Most mornings I wake up before my partner and walk to our kitchen. I’m still nude from sleeping as I switch on the kettle and prepare the French press for our morning coffees. I’m about a month away from my due date and wake up 10 times or more a night. Clothes get in the way. My husband is still asleep on the couch. I was probably balmy and restless again last night while trying to maneuver my lifesize pregnancy pillow between my thighs and around my head like a cradle. Restlessness, which I believe to be a symptom of uncertainty, is becoming part of my quarantine normal. Without needing to rush out the door to get to my office, my partner and I are able to relish our final weeks together as two before we become a family of three—a silver lining amid humbling grief and anxiety. My third trimester began just as Illinois’s stay-at-home order took effect on March 21, 2020.
Being 28 weeks pregnant at the start of a statewide stay-at-home order may be the best preparation for motherhood that I could have never imagined.
My midwife appointments became virtual, as did childbirth classes and meetings with my doula, and I had to adapt. That sense of community I was hoping and longing to gain among other expecting parents through pregnancy was swept out from beneath my feet overnight, and I had to adapt. From baby clothes and diapers to postpartum care essentials, everything must now be bought online, and I had to adapt. I spend frantic hours online researching this diaper versus that and this stroller versus the next, all while desperately wanting to feel the fabrics. These small uncertainties are things that normally wouldn’t irk me. The vast uncertainties that we are facing collectively around the globe are manifesting in interesting ways within the walls of my home, my microworld for the past two months.
I could go into labor any day now, and I have a heaviness that usually begins after dinnertime. The pressure starts in my chest and weighs down into my stomach. Sometimes my breath feels tight and my fingertips tingle with warm blood. The psychology of my uncertainties are finding life and emerging within my body. Sitting outside with my dog and taking deep breaths helps. Cooking dinner and taking a quiet bath before bed also help. Spontaneous maternity photoshoots in our living room help, too. Scrolling on my phone does not; neither does avoidance or overworking.
From pregnancy through postpartum, motherhood is a lesson in isolation as well as acceptance.
I recently read my friend Stacey May Fowles’s recent essay “New motherhood prepared me for COVID-19 isolation” about being quarantined at home with her two-year-old daughter. Her piece first made me weep and then I stopped when an overwhelming familiarity calmed my hormones. I thought, how strange that her words resonate so vividly with me since I don’t yet have a child in my arms. I don’t know anything about motherhood yet. While our experiences are opposites, they have one deep commonality: From pregnancy through postpartum, motherhood is a lesson in isolation as well as acceptance. Fowles writes, “Becoming a mother meant dramatically relearning not only how to approach life, but the pace of that approach. I had to actively cultivate patience, and become okay with staying in one place for long stretches of time, day after day.” As motherhood prepared Fowles for isolation, pregnancy during a pandemic has prepared me for motherhood; I’ve been forced to slow down, accept uncertainty, and unwrite any narrative I dreamt as to what bringing a child into the world could look like—all while staying home, day after day.
The lessons surfacing throughout this experience are not solely difficult or easy, serious or lighthearted. Some days, I struggle with the uncertainty of shocking flatulence and gassiness in close quarters with my husband, while during others I struggle with the uncertainty of numbing anxiety—that heaviness I mentioned. I am fortunate to be employed and able to work exclusively from home, yet I’m already ruminating about what returning to work will look like come September. My husband and I are savoring undisturbed time together before our baby makes their appearance, yet I can’t help but grieve the loss of time spent with my parents during my last months as just me and not “mom” me. My family lives in Ontario, Canada, which feels especially far away, since the border is closed. I’m spending much more time off my feet, yet I worry my heightened anxiety will negatively impact my baby’s health. I find myself annoyed or even hurt when I see people I know on social media not taking social distancing seriously, yet I also worry I am taking the precautions too seriously. I worry, I worry, and I worry. When I tell my friends who are already mothers about my newfound hobby—worrying—they laugh and welcome me to the parent club. With or without a pandemic, parents are wired to worry, as we are strengthened by our children to endure isolation.
When I tell my friends who are already mothers about my newfound hobby—worrying—they laugh and welcome me to the parent club.
Many firsts have been and will be lived by many expecting moms while in isolation: our first prenatal class, our first Mother’s Day, our first contractions, the first time we feel our babies’ warmth on our skin. This time of isolation feels heavy for many reasons, but as long as our babies are healthy, then we will be okay. This pandemic is momentary, just as our pregnancies and those first few months postpartum will soon feel. My husband says that time is the most expensive thing that we’ve got. I can hear him singing that line to me and know that even with all the uncertainty in our path ahead, we will be okay. And that if we look back on this period and are privileged enough to see time slowed down, then we will surface from this crisis much richer than we were before.
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