A Short Pandemic Pregnancy

JOY!

My husband and I found out I was pregnant in May 2020, during the beginning of the COVID 19 pandemic in the United States. The new addition would be joyfully welcomed by three older and loving brothers. It was a bit of a surprise, I was scared, but chose to fill my thoughts with more Joy and less fear. I feared what having a baby in a pandemic would look and feel like compared to previous experiences. None the less, we carried on, wrapped our growing baby in our joy while silently hoping that our fourth child would be our first girl. And she was. 

Prenatal Care and the Pandemic

During the pandemic, prenatal care was different, appointments were done via telehealth and the medical world was preoccupied with new protocols brought on by COVID 19. I had an ultrasound completed at 10 weeks GA: normal. A follow up visit in the office at 12 weeks: normal. My 16 week visit was a telehealth call. I remember saying to the Nurse Practitioner "I just don't like that I cannot be in the office to hear the heartbeat,I just don't feel as much movement in this pregnancy as before." I had decided to do genetic testing for the first time around this visit as well. I was 35 years old and we wanted as much information as possible since we were in a pandemic and we had other children to care for.  We got our genetic testing results back when I was 18 weeks pregnant, I hadn't had fetal heart rate monitoring in 6 weeks, I had started spotting and the results showed a 40% chance that our baby had Trisomy 13, a chromosomal abnormality that would not allow the baby to live. My husband and I talked to our doctor about the results of the genetic testing in the office and he referred us to a Maternal Fetal Medicine Doctor. Still he chose not to monitor the baby with a doppler during that visit. We waited five days to go to MFM. Still spotting. We chose to believe in this baby, but we cried and waited, our spirits had begun grieving our baby that our mind didn't know we had lost. Five days later we entered the room for the ultrasound to further rule out Trisomy 13, we were told "I am sorry, at this time I am not seeing a heartbeat." My husband cried, I said one bad word and we entered into shock. Our fears had collided with reality. We would go on to deliver Piper Lynn at 4:07 am August 19, 2020 in the hospital. Our room mostly silent, with some intermittent sniffles from our crying and our voices cracking as we said hello and goodbye to our daughter. 

The Grief

Experiencing a loss during the pandemic created complicated responses to our grief. It changed how we began our journey and who could be with us as it evolved. It changed the care protocols for me and my baby. It added trauma to our story. We couldn't have anyone at the hospital with us, so my husband and I did a video call to show our daughter to our family. We entered our grief journey with the added challenges brought on by the pandemic; social isolation, caution fatigue, little-to-no access to our regular coping stradegies, and restricted help with our other children. So we grieved all parts of our process in front of our children or alone at home, at times handling it well and other times pushing the limits of what young children should here or see. The five of us were managing the fears and changes brought on by the pandemic, while trying to make sense of the fragility of life and uncertainty of death after losing Piper. My husband and I lost much of our naivety in those few short months. We no longer were allowed to navigate daily life under the protection of ignorance. As my grief journey continued during the COVID 19 pandemic, it felt mind-numbing and confusing as I attempted to create stradegies to manage daily struggles that surfaced from our loss and the pandemic. When I needed better mental health resources, that difficulty was compounded. 

The Grief Journey Continues

We did not get to bring our 4th child into the world the way we wanted or get to see her grow into a powerful, loving, silly, young woman. Our grief journey has been laced with other extreme and unique challenges brought on by the pandemic. But we have chosen to experience each day in it's full capacity however it is presented to us.

These adversities can paralyze us, break us down, make us question our purpose. However, once broken, these experiences can give us renewed connection to our lives, a stronger ability to wade through fears and see the beauty around us. Loss during the pandemic, even with all of its hard, raw, ugly parts allowed me to open my heart to the unexpected re-birth of my life.