Having a baby during a pandemic!

When we first found out we were having a baby, I could never have imagined that the week she was to be born, the world would go into lock down. As I sat in the doctors office on the Friday before she arrived we were told that they would be inducing our baby early. Everyone in our household was healthy but everything around us was not ok, and so it was decided an early delivery was the best way to tackle the uncertainty that lay ahead.

On the 23 March 2020 I gave birth to a healthy baby girl. We were in full lock down in our hospital room for 5 days. My husband left the room once to get some things from our car and was almost not let back in. Whilst tired, lonely and claustrophobic for that period of time were able to experience this lovely, slow and uninterrupted newborn bubble where we were able to focus solely on my recovery and the health of our baby. For our babe, it was 5 days before she met her sister and 4 weeks before she was able to be cuddled by her extended family. We were so worried that if lockdown went for a long period of time that she would not develop a bond with her extended family and our close friends. Never have I understood the need for my ‘village’ more.

As parents to a 2 year old and a newborn we had very limited access to the health services you would normally expect with a baby and were completely cut off from our support network physically. Those first few weeks were the hardest of our lives, made harder by grandparents standing in our driveway and crying because they couldn’t cuddle their newborn grand daughter due to their high risk jobs.

We have been participating in lots of studies to measure the impact of COVID 19 on babies born in that lockdown period. Only time will tell if it had lasting impact either positive or negative. In the mean time, this will certainly make for a great story at her 21st speech.