ANXIETY, CONFUSION, TERROR, RELIEF: GIVING BIRTH IN PANDEMIC

Pregnancy, birth and life with a newborn in the middle of a pandemic has brought on high anxiety, ever-shifting hospital protocols and intense isolation for many of the millions of women who have done it around the world.

As the pandemic stretches into a second year and economic worry persists, demographers are studying the reasons for an anticipated pandemic baby bust. Women, meanwhile, have learned to go through labor in masks and to introduce fresh arrivals to loved ones through windows.

Fear, anxiety and chaos were particularly acute in New York City during the early months of the pandemic in what was one of the country’s most devastating hot spots.

Whitnee Hawthorne gave birth to her second son May 7 in a New York hospital. Ten months later, her baby has yet to meet his paternal grandparents, who live in Louisiana.

“Our first son met them the second week of his life,” said Hawthorne, whose husband was thankfully by her side after a ban on birth partners during delivery was lifted at their hospital several weeks before her time.

As a Black woman, she said, she had decided she would leave the state rather than be in labor alone.

“I’m keenly aware of the high maternal death rates for Black women and also, having had a negative experience with a nurse during my first birth, I was scared,” Hawthorne said.

Like Hawthorne, Nneoma Maduike was masked when she gave birth Aug. 1 to her second child, a son, after a pregnancy filled with unknowns.

“The anxiety was absolutely awful. Information was evolving as quickly as anything you can imagine,” said Maduike, who lives in Brooklyn. “I didn’t know what guidance to follow. My husband’s a doctor and he was still going in every single day and that brought on even more anxiety.”