction which was at midnight on the 26th of May. and thankfully our adorable little baby Annabelle was born healthy on the 27th of May then in August when she was a couple of months old we both got Covid which was terrifying but luckily I'm so glad I was breastfeeding so I was able to pass on antibodies and that felt quite good to know I was helping her and thankfully neither of us was very ill.

The big fat Covid positive has been that working from home instead of having to go into the office every day means I see her so much more than I would have otherwise. Thank you for letting me ramble on I love your podcast and a big shout out to both of you and all of your lovely children and all of the listeners.

get my NT scan done, which is where they measure the nuclear translucency behind the baby's neck. So I went alone, but I was just really excited. I was like, oh, I get to see my baby in the ultrasound, whatever. So I went and got it done. And afterwards the midwife came in and talked to me about the results. And she told me that the rating for my baby was really off. So it was at about 7.7 millimeters, where a normal baby would be around like 2.5 millimeters.

And she said that it's a big indicator that it could be Down syndrome or some type of chromosomal disorder. So I ended up going to get the blood work. I think it was maternity 21. I got that done. And that took about two weeks to get back. And it came back. It ruled out Down syndrome and some of the major chromosomal issues, but the doctors were still kind of nervous because the reading was so off and that the maternal Fetal Medicine Doctor told me that with the reading being so off, he thought that my baby, which I had found out was a boy by then, had a 50-50 chance of having something genetically wrong with him, and he recommended I get an aniosyntesis, and that was a really hard decision, but I did end up getting that done. two or three weeks later, I got the results and it came back. They couldn't find anything wrong.

So that was a huge relief and that's when I finally announced on social media that I was pregnant because I had been working from home. So most people besides like family, they didn't even know I was pregnant. So that was kind of relief because if I was going to work every day and people were constantly asking like, oh, how's the baby? Whatever. You must be so excited. It was just so hard because, you know, I didn't know if there was something terribly wrong with my baby, I didn't know what was going to happen. So it was kind of a blessing in disguise. I gave birth to him on September 15th, 2020, and he came out perfectly normal. I had him a week early. But yeah, that was my experience. You guys' podcast is amazing. I love listening to it. You guys are awesome. Thanks for listening. Those stories were so great. I really identified with so much of that.

I mean, Hope's story about how her baby has only met a few people, same girl, same. Sebastian has met his grandma's and four of our friends. He's been held by, I think, four people outside of Cory and me. It's weird. It is. When I think about when Augie was a little baby, he had met all of my friends by now. Oh yeah, would I meet him a week, a week after he was born maybe? Yeah, you came over with CeCe and we like swapped babies. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, but hopefully soon he'll get to meet more people. The people he has met are my friends who are fully vaccinated. So that's been nice. Yeah, like Steve and Carrie. They are medical professionals, so they got it a while back. So that's been nice. We had them indoors without masks on. It was so weird at first. I could not, like I just didn't know. I was like, I don't know if this is okay. Is this okay?

And Carrie, she's a pharmacist and she's like very matter of fact about things. And she's like, the CDC says this is fine. It's fine. Like you need to chill out basically. I was like, okay, you're right. I need to chill out. And of course it was fine. It's just gonna take some adjustment. It's just gotten used to this. It was an adjustment to get used to this weird lifestyle. And now it's gonna be an adjustment to come back. But I'm gonna think like Carrie, think like Carrie.

The other thing I've noticed is has this happened to you where like you'll be meeting with people outdoors or whatever for like, I don't know, a gardener comes and needs to talk to you or whatever it is. You have your mask on at your house outdoors and then the person leaves and you still have your mask on like for 10 minutes. And then you realize like, oh, I don't need this on anymore. I don't need it. Oh, yes. All right. Well, should we take a break and come back with some more listener stories? Yeah. Let's do it.

We're back, and Laura, we've got even more listener stories. Should we get into it? I can't wait. Let's do it. Hi, Shannon, Laura. This is Cassie from Kentucky. While I was happy to be pregnant the whole year of 2020, it was a very stressful one. I remained unemployed for the fear of contracting COVID-19 while pregnant. You know, my husband and I tried our best to stay home and to stay safe, but it was scary at times when we'd find out someone at his job. had contracted COVID-19. On top of that, I found out early this year in January that my mom actually got COVID-19 and that was about one month before I was due. That was especially scary for me when you account for the hormones and I wanted to know that she would have a chance to meet her grandson. So luckily mom recovered and she did come to visit to help us learn being new parents. My entire pregnancy, everyone said how huge I looked.

My sister constantly told me that I was gonna have a big baby after being uncomfortable for 40 weeks and three days. I finally gave birth to my boy, who you can probably hear in the background, so I'm sorry about that. Everything about my induction went smooth, but I pushed for four strenuous hours to get him out. Four hours. To our surprise he ended up being 10 pounds 10 ounces and all the hospital staff said that I had given birth to a toddler and the midwife who delivered him started calling him Bubba. So the nickname kind of stuck and we still call him Bubba. Hi, Shanna and Laura. My name is Chelsea, and I am from just south of Seattle, Washington. My husband and I have been married, we've been together for about six years, and we just got married in June of 2019. On Easter in mid-April of 2020, we got our BFP.

My pregnancy was pretty uneventful and uncomplicated almost all the way through. So one day, when I was about 33 weeks along, I started to experience some minor spotting and very minor cramping. And so of course the first thing I did was Google my symptoms as you do. Just about everything I read said that those are pretty common symptoms at that point in pregnancy and are usually nothing to worry about and to maybe call your doctor. She had asked me if I had been doing any heavy lifting or strenuous exercise. I answered no, and she took a look back at my latest ultrasounds and non-stress tests and confirmed that nothing had looked out of the ordinary. Even though everything seemed normal, she thought I should go to the hospital to get checked out just to be safe.

Once we were in the triage room, they hooked me up to the monitors, started an IV, and said they were going to just run some tests. The doctor and nurses told us everything seemed fine, the baby was moving, my cervix was closed, the monitor was picking up some very minor contractions that I couldn't even feel. But they said that was pretty normal too. The really the only abnormal thing they found was some clear fluid along with that little bit of blood that I had been spotting. They left the room to run some tests and figure out if that was amniotic fluid. After probably about 20 minutes, I felt a rush of fluid suddenly under the blanket that soaked me all the way down to my feet. My contractions started to gradually intensify. My husband went out into the hallway to find the doctor and tell them what was going on. As we waited, the contractions began to come on faster and stronger

Eventually getting to the point where I could barely hold a conversation. No sitting or lying position felt comfortable. It was very squirmy and started to really panic. When the doctor came back in, she could see the panic on our faces. She checked me again. This time was a different story. She came back up and told me I was fully dilated and that she could even see that our baby had a full head of hair. My husband and I were absolutely in shock. As the doctor and nurses began rushing around, assembling the NICU team and preparing to move me to a delivery room. There, I got a very quick introduction to a team of about 10 doctors and nurses from the NICU, all reassuring me that my baby would be just fine. There hadn't been time to test me for COVID, so I was required to wear a mask throughout my entire labor, which really sucked. And all the medical staff wore extra layers of PPE.

After about 30 to 40 minutes of pushing, my beautiful baby boy was born at 8.07 PM. To put it into context, we had only arrived at the hospital about three hours earlier at around 5 PM.

He was born on October 28th, 2020 at 33 weeks and three days gestation. His due date was actually supposed to be December 13th, 2020. He was born pretty large at five pounds, 10 ounces and appeared perfectly healthy right off the bat. Luckily, I was able to snuggle him and kiss him on my chest for a few moments before he was taken down to the NICU. My husband followed our son down to stay by his side while I went through the afterbirth and recovery and got a COVID test, which came back negative. He did go on to stay in the NICU for 25 days with a main focus on gaining weight and learning to eat on his own. He slowly graduated from feeding through a feeding tube to a paced bottle and eventually we've connected and figured out how to breastfeed. During our son's hospital stay, no other visitors were allowed to come and see him, of course, due to COVID restrictions.

He was finally able to come home with us on November 22nd, 2020, just before Thanksgiving, and he's been healthy and thriving ever since. He just turned four months old at the end of February, and he is the most happy baby I have ever known. He loves to smile and giggle, I swear he seems to get chunkier every day. He now weighs over 14 pounds. Looking back on his traumatic entrance into the world, it all feels like a dream. Again, we are just so fortunate that it has such a happy ending. I would say a BFP throughout our entire birth experience would have to be the team of amazing doctors and nurses at our hospitals, NICU. I swear those people are true angels on this earth. They took amazing care of our son and acted as a wonderful support system for my husband and I through the absolute hardest, darkest time in our lives.

They are the team at the Valley Medical Center in Renton, Washington. Again, I'll never be able to thank them enough. Yeah, so that's my story. And I just wanted to say thank you ladies so much for letting me share. And thank you for this podcast and for everything you're doing for all of us new moms out there and pregnant ladies out there. I love you and I hope that you and your families are doing well. Hi everyone, my name is Alyssa and I'm from the Catsco Mountains in Upstate New York. This time last year I was in the middle of fertility treatments and I work in a school system on the 13th of March.

the leaders in our area decided to have a big meeting to discuss the pandemic and what we might face going forward with the school districts and have a pizza party, essentially. During that, I was speaking with my coworker and she said, how wild would it be if you were pregnant? And of course in my head, I was like, yeah, right. You know, after a couple of years of fertility treatments, that's just not happening. Four days later I got my BFP. So I spent my entire pregnancy with the shutdowns. That same afternoon we got the call from the same health department who'd come and visited us saying New York is shutting down. So we packed our stuff up and went home for several months until July when we did a trial at being back in school. And on a light note, I thought I'd share a funny story with you guys. It was towards the end of my pregnancy, the beginning of November.

And I had to go for, you know, one of my weekly checkups at that point. And they're like, oh, we don't have an appointment for you. And I'm, you know, of course, like, what, you know, I have it right in my phone, you know, I look at the text message that they send to confirm your appointment. I was at the wrong office, you know, about 20 miles from where I should be. Um, so it didn't start super well, but luckily there was a doctor there who was willing to fit me in. So I go, you know, I have to give, you know, your urine sample and I'm in a mask and, you know, I have my glasses, which love to fog up and, you know, I'm attempting to give this sample and my glasses fall off. They hit the sample, the sample spills and my glasses hit the floor.

So I don't want to wear my glasses right because they're dirty now and so you know I get myself together, I get in the office where I can't see and the guy leaves me on the table laying down you know with that footrest thing out, but he's like, oh, you can get down. Now I'm stuck up there with my big old belly thinking, how am I gonna get down with this leg thing out? So I swing my legs over where the stirrups are. My leg hits the button that makes the table go up and down and the table goes all the way up in the air. So I'm stuck. So then I had to wait for someone to show back up to let me down. So that was a heck of a day. Wrong appointment, spilled things, being blind, stuck on a table. So I just thought I'd share a light note with you. Thanks everyone. I enjoy the podcast so much. It got me through the summer. I got all the way through twice. Hopefully we'll be out of this soon.

Get vaccinated. Bye. Hi, Shanna and Laura. I'm 19 and I got pregnant at 18 right as the pandemic started like started in my state and right as my state got shut down. And it was honestly really scary because I never thought I would get pregnant at such a young age and I had been with my fiance for less than a year at that time. And it was just also new and scary. And I didn't know how a coronavirus would affect a fetus at that point. So I was just scared to go anywhere and do anything. There were no prenatal classes or anything available in person or online for my hospital. So I didn't get any of the experiences that I thought I would get if I ever was to get pregnant. And especially with being so young, it was really hard to try to navigate. all of the pregnancy, all of everything by myself.

And when it came time to deliver, I always thought that my mom would be in the delivery room with me, but because of COVID, I found out only one support person was allowed. So I had to choose between my fiance and my mom. And I mean, obviously I chose my fiance, but I really missed out on having that support from my mom. And I really wish that she could have been there to see her grandchild being born. But I mean, honestly, I wouldn't change any of the last year though, because it's made me so much stronger. And I feel like the path I had to delivering my baby made me a better mom in the long run because I had to do everything myself pretty much. I didn't have much support. So I had to figure out everything on my own, but your podcast helped me so much during the isolation of pregnancy.

Especially during this time, I found your product class when I was pregnant and listening to it every Monday really brightened my spirits and helped me feel like I wasn't so alone. Those stories were so great and oh my gosh, Laura, a precipitous birth story. I know you had some, maybe some thoughts or fears about that happening to you during quarantine. Yeah, I totally did. I was afraid of it happening, especially because my mom wasn't here yet. The weirdest thing about it is I had these weird premonitions. I don't remember if I talked about it on the podcast, but I was like, my water's gonna break. I'm gonna have a VBAC. I just knew it. I don't know why. And of course, hindsight's 2020, it was kind of a 50-50. And I could be here talking about how like, oh, I thought I was going to, but I just had my C-section. But anyway, it came true.

But the weirdest thing to me is that my mom arrived 12 hours before my water broke. Yeah, I still can't get over that. So crazy. She apparently, she was like dead asleep because she had just driven all the way from Portland down to LA and was so tired. And I call her at 4 a.m. being like, I'm so my water broke. And she was apparently just like. Really?

No, I wanted my rest. And definitely like Chelsea's story about going in and having a baby three hours later. I was so worried that was going to happen that I think I went in a little too early. I could have probably waited a little longer. But I was like, I do not want to have a baby in the car. Mm-hmm. No, no, that would not be good. No, but yes. Oh my gosh. Thank you everyone for sharing this amazing. We do have a few more, but I was thinking we should take a quick break and come back and listen to our final listener submissions. What do you think? Let's do it.

We are back in Laura. I asked Alexa today how many days it's been since I went into lockdown, and it's been 400 on the nose. What, really? 400? 400. That just, I don't know, that just really blew my mind. That feels like such a long time. Such a long time and that made me want to start crunching some other numbers about the lockdown and I wanted to share with you if I love data. Let's hear it. Okay. So the first thing I was thinking about was how many meals have I prepared during lockdown because, you know, L used to be at preschool all day and would get meals there and we would eat out a lot and blah, blah, blah, but now it's like I've been cooking meals or preparing meals for 400 damn days. So let's see, 400 days times three meals a day is 1200. I don't do every single one, but let's be real, I probably do 90% of meal prep.

So that would be 1,080 meals that I have prepared during this last year.

It's so exhausting. It's just so exhausting. I try to bring a sense of zest to it at least some of the time, like dinner. I try to make new meals that I haven't had before and like have a glass of wine while I make it and listen to music. But you can't do that all the time. Half the time it's just like I stare at a hot dog in the toaster oven while it's warming up and just I'm like, what is happening with my life? So that's a lot. I just bought a bunch of like microwavable mac and cheese cups because I'm over it.

I saw them at Costco and I was like two minutes in the microwave. Yes, please. Yeah. Oh, you've inspired me. Maybe I should go buy some of those. I need something like that. Because Al loves mac and cheese, big time. Okay, my next number I crunched is, how many Zoom meetings have I done this year? And let's see, I don't know exactly, but I'd say I have about five meetings a week. So I've been in lockdown for 57 weeks. times five meetings, I've done 285 Zoom meetings in the last year. Each one's about 30 minutes. So I've spent 8,571 minutes in Zoom meetings. Don't you wish you had bought Zoom stock in February 2020? Right. Oh my god. Yeah. Who knew Zoom was going to be such a huge part of our lives? And I am on the low end of meetings. My coworkers, some of my coworkers, go to many meetings a day. I'm lucky. I don't have to go to so many, but that's a lot of minutes. It really is.

Your poor webcam is working over time. Our poor computer is like, we were never designed to be used this much. What's happening? I know, exactly. All right, and here's another number I crunched. I wanted to know how much money I've saved on preschool in the last year. Ooh, yeah. Because this is kind of a good one, I think, of anything. It's like, oh, I've saved money. All that work I've been doing rearing my own child every single day, 24 hours a day. Maybe there's a monetary gain. OK. So we have been in lockdown for 13 months, so I will multiply that by the amount We used to pay for preschool every month. Oh my God. Oh no. Holy shit. I feel like, you know how in movies where they're like, what's your offer? And they like write it on a piece of paper and slide it across the table. I feel like that's what you should do. If we were on the same table. Here's my offer.

Here's how much money I've saved. Oh God, tell me. Okay. How much was it? Yes. Okay. I will tell you. I will not leave everyone hanging as if it's a... Mysterious number on a piece of paper. Okay, I saved $17,225. Holy moly. On school. Wow.

For one kid, remember, I was working from home so I could also at the time take care of CeCe. Wow. So. Why is it so expensive to have kids in this fucking country? My God. It's so expensive. That's wild. I mean, I always justify it to myself. I'm like, well, you know, their hours were really good and they gave her snacks and blah, blah, blah. But still it's like, wow, that's a lot. No, I mean, but also think about it. If someone told you like, hey, okay, here's the deal. you're not gonna have childcare for a year.

You are gonna have to work another job at the same time as preparing over a thousand meals, doing every nap time, doing every activity, coming up with your own curriculum to help your preschooler, making sure you change all the diapers, also, you know, try throwing potty training in there, all while juggling your other job, remember, just make this clear, and we're gonna pay you $17,000 to do that.

That would seem pretty low. That would seem real low. Now you put it in perspective. The funny thing is I'm like, where did that money go? Because it's not like it's sitting in a bank account somewhere. We weren't wise about this. I think it just went towards bounce houses and crap. I don't know, it's gone. Yeah, I don't think you spent $17,000 on bounce houses, but you know, God, can you imagine? You build a house out of bounce house material. Yeah, yeah, I could. Oh my God. So those are some amazing information that I haven't done any numbers like that. I have one ready. How many babies did I conceive, gestate, and give birth to during the last 400 days? Oh, I don't know. I'm on the edge of my seat. How many is it? One whole baby. One whole baby that he's really cute. Oh, that's cute. That's a good number. I like that you crunched that number for us. Thank you.

I should look up how many cells are in like a baby. There you go. They're born, but I my phone is across the room and. We should just get back to listener stories. We should, we have more. Let's get into them. Okay. Hi, Sean and Laura. This is Emily from Iowa. And I just wanted to tell my story about giving birth in a pandemic and what that has been like all pregnancy. I had like a really severe anxiety about giving birth. I went to counseling for it. I was talking to doctors about it. pretty severe and then add COVID on top of it. And so anyway, I went to be induced. They hooked me up to the monitors and they're like, do you know that you're having contractions right now? And I was like, uh, I guess I just thought those were Brexton eggs. And so they let me go for a while just with that. And I was laboring, I guess that went on from, so I was induced at eight in the morning.

And so they were monitoring me and tell about, four or five that day, I started being like, well, I'm scared that they're going to be like, oh, you're ready to push and I don't have an epidural. So I had no desire to do a natural birth. So power to the people who strive for that. That is just not my wish or goal at all. And so I went ahead and said, just go ahead and give me the epidural because I want to, you know, I don't want to feel Everything then at two o'clock in the morning. I started pushing I pushed for an hour When the nurse said you're gonna like deliver the baby in the next couple pushes I'm gonna go get the doctor. They got the doctor and I delivered my baby and at that time She came out and they swooped her away. So what had happened is she had swollen milconium. I think I'm saying that right and then they said that she would have to be taken to the NICU.

So at that time, because of COVID, I was not able to go with, my husband was. Also because of COVID, we weren't able to leave our room really for any reason. So we weren't allowed to go walk the halls. We weren't allowed to go get food or anything. Everything was delivered to us. But regardless, I wasn't able to see my daughter right after she was born for two hours. I mean, I'm glad my husband was able to be up there with her in the NICU. But it was quite traumatic to not be able to, you know, hold your child right away right after you give birth. Regardless, she came back down after they did some monitoring and realized everything was okay. She wasn't gonna be ill from swallowing that fluid. I would say this pandemic has definitely affected my birth story and my birth plan, but yeah, I'm actually pregnant again due in June. That was not planned, but I'm excited.

It was a happy, happy accident. And so I'm curious to see what this delivery will look like compared to my last pandemic delivery. I love your guys' show and can't wait to hear others experience with the pandemic. Hi, Big Fat Positive Podcast. My name is Kelsey and I was going to tell a little bit about my experience of 2020 and COVID. So one year ago, today I was in Cameroon. I was working with a local NGO on a clinical vaccine trial for a cholera vaccine. On March 18th, 2020, the border is unexpectedly closed to the country, and it was uncertain when I would be able to return to the US. Quickly, many of the restaurants were forced to close and the markets, and it was difficult for me to get food because I had no kitchen in the guesthouse where I was staying.

In fact, the guesthouse closed to visitors, but decided to let me stay because I wasn't able to leave the country and had nowhere else to go. In early April, I was finally able to fly back to the US on an emergency state department evacuation flight. In July, I got a positive pregnancy test. It's a little bit earlier than we had originally planned, but we were both very excited. Immediately the anxiety started to set in over being pregnant during the middle of a pandemic, especially with all the uncertainty surrounding the risk to pregnant people and babies and all of that. The Big Fat Positive podcast was one of the first resources that I discovered and it was a great way to learn about what to expect in terms of the doctor's appointments, lab tests, symptoms and everything else.

It was actually thanks to Laura's description of her SPD pain that I recognized when I started to develop it at around 16 weeks pregnant. I feel like I've missed so much about pregnancy during COVID. I've only been able to see my parents once and that was Thanksgiving and I never had the chance to go shopping with my mom or spend time with my sisters or Have anyone help me decorate the nursery? On the bright side, there have been some positives to pregnancies during COVID. There were no happy hours to miss out on or trips to amusement parks where I couldn't ride any of the rides. And on a more serious note, I have had more flexibility to work from home now. I'm excited to have this time to bond with the baby and be together as a family without the stress of the commutes and having to return to work immediately.

Overall, in spite of the uncertainty and the extra stress, I'm so excited to start this journey of parenthood and I'm thankful for the Big Fat Positive podcast for being a part of that journey.

And I didn't really anticipate how much I would miss having a baby shower or just getting together with other parents and talking about having a baby. And I kind of missed all the fun parts. I've just been alone with all the crappy parts like the nausea and the heartburn and the pelvic discomfort. I'll be finished with my vaccine soon and I'm really hoping that that kind of leads the way to reconnect with friends and rebuild the supportive community that I used to have.

But then he broke up with that person and we started dating. Now we're in love. We're going to get married, the whole thing. So it has been a role win of a year for us. I did things. that I never thought I would, and it's been a year, and I realize how strong my whole family is, myself included, because I really thought I wasn't, but I really am. I'm a bad bitch. Sorry about the language. Love you guys, bye.

And I started walking several times a week in the area. And like from my house, I can walk up into the canyon and like hike in the hills and We've discovered tons of parks and just like it's a wonderful area, a wonderful neighborhood. And I really love it. And I don't think I would be feeling this way right now if it weren't for the pandemic. Oh, yeah, that's what you were considering moving right before. We were about one week before lockdown. We met with the real estate agent, Emily, to talk about the process of selling this house and getting something else. And then that happened, and we put that on hold. And it's been on hold ever since. And I don't know where we are with it now or what's going to eventually happen with that. You were going to move to a condo with no yard.

We were considering moving to a condo so we could be closer to work, because while I was working from home, but Steve's commute and L's commute, you know, because she would go with him to the preschool where he works. It was killing like it was awful. Her days were so long and I just didn't envision life like that. I was willing to sacrifice the space to have time back with her. Can you imagine if you had done that and then the pandemic hit? I mean. Oh my God. That's what I'm getting at. I know. We're so grateful that it worked out the way it did. Really grateful. That was very good timing. Yes. Very good timing. Yeah. Anyway, so that's mine. What about you? Have you fallen in love with anything during the pandemic? Yeah. I mean, other than the baby, I birthed out of my loins. Yes. This is a big one.

i actually think the thing i've really come to appreciate is meeting friends outdoors like you know it used to be if you want to meet up with friends you go into a restaurant or they come over and sit in your living room but now out of necessity if you want to see anyone basically you sit out in the yard or you find a park or whatever right. And I realized recently, it's just so much nicer to sit outside and talk to people. And we didn't do it before as much because we weren't being forced to do it. And we were lazy and the TV was inside and all that stuff. But now I don't think I'm ever going to go back. I think our default's going to be meeting people outside if it's nice enough. There's no reason not to, especially in Southern California. It's usually nice enough. It really is, yes. Yeah, I'm definitely utilizing more outdoor time and also just parks in general.

I don't think I really understood the joy of a public park until lockdown and being able to take Augie there and stuff. But just generally, the urban outdoors that often gets neglected, I think. That's great. That's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah. There's a lot of beautiful areas in the city. That's for sure. Yeah. But anyway, I think that's it for our bonus episode. I think we should wrap it up and let people get back to their slowly opening backup lives. I think so. Listeners, if you have anything else you want to add to the conversation, please reach out. We love hearing from you. Laura, where can they reach us?

that's going on in there. If you love our show, please rate us wherever you listen to podcasts and leave a short review that's so helpful and helps other listeners find the show. Big Fat Positive is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Thanks for listening, everyone. Bye. Bye.