On becoming a mother in a pandemic
All In The Mind
ABC Australia
4.5 • 825 Ratings
🗓️ 10 July 2021
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
More than a year after the novel coronavirus pushed much of the world into lockdown, a generation of new mothers are still coming to terms with having been pregnant - and giving birth - in a pandemic.
And if you consider the uncertainty of the past year, the stress, the isolation - there are lots of reasons to be concerned about the impact that might have had on new mums, as well as their babies.
On All in the Mind this week, we delve into new research on the impact of the pandemic on new mothers, and hear from mums about the trials, and occasional triumphs, of life in a lockdown limbo.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an ABC podcast. |
| 0:06.1 | What was the scariest part about becoming, you know, a new mum in a pandemic? |
| 0:11.1 | Hmm, the scariest thing. |
| 0:13.3 | Oh, how deep do we want to go? |
| 0:17.7 | I don't know. |
| 0:18.5 | I guess you started even questioning the future and what kind of world you've brought your baby into in a way, yeah. |
| 0:30.4 | More than a year after the novel coronavirus pushed much of the world into lockdown, |
| 0:35.1 | a generation of new mothers is still coming to terms |
| 0:38.6 | with having been pregnant and giving birth in a pandemic. |
| 0:42.2 | So that was not something I would recommend. |
| 0:44.2 | COVID test in labour, just I wouldn't recommend it. |
| 0:46.8 | Definitely not. |
| 0:47.8 | To be honest, if I had known that there was going to be a global pandemic, there probably |
| 0:52.9 | would be no baby. |
| 0:54.5 | At one point, we're thinking, OK, there's a bit of a flu bug going around |
| 0:58.0 | and the next minute we're thinking, oh my gosh, there's people who are going to infect us, |
| 1:01.9 | could our baby get sick? |
| 1:03.4 | And this isn't over yet. |
| 1:05.1 | Several cities have recently been back in lockdown, while Sydney still is. |
| 1:09.3 | And for many who have family overseas, their relatives |
| 1:12.0 | still haven't met their babies. So my family and my husband's family are in India and they |
| 1:16.9 | were planning to come in August last year. My husband is German, so unfortunately his family |
... |
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