Re­silient, self­less, brave–ar­guably at­trib­ut­es typ­i­cal­ly giv­en to a woman, es­pe­cial­ly a moth­er. Lit­tle sur­prise then that when faced with the predica­ment of be­ing preg­nant dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, ex­pec­tant moth­ers and med­ical doc­tors, Emi­ly and Chris­tine (not their re­al names) are “wom­an­ing up.”

The women were not able to use their re­al names be­cause of em­ploy­ment re­stric­tions. Still, they want­ed to share with oth­er preg­nant women that with ex­tra cau­tion, self-care and at­ten­tion to men­tal well-be­ing, en­dur­ing a preg­nan­cy in a pan­dem­ic does not have to be the most daunt­ing ex­pe­ri­ence.

Hy­per-vig­i­lant

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Wednes­day, Emi­ly was quick to re­call a taunt by some­one she knew about find­ing her­self ex­pect­ing her sec­ond ba­by in the mid­dle of COVID-19.

“Why you de­cide to get preg­nant dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, girl?” the friend had teased, most like­ly mir­ror­ing the views of many who see bring­ing a ba­by in­to the world at this time as a less than ide­al sit­u­a­tion, with some even hav­ing coined the terms, “2020 ba­bies” and “pan­dem­ic moth­ers.”

Emi­ly had firm ad­vice for ex­pec­tant moth­ers like her­self, how­ev­er:

“Be­ing preg­nant is a spe­cial time. Don’t let the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic take that away from you. Think pos­i­tive­ly and keep pos­i­tive peo­ple around you.”

Cur­rent­ly nine months in­to her sec­ond preg­nan­cy, the moth­er of a tod­dler did ad­mit that she had to over­come some chal­lenges. When she be­gan to take no­tice of the pan­dem­ic in late Jan­u­ary she won­dered why there was so much fuss by in­ter­na­tion­al me­dia, she said.

“Af­ter the first case of COVID-19 was con­firmed in Trinidad I did adopt more strin­gent pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sures. Af­ter work, I would go straight home, re­move my shoes out­side and quick­ly show­er and change my work clothes. We kept a bot­tle of hand sani­tis­er at the en­trance of our home,” she re­called.

To­wards the end of her first trimester, at the time of the first na­tion­wide lock­down is­sued by the Gov­ern­ment, her body and mind be­gan to be test­ed. She ex­pe­ri­enced heart pal­pi­ta­tions and had to seek med­ical at­ten­tion for what her car­di­ol­o­gist iden­ti­fied as be­nign ar­rhyth­mia. It meant she had pe­ri­ods of ab­nor­mal heart­beats, which were not life-threat­en­ing and did not re­quire med­ica­tion. The con­stant me­dia bom­bard­ment with news of mount­ing in­fec­tion rates and deaths in Wuhan, Chi­na, as well as Italy and Spain had tak­en its toll.

“I was wor­ry­ing about the sit­u­a­tion–my per­son­al well-be­ing, the ba­by I was car­ry­ing…my fam­i­ly, friends and my coun­try at large–when I thought I wasn’t,” she re­called.

The most press­ing con­cerns re­port­ed among preg­nant women lo­cal­ly and abroad are whether they are more like­ly to con­tract COVID-19, whether COVID-19 will do greater dam­age to their bod­ies than non-preg­nant women and whether they will pass on the virus to their ba­bies if they do be­come in­fect­ed.

Though most would be­lieve that a med­ical or sci­en­tif­ic back­ground would make a woman less fear­ful of ex­pect­ing a ba­by dur­ing a pan­dem­ic, Chris­tine ad­mit­ted that know­ing the dan­gers of COVID-19 made her “hy­per-vig­i­lant.”

“Ex­tra­or­di­nary” was how she de­scribed be­ing preg­nant dur­ing the cur­rent COVID-19 health emer­gency.

“The chal­lenges have been re­al, not on­ly phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly, but as the say­ing goes: we learn from tough times and cir­cum­stances,” she shared.

Emi­ly, who lives in Champs Fleurs, re­vealed that she was much more ac­tive dur­ing her first preg­nan­cy, hav­ing dressed up glam­orous­ly to at­tend­ed a friend’s wed­ding, gone out to dine, vis­it­ed beach­es and trav­elled abroad. She had even had two ba­by show­ers.

De­spite the con­straints that have come with COVID, the 35 year old, who is al­so a wife, said she felt more com­fort­able with what to ex­pect with preg­nan­cy and moth­er­hood this time around and was grate­ful for her sol­id sup­port sys­tem at home.

Ini­tial­ly para­noid

Al­so nine months preg­nant, Chris­tine too has ex­pe­ri­enced the ma­jor­i­ty of her sec­ond preg­nan­cy with the knowl­edge of a world­wide high­ly trans­mis­si­ble, dead­ly nov­el coro­n­avirus. To com­pound mat­ters, Chris­tine has pre-ex­ist­ing med­ical con­di­tions.

Ini­tial­ly, Chris­tine was so “para­noid” about con­tract­ing the dis­ease, she in­sist­ed on don­ning a heavy suit of amour every morn­ing for work.

“On the days I did work at the med­ical fa­cil­i­ty, I was decked out in my N95/ sur­gi­cal mask, to­geth­er with a face shield and while seen by oth­ers as ex­ces­sive, I took all pre­cau­tions to pro­tect my­self and un­born ba­by at that time.”

Though some pa­tients she saw on the job were ex­tra mind­ful of her con­di­tion as a preg­nant doc­tor, even of­fer­ing words of en­cour­age­ment, oth­ers were not forth­com­ing about their vi­ral symp­toms, she said. She felt ex­posed to the virus at times as a re­sult.

Chris­tine al­so con­sid­ered the pos­si­bil­i­ty of re­quir­ing emer­gency at­ten­tion at hos­pi­tal for pos­si­ble com­pli­ca­tions like bleed­ing, ab­dom­i­nal pain or pre-term labour. Her fears al­so sur­faced when­ev­er she had to leave the house in search of ba­by items or when­ev­er she had her own doc­tor ap­point­ments.

Hav­ing at­tend­ed both pub­lic clin­ic and pri­vate con­sul­ta­tions with her ob­ste­tri­cian/gy­nae­col­o­gist, the ex­pec­tant moth­er who is in her ear­ly 30s was even­tu­al­ly re­as­sured by the strict COVID-19 mea­sures ob­served by her health care pro­fes­sion­als. The rou­tine an­te­na­tal tests, in­clud­ing blood tests and ul­tra­sounds ad­min­is­tered, al­so helped.

“At the lo­cal health cen­tre, all pro­to­cols were ob­served–masks, seat­ing, sani­tis­ing, dis­tanc­ing–and the nurs­ing staff worked dili­gent­ly in the (height of) pan­dem­ic times–pleas­ant, re­as­sur­ing and pro­fes­sion­al,” Chris­tine re­called.

“Pri­vate­ly, the same pro­to­cols were held which made my hus­band and me com­fort­able to keep ap­point­ments. The doc­tors (her ob­ste­tri­cian, and sub-spe­cial­ists for her oth­er con­di­tions) kept to their ap­point­ments and ad­dressed all con­cerns. One physi­cian used telemed­i­cine (ex­tend­ing care to pa­tients re­mote­ly) to in­ter­pret blood re­sults to re­duce wait­ing time and dur­ing lock­down, still en­sured con­ti­nu­ity of care.”

She not­ed that through­out her preg­nan­cy, most oth­er preg­nant women with whom she had dis­cus­sions or came in­to con­tact, were fol­low­ing the Min­istry of Health guide­lines like wear­ing masks, so­cial dis­tanc­ing and re­duc­ing their out­door trips.

“Over­whelm­ing” sup­port from her hus­band, par­ents, oth­er rel­a­tives, col­leagues and church ral­lied her through…as did their dri­ve-by ba­by show­ers and food crav­ings drop-offs, she jest­ed.

'Place em­pha­sis on the men­tal health of ex­pec­tant moth­ers'

Chris­tine said she ap­pre­ci­at­ed ef­forts by the Min­istry of Health to sen­si­tise and al­lay con­cerns of preg­nant women via vir­tu­al con­fer­ence brief­in­gs, adding that greater em­pha­sis should be placed on the men­tal health of ex­pec­tant moth­ers, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing this pan­dem­ic.

Both felt that preg­nant med­ical work­ers, es­pe­cial­ly, may have to grap­ple more with anx­i­ety and fear since such pro­fes­sion­als are at a high risk of con­tract­ing COVID-19 and are con­sid­ered “es­sen­tial work­ers” who do not have the op­tion of work­ing from home.

Chris­tine al­so sug­gest­ed that this coun­try moves to­wards the in­ter­na­tion­al trend of prac­tis­ing telemed­i­cine–where doc­tors con­sult with clients re­mote­ly–to re­lieve some of the bur­dens on both pa­tient and health care in­sti­tu­tions.

“A Zoom or Skype site can be set up with a ded­i­cat­ed mul­ti-dis­ci­pli­nary team to an­swer re­al-time ques­tions for preg­nant women at des­ig­nat­ed times,” she of­fered.

She was hap­py to see the in­tro­duc­tion of COVID-19 na­sopha­ryn­geal swabs for ex­pec­tant moth­ers be­fore elec­tive de­liv­er­ies for the safe­ty of moth­er, un­born ba­by and staff at some in­sti­tu­tions.

She said be­ing preg­nant at such a time as this has taught her the val­ue of self-in­tro­spec­tion and set­ting an ex­am­ple for her oth­er child who was al­ways keen­ly ob­serv­ing her re­sponse to dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tions. She said oth­er preg­nant women should guard their men­tal health and main­tain close ties with fam­i­ly and health care pro­fes­sion­als.

Emi­ly rec­om­mend­ed such mea­sures as per­mis­sion to work from home, de­pend­ing on the woman’s pro­fes­sion, timed ap­point­ments at hos­pi­tal an­te­na­tal clin­ics and home vis­its by the dis­trict health vis­i­tor for un­com­pli­cat­ed preg­nan­cies.

Ac­cord­ing to her, be­ing preg­nant in a pan­dem­ic has strength­ened her abil­i­ty to man­age work and home sched­ules and pri­ori­tise the im­por­tant things in life like fam­i­ly in­ti­ma­cy and prayer.

She ad­vised moth­ers to main­tain good eat­ing habits, do light ex­er­cise, stay well-hy­drat­ed and well-rest­ed and plan es­sen­tial trips to min­imise time out­side the house.

“You may be dis­ap­point­ed that you may not be able to have a ba­by show­er or a pret­ty preg­nan­cy pho­to­shoot, but think of oth­er safe in­no­v­a­tive ways that you can cel­e­brate the new mem­ber of your fam­i­ly,” she added.