The year 2020 was a year like no other — especially if you were pregnant.
But on this Mother’s Day, the moms who braved COVID-19 lockdown and morning sickness at the same time have much to celebrate.
The COVID-19 pandemic meant that pregnant women around the country, including in Bartholomew County, had to face additional challenges, including being alone for ultrasounds and doctor’s appointments, no family in the hospital waiting room, social isolation and sometimes financial uncertainty.
Some went through labor and gave birth while wearing a mask.
The pandemic also curtailed many activities that some moms-to-be look forward to, including telling friends and family in person, gender-reveal parties, baby showers and even, in some cases, using the “expectant mother” parking spots at work.
“It was just a very weird experience,” said Brianna Johns, 25, of Columbus, who gave birth to her first child, Oliver, in September.
“That’s just the word that comes to mind. It was just weird.”
Johns found out she was pregnant about a month and a half before the spring 2020 lockdown. She had planned to visit friends and family to deliver the news, but ended up calling or texting instead.
Johns and her husband, Kyle, had wanted to get an early ultrasound to learn the baby’s gender but “everything was closed,” she said. So she took a blood test at home to find out.
At times, Johns said, it was scary going to doctor’s appointments alone “not knowing if I was going to get bad news by myself.”
“The hardest part was the 20-week ultrasound where they’re looking for abnormalities and issues with the baby and not being able to have my husband there just on the off chance that something was wrong,” Johns said. “And we were very lucky. I mean, (the baby) was perfectly healthy. But that was very, very stressful.”
After the ultrasound, she was allowed to talk with her husband on FaceTime “just for a really quick, ‘Here’s your baby, it’s a boy’ sneak-peak.”
For Maryka DeBusk, 26, who gave birth to her second child, Carmen, in December — when COVID-19 hospitalizations at Columbus Regional Hospital were approaching all-time highs — the experience was “completely different from start to finish” than the previous pregnancy.
In particular, DeBusk said she was concerned at times about getting COVID-19 and what that would mean for the pregnancy and her health, as expectant mothers run a greater risk of severe illness from the virus.
Recent studies have found that pregnant women are multiple times more likely to be admitted to an ICU, require mechanical ventilation and die from COVID-19 compared to women of the same age who were not pregnant.
Additionally, pregnant women who are hospitalized with COVID-19 have been shown to have a heightened risk of preterm birth.
“Just having to really isolate myself from people to make sure I kept myself healthy for me and the baby (was different), because I didn’t know what would happen to the baby if I was to get COVID,” DeBusk said. “…When we came home (from the hospital), I didn’t really feel comfortable having anyone over and not knowing if we were going to be exposed.”
But one blessing in disguise, DeBusk said, was working from home, which she said was “super helpful” because sometimes she “didn’t have to get up to get dressed and put on a fake smile and try to sit at an uncomfortable desk all day” on the days she felt awful.
“I could sit on the couch in my pajamas and get as much work done as I could,” DeBusk.
And the differences didn’t end there.
Only her husband Jake, 28, was allowed to be by her side while she was giving birth. No parents or other family or friends were allowed, though DeBusk didn’t have too many complaints about that.
“I wasn’t completely upset about that, because when you just had a baby, it’s almost like time stands still and you just want to take it in and look at your new baby,” DeBusk said. “(Having visitor restrictions) allowed us to just have those intimate moments be more personal, and you didn’t feel like you were trying to host people in your hospital room when you feel like you just got hit by a car. I mean, you just had a baby.”
For Torrie Wagner, 27, of Columbus, who had her second child, Madelyn, this past January, the pandemic caused her and her husband Thomas to briefly reconsider whether it was the right time to have another child.
They had just decided that they wanted to expand their family, but not long after, COVID-19 started spreading across the state, hospital beds were filling up and unemployment was reaching levels not seen since the Great Depression.
It was anyone’s guess how things were going to play out.
At one point, Wagner was not working for about a month. Then her 2-year-old daughter’s daycare facility shut down. Then her husband was out of work for about a week.
The plus side, Wager said, was that the lockdown gave her and her husband “a little time to slow down and enjoy our daughter (Lillian) being the only child for a little bit longer.”
“We definitely stepped back and evaluated if wanted to continue (trying to get pregnant),” Wagner said. “…It was all uncertain, but the pandemic wasn’t going to be for the rest of our lives. We love the age gap of two, two and a half years between our kids.”
“At the end of it, it was definitely worth it to have our kids in the age group that we wanted,” Wagner said.
But the experience was very different this time around, Wagner said.
Wagner and her husband had hoped that their family and friends could come to the hospital and meet the new baby and socialize as they had done for their first child.
In particular, their daughter Lillian was excited to have a little sister but was not allowed to meet the new baby in the hospital due to COVID-19 restrictions.
Lillian ended up meeting her sister two days later after her parents came home from the hospital, Wagner said.
“We just didn’t want to look back and regret holding off a year or two due to a pandemic, because I think that would have been harder on us,” Wagner said.
“But it was definitely hard,” Wagner said.
